Former VPD officer Kal Dosanjh worked as youth advocate, mentor: Read our coverage of him here

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In this May 2026 story, Dosanjh spoke about his past efforts to help a teen stay out of trouble. The teen ultimately drifted toward criminal activity and was shot dead in a gang-related shooting in May 2016.

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“When you’ve invested so much emotionally into this kid and you’re working hard to keep them on the right track, you see they are achieving success, and it feels like there is a light at the end of the tunnel that they will make it out,” Dosanjh told Postmedia.

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“It just hurts.”

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The veteran officer met the teenager three years ago through KidsPlay Foundation, an organization based in Surrey helping youth stay out of gangs, drugs and violence. Dosanjh did not want to publicly name the victim out of respect for his family, but said the victim he knew was the 18-year-old shot to death.

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The two were introduced by the victim’s mother, who called Dosanjh to get her son connected with KidsPlay, he said.

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“He was dealing with a lot of suffering and trauma,” he shared. “So she (the mother) reached out. She was working two or three jobs to make ends meet and give (him) the best life possible, but she recognized that (he) was easily influenced by the wrong people.”

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Manbir Amar was killed on Aug. 31, 2022 during a physical altercation between two neighbours. Amar, a filmmaker, had worked alongside Dosanjh in anti-gang prevention efforts.

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Amar produced three films: a short, a feature film and an award-winning 2009 documentary titled A Warrior’s Religion that provided an inside look at gang life in Metro Vancouver’s South Asian communities through dozens of interviews.

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Kal Dosanjh, a former Vancouver Police officer, credits Amar’s work as fuelling an impactful paradigm shift in gang-prevention work in the South Asian community.

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“He was a real visionary,” said Dosanjh, who leads in-school presentations that encourage youth to steer clear of gang involvement.

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“I remember Mani telling me about how he snuck into Vancouver General Hospital to interview Bal Bhuttar, a notorious South Asian gangster,” Dosanjh recalled. “He asked Bal what led him down the path into the world of gangs, Bal told him about his childhood.

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“This precipitated a deep, insightful dive from the South Asian community to explore the impact that abuse and dysfunction in the household have on pushing kids to pursue drugs, gangs and crime.”

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In 2016, Dosanjh’s KidsPlay Foundation organized a Surrey forum for teens to discuss issues around Islamophobia and finding ways to develop and improve intercultural harmony in the community.

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The event was organized by the Kids Play Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to steering youth away from a life of gangs, drugs and violence.

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What does that have to do with Islamophobia or racism? Plenty, said founder Kal Dosanjh, a Vancouver police officer. He said the impetus for the forum was a story he had heard about notorious gangster Bindy Johal, who was shot to death in a Vancouver nightclub in 1998.

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Dosanjh said Johal once was asked “why he was getting mixed into gangs and that lifestyle, and he said he grew up fighting on the street,” recalled Dosanjh.

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Growing up as an Indo-Canadian kid in Vancouver, Johal was beaten up, was told to go back to his country, and faced discrimination.

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“Then, he said, he had enough, got together with others, and fought back. Unfortunately it got to the point he became a drug dealer and gangster,” said Dosanjh. “That bothered me.”