VANCOUVER — Police officer Keiron McConnell had been on the job four months when a call crackled over the radio about a stolen vehicle. The driver was arrested after a short chase, but when McConnell was told the young man was a gang member, it shattered his understanding of what that meant. “Everything I thought about gangs up to this point had kind of come from the movies ‘Colors,’ ‘Boyz n the Hood,’ that kind of stuff,” McConnell said. “This young fellow lived on the west side of Vancouver, mom and dad still lived in the house, they were wealthy by 1990s standards, his siblings were successful in school. So it was like, what is it about this kid that got him involved?” The question plagued McConnell as he watched the pattern of seemingly privileged, middle-class young men choosing a life of crime repeat itself. About 15 years after that arrest, while pursuing a PhD, he explored the question of what makes British Columbia’s landscape so unlike any other. Established wisdom, he found, aligned with the stereotypes he’d carried into the job. Traditional gang members in cities like Chicago are young men born into poor nei...