On Tuesday morning, more than 1,000 police officers from forces across Ontario executed 105 search warrants in the GTA and Ottawa, resulting in 79 arrests and the seizure of $30,000 in cash, $10,500 in casino cheques, 19 firearms, diamonds, cocaine, body armour, vehicles and more than 10,000 ecstasy pills.
The arrests signal the first time police have been able to establish a link to the infamously violent Jamaican drug cartel, which one expert says has been operating in the GTA for decades, reaping profits in the shadows while fuelling gang warfare and terrorizing residents.
Global News
Police say that some of the men arrested in Tuesday's crackdown could have links to Jamaica's powerful Shower Posse gang.
“You’re not gonna notice them. You’re not gonna see them,” said Staff Inspector Mike Earl, noting members of the Shower Posse are typically in their 30s or 40s. “They’re smart, they’re organized and they’ve been around a long time.”
Dubbed Project Corral, the investigation began in August 2009 focusing on several shootings and other violent crimes in northwest Toronto that police believed to be a result of fighting between the area’s competing criminal organizations.
While investigators initially targetted members of the Falstaff Crips and Five Point Generals — street-level gangs allegedly selling illicit drugs and trafficking in firearms — police now allege that these gangs were being controlled by the Shower Posse.
“Over the course of this investigation, a more significant organized crime involvement has been identified,” Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair told reporters at a media conference on Tuesday. “We’re very hopeful that by incapacitating these organizations … we can make our communities safer.”
Police say their investigation revealed that the Jamaican gang is allegedly responsible for a “significant part” of the city’s drug trade, and that its influence stretches as far north as Sault Ste. Marie, sweeping from Windsor in the west to Ottawa in the east. Earlier this year, Project Corral investigators in the Dominican Republic intercepted more than 70 kilograms of cocaine and a load of firearms destined for Toronto, police say.
Two unsolved homicides, one on Dec. 3, 2009, and the other on Feb. 8, 2010, both of which occurred on Falstaff Ave., are also part of the investigation.
The Shower Posse takes its name from its modus operandi — showering communities with bullets to enforce their dominance, said Michael C. Chettleburgh, author of Young Thugs: Inside the Dangerous World of Canadian Street Gangs.
The Posse has a strong presence in northwest Toronto because members fled to Canada when Michael Manley’s government took power in Jamaica in the 1970s.
“They came with a lot of violence in their system, essentially, in that they were brought up in the ways of badness by government officials,” said Mr. Chettleburgh, the founder of Astwood Strategy Corp., a crime and social justice consultancy group. “They came with access to the drug trade, and they arrived in Canada … and basically set up shop.”
The gang’s lineage has been passed on to a new generation of Canadians, he said.
“In terms of the street level, they still have a presence, they’re still a powerful entity in terms of supplying the market with the tools of the street gangsters, which is dope — drugs of all kinds,” he said. “They are a force to be reckoned with, as are traditional organized crime entities.”
The Shower Posse, said to operate drug bases in more than 20 U.S. cities, has its roots in Brooklyn, N.Y., where Vivian Blake founded the gang in the 1970s. Before his incarceration in a U.S. prison in 2000 for racketeering and cocaine possession, the native Jamaican was allegedly responsible for importing thousands of tons of drugs into the United States. He served eight years of his 28-year sentence and returned to Jamaica in January 2009. He died on March 25 in Kingston at the age of 54.
The Shower Posse, said to operate drug bases in more than 20 U.S. cities, has its roots in Brooklyn, N.Y., where Vivian Blake founded the gang in the 1970s. Before his incarceration in a U.S. prison in 2000 for racketeering and cocaine possession, the native Jamaican was allegedly responsible for importing thousands of tons of drugs into the United States. He served eight years of his 28-year sentence and returned to Jamaica in January 2009. He died on March 25 in Kingston at the age of 54.
The gang’s alleged current leader, 41-year-old Christopher Coke, is a powerful player in Jamaican politics, so much so that the U.S. State Department’s attempt to extradite him has rattled relations between the two countries.
Mr. Coke is facing charges in the United States of firearms trafficking and conspiracy to distribute cocaine and marijuana.
He is so influential that intermediaries managed to seek a resolution of his legal predicament directly with top aides to President Obama.
The State Department has suggested that it is Mr. Coke’s influence with top ruling party politicians that is impeding his extradition. The Jamaican government continues to resist Mr. Coke’s extradition, claiming insufficient evidence.
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