A 12-year-old New Westminster boy got a taste of the spotlight Monday when his winning design for an anti-gang campaign vehicle was unveiled.
Massey Heights resident Christian Williams, a Grade 7 student at Our Lady of Mercy Elementary School across the Burnaby border, was among about 30 to 40 New West kids who entered the police department’s “Wrap Our Ride” contest last month.
Williams’ design was inspired by his passion for graphic design and his dad’s love of muscle cars, he told the Record.
“When he took (his car) to the shop, I saw one of the mechanic’s cars, and it had flames fading out on the side, so that made me think: Canada flag,” he said.
Williams returned home and went to work on a Canadian flag-inspired design. Like the flame design he saw on the mechanic’s car, his vision for the Hummer included a Canadian flag fading out, along the side panels of the vehicle.
“I polished it off, sent it off to the guys (the police), and they called me later and said, ‘Hey, you won.’ So that was awesome, and after that they took me down studio and they basically showed me how they’d wrap it,” he said.
The winning “wrap” was then pasted to the Hummer H2, which had been seized in another jurisdiction as a profit of crime through the province’s civil forfeiture program and loaned to the New Westminster Police Department as part of the “End Gang Life” anti-gang campaign led by the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit of B.C.
The flashy Hummer will be primarily used by the police department’s school liaison officers as a way to engage with young people about the perils of gang life. It’s a conversation starter, Chief Const. Dave Jones said to the crowd Monday.
“This is meant to be the ice-breaker. They’ll want to approach and find out the history behind it; how we ended up with a Hummer vehicle; why it’s been decorated in this manner; and of course, the story behind the actual vehicle itself,” Jones said. “We create vehicles like this to attract that level of conversation. It’s not meant to be a very detailed plan, it’s that first level of introduction, communication.”
