B.C. police are slamming a Rolling Stone article on jailed United Nations gang leader Clayton Roueche as a fawning, overblown, and inaccurate portrayal of the crime lord’s actual life story.
The magazine article, titled “Boss Weed: The gangster who changed the pot game,” is full of grandiose claims about Roueche’s impact on the North American drug trade, while largely separating him from the brutal violence and deadly turf wars it spawned.
Author Jesse Hyde describes the Chilliwack-native as “one of the most significant drug traffickers the U.S. had ever captured,” and the man who “professionalized the industry the same way Pablo Escobar had done decades before in Colombia.”
One suggestion in the article is that Roueche was the first to use helicopters and float planes to traffic an estimated 20 tonnes, or $120 million worth of marijuana into the U.S. annually.
But the police who helped put Roueche behind bars say the characterization is laughable.
“He didn’t innovate helicopter trafficking of drugs, there were people long before him who did it,” said Sgt. Lindsey Houghton of the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit. “And there were much bigger players in the drug trade around then, as there are now.”
The article appears to praise Roueche for fraternizing with non-white gangsters, a practice that led to his gang’s UN moniker.
It also highlights his supposed “Samurai code” of “honor, loyalty and respect,” and his interest in Buddhism.
Houghton said the article effectively glamourizes the notorious gangster while glossing over the bloody Metro Vancouver gang war he helped create, and which has continued to plague the region since he was locked up in the U.S. five years ago.
“It was very disappointing to see an article written like that, especially since the author didn’t contact us for any context or background, seeing as how we led that investigation,” Houghton said.
“It minimizes the impact that he and his gang members had on our community, and it doesn’t do any service to the work that educators and law enforcement are doing to try and demystify and inform youth and young adults about the perils of entering gang life.”
The article does quote UN gang expert Det. Andrew Wooding of the Abbotsford Police Department, although the force said the officer never talked to Rolling Stone.
Roueche is serving a 30-year sentence in Washington State after pleading guilty to conspiracy to export cocaine, conspiracy to import marijuana and conspiracy to engage in money laundering.
With a report from CTV British Columbia’s Lisa Rossington
