Crime in
Toronto
Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...
has been relatively low in comparison to other major cities, but it saw a record number of shootings in 2019. In 2017, a ranking of 60 cities by ''
The Economist
''The Economist'' is a British weekly newspaper printed in demitab format and published digitally. It focuses on current affairs, international business, politics, technology, and culture. Based in London, the newspaper is owned by The Econo ...
'' ranked
Toronto
Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...
as the 24th safest major city in the world, behind Tokyo, London, Paris, and Seoul, but one of the safest major cities in North America. A CEOWORLD magazine ranked Toronto as the 95th safest city in the world for 2018, running behind several other major cities like Tokyo, London, Osaka, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taipei but safer than most cities in North America.
Even though Toronto is the
fourth largest city in North America, it has a relatively low
homicide
Homicide occurs when a person kills another person. A homicide requires only a volitional act or omission that causes the death of another, and thus a homicide may result from accidental, reckless, or negligent acts even if there is no inten ...
rate that has fluctuated over the 2010s decade between 2.1 and 3.8 per 100,000 people. This is worse than most of Europe, but comparable to modern day New York.
This is also lower than other major cities such as
Atlanta
Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,715 ...
(19.0),
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
, image_map =
, map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago
, coordinates =
, coordinates_footnotes =
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name ...
(18.5),
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
(9.0),
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
(8.6),
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
(5.1), and
San Jose (4.6). In 2007, Toronto's
robbery
Robbery is the crime of taking or attempting to take anything of value by force, threat of force, or by use of fear. According to common law, robbery is defined as taking the property of another, with the intent to permanently deprive the perso ...
rate also ranked relatively high, with 407.1 robberies per 100,000 people, compared to
Detroit
Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at th ...
(675.1), Chicago (588.6),
Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...
(348.5), Vancouver (366.2), New York City (265.9),
Montreal
Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-most populous city in Canada and List of towns in Quebec, most populous city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian ...
(235.3),
San Diego
San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the List of United States cities by population, eigh ...
(158.8), and Portland (150.5).
While homicide rates in Toronto were relatively low for several years, they started to increase in 2016 until Toronto experienced the highest homicide rate among major Canadian cities in 2018;
in that single year, the city surpassed the homicide rate of New York City.
Homicide rates declined again in 2019; when compared across major metropolitan areas, the
Greater Toronto Area
The Greater Toronto Area, commonly referred to as the GTA, includes the City of Toronto and the regional municipalities of Durham, Halton, Peel, and York. In total, the region contains 25 urban, suburban, and rural municipalities. The Greater T ...
ranked ninth in Canada with a homicide rate of 2.26 per 100,000.
Late 1980s and early 1990s
In the late 1980s, gangs in Toronto were becoming increasingly violent. This coincided with the arrival of
crack cocaine
Crack cocaine, commonly known simply as crack, and also known as rock, is a free base form of the stimulant cocaine that can be smoked. Crack offers a short, intense high to smokers. The ''Manual of Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment'' calls ...
in the city, which caused more gun violence to occur in low-income neighborhoods.
[Betsy Powell]
"Gang life allure: Drugs, fast money, easy sex"
''Toronto Star'', September 5, 2010. In 1988,
Toronto Police
The Toronto Police Service (TPS) is a municipal police force in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and the primary agency responsible for providing law enforcement and policing services in Toronto. Established in 1834, it was the first local police ser ...
were under scrutiny for a series of shootings of unarmed
black
Black is a color which results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without hue, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness. Black and white have o ...
men, dating back to the late 1970s.
[K.K. Campbell]
"LAWS CHARGES METRO POLICE BIAS AGAINST BLACKS `WORSE THAN L.A.'"
''Eye Weekly'', October 1, 1992 In 1991, Toronto experienced its most violent year with 89 murders (that murder tally was surpassed in 2018), 16 of which were linked to drug wars involving rival gangs.
Much of the high murder toll of 1991 was due to a gang war in Chinatown between various Chinese gangs for the control of the drug trade.
On May 4, 1992, there were riot
A riot is a form of civil disorder commonly characterized by a group lashing out in a violent public disturbance against authority, property, or people.
Riots typically involve destruction of property, public or private. The property targete ...
s on Yonge Street
Yonge Street (; pronounced "young") is a major arterial route in the Canadian province of Ontario connecting the shores of Lake Ontario in Toronto to Lake Simcoe, a gateway to the Upper Great Lakes.
Once the southernmost leg of provincial Hi ...
, which followed peaceful protest
Nonviolent resistance (NVR), or nonviolent action, sometimes called civil resistance, is the practice of achieving goals such as social change through symbolic protests, civil disobedience, economic or political noncooperation, satyagraha, const ...
ing of a fatal shooting of an unarmed black man by Toronto police, the eighth such shooting in the last four years, and fourth fatal one. Later that year, local activist Dudley Laws
Dudley Laws (May 7, 1934March 24, 2011) was a Canadian civil rights activist and executive director of the Black Action Defence Committee.
Laws was born in Saint Thomas Parish, Jamaica, to parents Ezekiel and Agatha Laws, and was a brother to six ...
claimed that police bias against blacks was worse in Toronto than in Los Angeles.[
]
Late 1990s
Toronto recorded 49 homicides in 1999, which, as of , remains the city's lowest homicide total since 1986. That year, there were a total of 90 homicides across Toronto's census metropolitan area
The census geographic units of Canada are the census subdivisions defined and used by Canada's federal government statistics bureau Statistics Canada to conduct the country's quinquennial census. These areas exist solely for the purposes of sta ...
, with a murder rate of 1.68 per 100,000 people.
2005–2014: "Year of the Gun", shootings and the falling murder rate
In 2005, Toronto media coined the term "Year of the Gun" because the number of gun-related homicide
Homicide occurs when a person kills another person. A homicide requires only a volitional act or omission that causes the death of another, and thus a homicide may result from accidental, reckless, or negligent acts even if there is no inten ...
s reached a record 52 out of 80 murders in total; almost double the 27 gun deaths recorded the previous year.
On December 26, 2005, 15-year-old Jane Creba was shot and killed in the Boxing Day shooting
The Boxing Day shooting was a Canadian gang-related shooting which occurred on December 26, 2005, on Toronto's Yonge Street, resulting in the death of 15-year-old student Jane Creba. Six other bystanders—four men and two women—were wounded. Th ...
while shopping on Yonge Street in downtown Toronto. After this incident, many people called for the federal government to ban handguns in Canada; this also became an issue in the 2006 federal election, but the number of homicides dropped to 70 in 2006.
However, 2007 saw another, smaller wave of gun violence starting in May with the shooting death of 15-year-old Jordan Manners at his school, C. W. Jefferys Collegiate Institute
C.W. Jefferys Collegiate Institute is a semestered public secondary school in the Keele and Finch area of Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
History
The school was founded in 1965. It was named after Charles William Jefferys, a Canadian artist whose work ...
. A couple of months later, on July 22, 2007, 11-year-old Ephraim Brown was killed after being shot in the neck by a stray bullet, during a gang shooting in the city's North York
North York is one of the six administrative districts of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is located directly north of York, Old Toronto and East York, between Etobicoke to the west and Scarborough to the east. As of the 2016 Census, it had a popu ...
district at Jane Street
Jane may refer to:
* Jane (given name), a feminine given name
* Jane (surname), related to the given name
Film and television
* ''Jane'' (1915 film), a silent comedy film directed by Frank Lloyd
* ''Jane'' (2016 film), a South Korean drama fil ...
and Sheppard Avenue
Sheppard Avenue is an east–west principal arterial road in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The street has two distinct branches near its eastern end, with the original route being a collector road leading to Pickering via a turnoff, and the main ro ...
. These events raised calls for a ban on handguns once again. Of the 86 murders in 2007, half were via firearm; thus, Toronto had a murder rate of about 3.3 per 100,000, slightly less than the peak rate of 3.9 in 1991.[ There was a drop in murders again in 2008 with 70 (a total of 105 murders in the ]Greater Toronto Area
The Greater Toronto Area, commonly referred to as the GTA, includes the City of Toronto and the regional municipalities of Durham, Halton, Peel, and York. In total, the region contains 25 urban, suburban, and rural municipalities. The Greater T ...
– including a record high 27 occurring in neighbouring Peel Region, but statistically this was an anomalous year there).
The falling murder totals continued in 2009 with 65, followed by 63 in 2010, then the lowest total in recent times with only 51 (75 total in the GTA) in 2011, the lowest homicide total since 1986 at a rate of 2.0 per 100,000, close to the national average, representing a further dramatic decline in the city's murder rate for the fourth consecutive year. The number of homicides stabilized to the mid-50s for the next 4 years. Overall, shooting incidents also declined, from 335 occurrences in 2010 to 255 reported in 2013, and reaching a decade-low 196 for 2014. Since 2014, gun violence has been steadily rising, with 350 shootings in 2017, 380 in 2018, and well over 400 in 2019.
2015–present
After a substantial decrease in homicides after the 2005 "year of the gun" and a stable period 2009–2015, the murder rate in Toronto started to increase again drastically in 2016. The homicide rate jumped to 75 homicides in 2016 and spiked in 2018 with 96 homicides in 2018, which is partially due to the Toronto van attack
A domestic terrorist vehicle-ramming attack occurred on April 23, 2018, when a rented van was driven along Yonge Street through the North York City Centre business district in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The driver, Alek Minassian, targeted ped ...
, which resulted in the murder of 10 people on April 23. This increased Toronto's homicide rate to 3.5 per 100,000 people in 2018, the highest among major Canadian cities and higher than New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
for the same year. The homicide total dropped again in 2019 to 78 (a rate of 2.7 per 100,000 people) below the rate of most US cities, but still higher than the Canadian average of 1.8.
In conjunction with that increase in murders, overall shooting incidents also increased from a low of 177 in 2014 to an all-time high of 490 in 2019, even outpacing gun incidents that occurred in 2018. At the same time, gun deaths increased from a low of 22 in 2013 to a high of 51 in 2018 and dropped slightly to 44 in 2019.
Organized crime
Victorian-Edwardian era
Large criminal organizations have been operating in the Toronto region since at least the mid-19th century, beginning with the homegrown, yet short-lived Markham Gang. Since that time, large-scale organized crime in Toronto has mostly been the domain of international or foreign-based crime syndicates. From the late 18th century and continuing well into the 20th century, Toronto was a city mostly inhabited by Protestants of British extraction. In the Victorian age and for some time afterward, Toronto came to be known as "Toronto the Good". Toronto in the first half of the 20th century was a city whose population was of overwhelmingly Anglo-Irish descent as the 1941 census showed that people whose families originated from the British isles made up 86% of the population while people whose families originated elsewhere made up 13% of the population. Not until the 1950-1960s following changes in immigration law did a significant number of people of non-British origin began to settle in Toronto, gradually changing Toronto from a city whose people were mostly of British descent into a city that is one of the most multicultural in North America.
Reflecting the influence of Victorian values, in Toronto as elsewhere in Canada laws were passed to regulate social behavior. Drugs such as cocaine and marijuana together with gambling were banned, prostitution was cracked down upon, and access to alcohol was limited. A British visitor to Toronto in 1896 stated: "Sunday is as melancholy and suicidal sort of day as Puritan principles can make it". As part of the effort to regulate social behavior, the Toronto police force went from 172 officers in 1872 to 600 officers by 1914. The majority of the Toronto policemen in this period were British immigrants with a disproportionate number of the police force being Ulster Protestants. The growth of the police force was due not to an increase in crime ''per se'', but rather due to an increase in laws regulating social behavior as the major concerns of the Toronto police went from being burglary, vagrancy and breaking up fistfights in 1872 to enforcing laws regarding censorship, Sabbath-breaking, dance halls, gambling, alcohol consumption, street traffic, and all forms of "immorality" by 1914. One journalist, Harry Wodson, wrote that "Toronto the Good" was a city of "shall nots" as the city council had passed 6,000 bylaws regulating all forms of social behavior. Such laws created opportunities for organized crime which moved in to fill the demand for what at least certain segments of the population wanted, but were not legally able to enjoy.
The principle concern of the Toronto police in the early 20th century was a moral panic that prostitution was increasing as it was widely believed that organized crime was engaging in sexual slavery by kidnapping young women and forcing them into prostitution. The Canadian historian Charlotte Gray noted in fact most of the prostitutes in Toronto were not forced into sexual slavery, but was rather chose to engage in prostitution due to poverty as many occupations were closed to women and wages in those that were open to women were significantly lower than offered to men. The area of Toronto that the newspapers were mostly concerned was an impoverished district known as "the Ward" that was bordered by College, Jarvis, University and Yonge streets. "The Ward" was mostly inhabited by Italian, Jewish, Finnish, Polish, West Indian and Chinese immigrants that was painted in lurid terms by the newspapers as a center of organized crime add depravity in general that was threatening society. Gray cautioned that such newspaper coverage of "the Ward" reflected more the prejudices of the era than its reality.
By the early 1900s, the infamous "Black Hand
Black Hand or The Black Hand may refer to:
Extortionists and underground groups
* Black Hand (anarchism) (''La Mano Negra''), a presumed secret, anarchist organization based in the Andalusian region of Spain during the early 1880s
* Black Hand (e ...
" had followed Italian immigrants to Toronto as it had in most major North American cities at the time. In 1907, in a much publicized case, a wealthy Toronto woman received a letter demanding she pay $500 to the "Brotherhood of the Black Hand" while warning if she contracted the police or the media "you and your husband will be murdered and your house will be blown up".
The Magaddino ascendency
Italian organized crime remains prevalent, with the Calabrian 'Ndrangheta
The 'Ndrangheta (, , ) is a prominent Italian Mafia-type organized crime syndicate and secret society, criminal society based in the peninsular and mountainous region of Calabria and dating back to the late 18th century. It is considered one of ...
such as the Siderno Group
The Siderno Group is a criminal association in Canada, Australia and Italy related to the 'Ndrangheta, a Mafia-type organization in Calabria. The association is labelled the "Siderno Group" because its members primarily came from the town of Sidern ...
, as well as the Sicilian Mafia
The Sicilian Mafia, also simply known as the Mafia and frequently referred to as Cosa nostra (, ; "our thing") by its members, is an Italian Mafia-terrorist-type organized crime syndicate and criminal society originating in the region of Sicily a ...
. During prohibition
Prohibition is the act or practice of forbidding something by law; more particularly the term refers to the banning of the manufacture, storage (whether in barrels or in bottles), transportation, sale, possession, and consumption of alcoholic ...
, Toronto became a major center for bootlegging operations into the United States, which also saw an increased presence of Italian-American organized crime — specifically the Buffalo crime family
The Buffalo crime family, also known as the Magaddino crime family, Buffalo Mafia, The Arm, the New York State crime family, the Upstate New York Mafia, and the Todaro crime family, is an Italian-American Mafia crime family based in Buffalo, Ne ...
. The most important gangsters in Toronto area in the 1920s was Rocco Perri
Rocco Perri (; born Rocco Perre; December 30, 1887 – disappeared April 23, 1944) was an Italian-born organized crime figure in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. He was one of the most prominent Prohibition-era crime figures in Canada, and was sometim ...
and his common-law wife Bessie Starkman
Bessie Starkman (born Besha Starkman; June 21, 1890 – August 13, 1930) was an organized crime figure in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, in the early 20th century. She and her common-law husband, Italian-born Rocco Perri, established a business in b ...
, who were involved in smuggling alcohol into the United States and heroin into Canada. In May–June 1929, an undercover Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer, Frank Zaneth, posing as a drug dealer from Montreal, was able to purchase in Toronto considerable sums of cocaine, heroin and morphine from Tony Roma, Antonio Brassi, and Tony Defalco, all of whom worked for Perri and Starkman. In one of Toronto's first large scale drug busts, Roma was arrested at an illegal Toronto gambling house where the police found money, guns, ammunition and drugs. On 27 September 1929, Defalco and Brassi were convicted of drug trafficking while Roma fled to the United States while on bail, where he was arrested in 1936.
In 1931, when "the Commission" was founded in New York by Lucky Luciano
Charles "Lucky" Luciano (, ; born Salvatore Lucania ; November 24, 1897 – January 26, 1962) was an Italian-born gangster who operated mainly in the United States. Luciano started his criminal career in the Five Points gang and was instrumenta ...
, southern Ontario was assigned to Stefano Magaddino
Stefano "The Undertaker" Magaddino (; October 10, 1891 – July 19, 1974) was an Italian-born crime boss of the Buffalo crime family in western New York. His underworld influence stretched from Ohio to Southern Ontario and as far east as Montreal ...
of Buffalo. In 1944–45, Magaddino consolidated his control by having Perri and a number of his associates murdered. The existence of the Mafia in Toronto was ignored in the post-war era until the 1960s by the media and the police. Much of the organized crime activities in Toronto area were the work of three Mafia families based in nearby Hamilton Hamilton may refer to:
People
* Hamilton (name), a common British surname and occasional given name, usually of Scottish origin, including a list of persons with the surname
** The Duke of Hamilton, the premier peer of Scotland
** Lord Hamilt ...
, namely the Musitano, Luppino
Lupino, or Luppino, is a surname of Italian origin, meaning ''little wolf'', which is derived from the Latin ''lupus''.
The name may refer to:
*The Lupino family of British and American actors:
**Ida Lupino (1918–1995), Anglo-American film actr ...
and Papalia families. The most important and powerful of the three families of Hamilton were the Papalia family, who in turn were the Canadian branch of the Magaddino family of Buffalo. Through based in Hamilton, Johnny Papalia
John Joseph Papalia (; March 18, 1924 – May 31, 1997), also known as Johnny Pops Papalia or "The Enforcer", was an Italian-Canadian crime boss of the Papalia crime family based in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The Papalia crime family is one o ...
was very extensively involved in Toronto, where he engaged in extortion, hi-jacking, loan-sharking, theft, book-making and the sale of heroin.
The first organized crime case that attracted widespread public attention was the beating of the gambler Maxie Bluestein by the gangster Johnny Papalia at Toronto's Town Tavern on 21 March 1961. Pierre Berton
Pierre Francis de Marigny Berton, CC, O.Ont. (July 12, 1920 – November 30, 2004) was a Canadian writer, journalist and broadcaster. Berton wrote 50 best-selling books, mainly about Canadiana, Canadian history and popular culture. He also wr ...
, a ''Toronto Star'' newspaper columnist wrote in his column that the Bluestein beating was a "semi-execution" committed in front of hundreds of people, which showed that Papalia did not fear the law. Berton made the Bluestein beating into a ''cause célèbre'' as he used his column to demand that Papalia be brought to justice. Berton described the beating: "...as terrible a beating as it is possible to give a man without killing him... Iron bars with ropes attached to them for greater leverage rained down on Bluestein's head and across his forehead, eyes and cheekbones. His scalp was split seven or eight times. Knuckledusters were smashed into his eyes and a broken bottle was ground into his mouth. When Bluestein dropped to the floor, he was kicked in the face. His overcoat, torn and slashed, was literally drenched in his own blood...When I saw Bluestein, some 10 days after the affair, he looked like a piece of meat". Berton's columns had their effect, causing massive public outrage and Papalia was ordered by his boss, Stefano Magaddino
Stefano "The Undertaker" Magaddino (; October 10, 1891 – July 19, 1974) was an Italian-born crime boss of the Buffalo crime family in western New York. His underworld influence stretched from Ohio to Southern Ontario and as far east as Montreal ...
, to turn himself into the police in May 1961 as Magaddino complained that the police were making too raids in their search for Papalia.
In the 1950s–60s, a number of outlaw biker gangs such as the Vagabonds, the Para-Dice Riders and the Golden Hawk Riders were founded in the Toronto area. The most aggressive and dominant biker gang in the early 1960s were the Black Diamond Riders whose attacks forced a number of other biker clubs to disband. It was largely to end the attacks of the Black Diamond Riders that four other biker gangs came together in 1965 to found Satan's Choice Motorcycle Club
Satan's Choice Motorcycle Club (SCMC) was a Canadian outlaw motorcycle club that was once the dominant outlaw club in Ontario, with twelve chapters based in the province, and another in Montreal, Quebec, at its peak strength in 1977. Satan's Choi ...
under the leadership of Bernie Guindon
Bernard Diedonne Guindon (born 19 November 1942), better known as "Bernie the Frog", is a Canadian former outlaw biker, gangster and Boxing, boxer, best known as the founder and national president of Satan's Choice Motorcycle Club from 1965 to 20 ...
. Satan's Choice quickly became the most dominant biker gang not only in the Toronto area, but in Ontario, pushing the Black Diamond Riders into irrelevance. Satan's Choice became the largest biker gang in all of Canada, and the second-largest in the world by 1970, being eclipsed only by the Hells Angels. For many young people in late 1960s Toronto, Guindon was a folk hero, who was greatly admired as a "rebel" against "Toronto the Good" values. Until the 1990s, biker gangs in Canada were very much subordinate to the Mafia, which used them as subcontractors to do "dirty work" that they did not wish to do themselves.
The murders of two Toronto businessmen, namely Salvatore Trumbari on 6 January 1967 and his former employee Filippo Vendemini on 29 June 1969 brought greater public attention to the subject. Subsequently, it was established that both Trumbari and Vendemini were involved in organized crime, being engaged in bootlegging (bars and liquor stores closed early in Ontario at the time. making bootlegging profitable). Starting in the late 1960s, many businesses in Toronto's Little Italy neighborhoods who refused to pay extortion money or alternatively were late in their payments were the victims of arson while their employees were assaulted. Three brothers, Cosimo, Ernest and Anthony Commisso who owned several bakeries in Toronto were targeted for refusing to pay "taxes". On 17 July 1968, the home of Cosimo Commisso was shot up; on 29 March 1969 the home of Ernest Commisso was broken into and vandalized; on 31 March 1969 a bakery owned by the brothers was blown up; and on 2 June 1969 Anthony Commisso was shot five times in his legs. Toronto police reports show that in 1970 alone 32 Little Italy businesses were burned down in cases of mob-related arson. In 1970, the Toronto Mafiosi, Rocco Zito
Rocco Zito (; August 19, 1928 – January 29, 2016) was an Italian-Canadian crime boss of the 'Ndrangheta in Canada, a Mafia-type organisation originating in Calabria, Italy. He was also a founding member of the Camera di Controllo in Canada in ...
met with Vic Cotroni
Vincenzo "Vic" Cotroni (; born Vincenzo Cotrone; ; 1911 – 16 September 1984), also known as "The Egg", was an Italian-Canadian crime boss of the Cotroni crime family in Montreal, Quebec.
Cotroni was born in 1911, in Mammola, Calabria, Italy. I ...
and Paolo Violi
Paolo Violi (; 6 February 1931 – 22 January 1978) was an Italian-Canadian mobster and ''capodecina'' in the Cotroni crime family of Montreal.
Violi was born in Sinopoli, Calabria, Italy, in 1931; his father Domenico was the boss of the Violi cl ...
of Montreal's Cotroni family, and Paulo Gambino, the brother of Carlo Gambino
Carlo Gambino (; August 24, 1902 – October 15, 1976) was an Italian-American crime boss of the Gambino crime family. After the Apalachin Meeting in 1957, and the imprisonment of Vito Genovese in 1959, Gambino took over the Commission o ...
of New York's Gambino family. Zito established a "pipeline" for smuggling heroin via Montreal and Toronto to New York. An article in the ''Toronto Star'' on 7 July 1972 linked most of the cases of bombings, arson and assaults in Little Italy to the Siderno Group, which was described as being the most aggressive of all the Mafia-type groups in Toronto.
Starting in 1945, the prosperity of the "long summer" economic boom that ended with the Arab oil shock of 1973–74 led to an enormous construction boom in Toronto. Most of the construction contractors in Toronto were immigrants from the ''Mezzogiorno'' (the south of Italy) while most of the construction workers were also Italian immigrants. In the ''Mezzogiorno'', paying off groups such as the Mafia and the 'Ndrangheta is seen as a normal business cost. Italian organized crime groups infiltrated and took over the Toronto construction industry in the 1960s. In 1974, a Royal Commission headed by Justice Harold Waisberg in its report examining the influence of organized crime in the Toronto construction industry stated that starting in 1968 "a sinister array of characters were introduced to this industry". A key moment occurred in May 1971 when Cesido Romanelli, one of Toronto's largest construction contractors, agreed to hire Natale Luppino of Hamilton's Luppino crime family
The Luppino crime family, () also known as the Luppino-Violi crime family, is a 'Ndrangheta organized crime family based and founded in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, in the 1950s by Giacomo Luppino. The Luppino family is one of three centralized Mafi ...
as his "escort" in exchange for which the Luppino family would intimidate Romanelli's workers and take over their unions. Luppino then took over the unions, who were demanding wage increases that Romanelli did not want to give them. At the same time, the Mafiosi Paul Volpe was hired by A. Gus Simone of Local 562 of the International Lathers Union to help "persuade" other construction unions to join the Lathers union. Accordingly, to Toronto police reports, between 1968 and 1972 at construction sites in Toronto there occurred 234 cases of major "willful damage", 23 cases of arson, 15 cases of mob-related assault, 5 explosions, and numerous cases of the theft of construction materials. Bruno Zanini, a journalist investigating Mafia influence in the construction industry was wounded in 1972 in an assassination attempt. In his report on 19 December 1974, Justice Waisberg concluded that the construction industry in Toronto had been taken over by the Mafia and a climate of fear reigned in the construction sites.
The Siderno Group had also moved into the Toronto construction industry and in particular specialized in taking over bids to build public buildings in order to inflate the costs with the additional costs being profit to them. The Toronto-based Commisso 'ndrina
The Commisso 'ndrina () is a powerful clan of the 'Ndrangheta, a criminal and mafia-type organization in Calabria, Italy. The 'ndrina is based in Siderno, but also has a branch in the Greater Toronto Area in Canada as part of the Siderno Group. ...
clan of the Siderno group were described by the end of 1970s as running a crime empire that "imported and distributed heroin with the Vancouver mob and the Calabrian Mafia in Italy, fenced stolen goods across North America, printed and distributed counterfeit money throughout Canada and the United States, ran a vast extortion network in Ontario, arranged insurance and land frauds in the Toronto area and engaged in contract killings and contract enforcement work across Canada and the United States– the whole gamut of violent criminal activities one usually associates with the Mafia". Cecil Kirby
Cecil Kirby (born 17 August 1950) is a Canadian outlaw biker, criminal and hitman for the Commisso 'ndrina, turned police informant.
Satan's Choice
Kirby was born in the Weston neighborhood of Toronto on 17 August 1950, and was twice expelled fro ...
, a Satan's Choice biker who worked as an enforcer and a hitman for the Commisso 'ndrina between 1976 and 1981 wrote in his 1986 book ''Mafia Enforcer'': "I quickly learned that their big thing for making money was the construction industry. They probably made more money from extortions in the construction industry than they did from trafficking in heroin – and it was a helluva lot safer". The Commisso 'ndrina clan was led by the three Commisso brothers, Rocco, Michele and Cosimo, whose principle interest in life besides for making money was avenging the murder of their father, Girolomo Commisso, who had killed in 1948 in Siderno by rival gangsters. The best known of Kirby's crimes in the employ of the Commisso brothers in Toronto occurred on the morning of 3 May 1977 when he blew up a Chinese restaurant, the Wah Kew Chop Suey House, and killed a cook, Chong Yin Quan.}
In the 1970s, the Triads entered Toronto with the two most important being the Big Circle Boys and the 14k Triad, both of Hong Kong, who smuggled in heroin from the "Golden Triangle
Golden Triangle may refer to:
Places
Asia
* Golden Triangle (Southeast Asia), named for its opium production
* Golden Triangle (Yangtze), China, named for its rapid economic development
* Golden Triangle (India), comprising the popular tourist ...
" nations of Burma, Laos and Thailand. Starting around about 1975, complaints about extortion by the Triads in Toronto's Chinatown became common. In 1976, the Kong Lok Triad (which is Cantonese for "House of Mutual Happiness") was in Toronto. The Kong Lok is the Canadian branch of the Leun Kung Lok triad of Hong Kong. In 1979, a report from the Immigration department complained that the Kong Lok triad was very active in trying to recruit Chinese-Canadian high school students in Toronto to work as drug dealers. In 1978-1979, hundreds of thousands of "boat people" fled Vietnam and sailed across the South China Sea to Hong Kong. As part of the Commonwealth, Canada took in a considerable number of the "boat people" who had gone to Hong Kong. A 1980 RCMP report stated that the Kong Lok was aggressive seeking to recruit those "boat people" who were ''huaren'' (ethnic Chinese) to work for them. As a general rule, groups such as the Triads tended to co-operate with older established groups such as the Mafia and the 'Ndrangheta.
In July 1983, Frank Cotroni
Frank Cotroni (born Francesco Cotrone; ; 1931 – 17 August 2004) was an Italian-Canadian crime boss of the Cotroni crime family in Montreal, Quebec.
Cotroni was born in 1931, in Montreal. His family, including his brother Vincenzo, had immigra ...
entered the Ontario market, sending out his favorite hitman Réal Simard
Réal Simard (born 7 January 1951) is a Canadian gangster from Montreal known for being a hitman for Frank Cotroni of the Cotroni crime family, who later turned informant.
Early career
In Simard's early days, he robbed banks with childhood friend ...
to meet Papalia in order to inform him that the Cotroni family would now operating in Ontario and he expected the co-operation of the Papalia family, which Papalia gave. Simard wrote in his autobiography ''Le neveu'': "The Toronto trip
Trip may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Fictional characters
* Trip (''Pokémon''), a ''Pokémon'' character
* Trip (Power Rangers), in the American television series ''Time Force Power Rangers''
* Trip, in the 2013 film ''Metallica Through th ...
clubs were not producing much and had not for a while. The head of the Commisso family had been in prison since 1981, and no one was looking after things. Ontario was 15 years behind Quebec when it came to making money from the clubs". Simard founded the Prestige Entertainment Inc strippers' agency to bring Quebec strippers to Ontario, rented an apartment at the Sutton Palace Hotel, and travelled around in a Merendes-Benz automobile. Cotroni visited Toronto about once a month to see Simard, and during those visits, the gangster-boxer Eddie Melo served as his chauffer-bodyguard. During his visits to Toronto, Cotroni always met with Rocco Zito
Rocco Zito (; August 19, 1928 – January 29, 2016) was an Italian-Canadian crime boss of the 'Ndrangheta in Canada, a Mafia-type organisation originating in Calabria, Italy. He was also a founding member of the Camera di Controllo in Canada in ...
, the leader of the Siderno group. In November 1983, Simard learned that two drug dealers from Montreal, Mario Héroux and Robert Hétu, had arrived to compete with the Cotroni family. Simard stormed into their Toronto hotel room to shoot both men, killing Héroux and wounding Hétu. After being arrested, Simard turned Crown's evidence and testified against Cotroni. Melo replaced Simard as the Cotroni family's Toronto agent, serving in that position until his murder on 6 April 2001. In the 1980s, Papalia sent out a crew of muscular Mafiosi led by Carmen Barillaro
Carmen Barillaro (24 July 1944 – 23 July 1997) was an Italian-Canadian mobster who served as the right-hand man to Johnny Papalia of the Papalia crime family based in Hamilton, Ontario. Barillaro was briefly the boss of the Papalia family in 1 ...
and Enio Mora
Enio "Pegleg" Mora (1949 – 11 September 1996) was an Italian-born Canadian mobster.
Early criminal career
Mora was born in Sora, Lazio, but grew up in the south of France. In 1968, he moved to Canada, where he immediately became involved in org ...
to raid the illegal gambling houses in Toronto's Greektown in the Pape-Danforth area that refused to pay him extortion money. The raids were noted for their brutality as Barillaro, Mora and the others beat up and robbed the patrons with much viciousness and in one case sliced up the ear of the owner of a gambling house. In December 1985, Barillaro, Mora and several other Mafiosi were all charged by the Ontario Provincial Police as part of Project Outhouse for their actions in the Greektown raids, but none of the accused were ever brought to trial.
The 1984 Anglo-Chinese treaty to return Hong Kong to China by 1997 led to a exodus of Hong Kong residents, many of whom went to Canada as another part of the Commonwealth. Canada became the preferred place of refuge for Hong Kongers because of its liberal immigration policies. A number of Triads took advantage of the influx to move to Canada, which was popular for them as it offered easier opportunities to smuggle drugs and people into the United States. In addition, extortion of businesses is a major source of income for the Triads in Hong Kong, and so when many Hong Kong businessmen immigrated to Canada in the 1980s, the Triads followed them to continue the extortion of their old targets in the New World. In 1986, a Toronto Police report charged that a number of Triad leaders from Hong Kong were now living in Toronto and were "funneling millions of illegally earned dollars into Toronto real estate and businesses to form a power base from which to direct their worldwide operations". The Triads commonly used Vietnamese gangs as subcontractors to do their "dirty work" for them. Peter Yuen of the Toronto Police Service recalled about the violence between various Asian crime factions in 1990: "You had gun battles, 15 rounds at the corner of Dundas and Spadina on a Saturday afternoon...It was like watching a triad movie. And the cops were just like dogs, too. We wanted to tell them, ‘We own these streets.’".
In 1987, Donald "Snorkel" Melanson, the president of the Vagabonds biker gang fell into a drug debt were $80,000 to the Hells Angels Montreal chapter. Melanson was known as "Snorkel" due to his practice of using a snorkel to consume cocaine. On the night of 2 September 1987, Melson to a hotel on Yonge Street to pay back $50,000 of his drug debt; he was found dead the next day with a bullet in his head by the hotel cleaning staff. Brian "Bo" Beaucage, generally considered to be the most violent and vicious member of Satan's Choice, spent the night of 3 March 1991 in a Toronto rooming house devoted to hard drugs, alcohol, and watching pornographic films. Beaucage's night of bacchanalian excess was cut short when he was beheaded in his bed by Frank Passarelli, a member of the Loners
A loner is a person who does not seek out, or may actively avoid, interaction with other people. There are many potential reasons for their solitude. Intentional reasons include introversion, mysticism, spirituality, religion, or personal consi ...
gang, who used a kitchen knife to decapitate him. The gruesome nature of Beaucage's murder, made worse by the fact that his body was partially devoured by dogs after his death, led to it acquiring a legendary reputation in biker community, being known incorrectly as "the fifty whacks with an ax".
The Rizzuto family-Hells Angels ascendency
In the summer of 1995, a biker war broke out between the Loners Motorcycle Club
The Loners Motorcycle Club (LMC) is an international outlaw motorcycle club founded in Woodbridge, Ontario, Canada in 1979. It has Sixteen chapters in Canada, ten chapters in Italy, nine in the United States and several chapters in other countrie ...
led by Gennaro "Jimmy" Raso vs. the Diablos led by Frank Lenti
Francesco "Cisco" Lenti (born 1947) is a Canadian outlaw biker and gangster, best known as the co-founder of the Loners Motorcycle Club alongside Gennaro Raso.
Satan's Choice
Lenti was born in Woodbridge, Ontario to Italian immigrant parents. Th ...
for the control of the drug trade. The Diablos were supported by Satan's Choice Motorcycle Club
Satan's Choice Motorcycle Club (SCMC) was a Canadian outlaw motorcycle club that was once the dominant outlaw club in Ontario, with twelve chapters based in the province, and another in Montreal, Quebec, at its peak strength in 1977. Satan's Choi ...
led by Bernie Guindon
Bernard Diedonne Guindon (born 19 November 1942), better known as "Bernie the Frog", is a Canadian former outlaw biker, gangster and Boxing, boxer, best known as the founder and national president of Satan's Choice Motorcycle Club from 1965 to 20 ...
. On 18 July 1995, a Diablo incinerated a tow truck owned by a Loner with a homemade bomb; in retaliation two Diablos were shot and wounded by the Loners on the streets of Toronto. On 1 August 1995, the Satan's Choice clubhouse in Toronto was hit by a rocket fired from a rocker launcher, and two weeks later the Loners' clubhouse was likewise hit by a rocket launcher. On 25 August 1995, Lenti was badly wounded by a bomb planted in his car, which marked the end of the biker war as his club collapsed as he recovered from his injuries during a prolonged stay in a hospital. The mayor of Toronto, Barbara Hall, who was not aware that the biker war was over, attempted to ban all outlaw bikers from the city limits of Toronto. The journalist Jerry Langton
Jerry Langton (born October 1, 1965) is a Canadian author. His focus is on crime, specifically the rise of motorcycle gangs throughout Ontario. Langton's books are published by John Wiley and Sons. He has written 10 books and is the author of the ...
wrote the "frequently hysterical Toronto media" vastly exaggerated the amount of biker war violence, which in turn led to Hall's overreaction. Hall's attempt to close Satan's Choice Toronto clubhouse failed owing to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which led her to instead try to have the city of Toronto buy the clubhouse in order to close it. Satan's Choice set a preposterously high price for their clubhouse, which caused much controversy in Toronto when Hall stated her willingness to have the city pay it. The controversy is believed to have been a factor in Hall's defeat in her 1997 reelection bid as the media took to mockingly calling Hall "Biker Barb".
Dany Kane
Dany "Dany Boy" Kane
(19697 August 2000) was a Canadian criminal who was a compliant police informant at the same time. Kane worked for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) as an informant inside the Hells Angels for many years, and provided ...
, a police informer inside the Hells Angels' Montreal puppet club, the Rockers, reported to his handlers on 20 February 1996 that Donald Stockford
Donald Stockford (born 6 May 1962) is a Canadian outlaw biker, gangster and stuntman.
Hells Angel
Stockford works as a stuntman for films and owned a house in Ancaster, Ontario, Ancaster, an affluent suburb of Hamilton, Ontario, Hamilton. He is ...
and David Carroll of the Angels' Montreal chapter had a meeting in Saint-Sauveur Saint-Sauveur or St Sauveur (French for "Holy Savior") may refer to:
Places Canada
* Saint-Sauveur, New Brunswick
* Saint-Sauveur, Quebec
* Saint-Sauveur (electoral district), a former provincial electoral district in Quebec
* Saint-Sauveur, Queb ...
to discuss a plan to smuggle narcotics from Montreal to the Toronto
Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...
area. Kane reported: "Their goal was to take a big part of the Toronto drug market". Kane reported that both Stockford and Carroll were selling massive quantities of drugs to various Toronto biker gangs. Reflecting the tendency of the outlaw biker subculture to become part of the mainstream of Toronto life, in the fall of 1997, Donny Petersen
Robert Donald "Donny" Petersen (17 April 1947 – 12 December 2021) was a Canadian outlaw biker, writer, and alleged gangster. The author of 21 books, Petersen won the International Book Award in 2012, 2013 and 2014, and served as the national sec ...
, a prominent Toronto businessman and the vice-president of the Para-Dice Riders, became the first outlaw biker to address the prestigious Empire Club of Toronto, which Langton noted was "...an honor normally reserved for heads of state and titans of industry".
In 1996, Vito Rizzuto
Vito Rizzuto (; February 21, 1946 – December 23, 2013), also known as "Montreal's Teflon Don", was an Italian-Canadian crime boss alleged to be the leader of the Sicilian Mafia in Canada. He headed the notorious Rizzuto crime family based ...
, the boss of Montreal's Rizzuto crime family
The Rizzuto crime family () is an organized crime family based in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, whose criminal activity covers most of southern Quebec and Ontario. The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) considers the family a facti ...
, made a $7.2 million loan to Mora who in turn gave the money to Papalia and Barillaro. Some of the money was used to open a restaurant in Toronto while the rest just vanished. Rizzuto decided to liquate the Papalia family, starting with Mora who was murdered on 11 September 1996. Rizzuto's instruments for killing Papalia and Barillaro were the Musitano brothers, who in exchange for accepting Rizzuto's "protection" from the vengeful Buffalo family had to accept being subordinate to the Rizzuto family. In April 1997, Pasquale Musitano met in Niagara Falls with Gaetano "Guy" Panepinto, the Toronto agent of the Rizzuto family. On 31 May 1997, Papalia was killed, followed up by Barillaro on 23 July 1997. On 22–23 October 1997, Rizzuto had dinners with Panepinto and Musitano, where he appointed Panepinto his Ontario lieutenant and placed Musitano under his authority. Panepinto was the owner of Casket Royale coffin company located on St. Clair Avenue and was widely known in Toronto for his television ads where he proclaimed "do not make your emotional loss a financial loss" as he boasted that his coffins were the cheapest in Toronto. Another key allies of Rizzuto in Ontario were the Caruana and Cammalleri families. Panepinto's crew were noted for their steroid abuse and a fondness for gyms. Panepitno specialized in selling ecstasy, marihuana, and the so-called "date rape drug" GHB. Panepinto came into conflict with the Commisso 'ndrina
The Commisso 'ndrina () is a powerful clan of the 'Ndrangheta, a criminal and mafia-type organization in Calabria, Italy. The 'ndrina is based in Siderno, but also has a branch in the Greater Toronto Area in Canada as part of the Siderno Group. ...
and had two of their members, Domenic Napoli and Antonio Oppedisano, murdered in March 2000. The Commisso brothers visited Montreal to meet Rizzuto, who disclaimed all knowledge of the murders. Rizzuto was furious that Panepinto had ordered murders without seeking his permission first, and withdrew his "protection" of Panepinto, meaning that Panepinto could be killed without fear of Rizzuto family retaliation. On 3 October 2000, Panepinto was murdered on Bloor Street when he was shot dead in his automobile by gunmen in a mini-van that pulled up next to his vehicle while he was waiting for a red light and pumped six bullets into him. Panepinto was replaced as the Rizzuto family's Toronto agent by Juan Ramon Fernandez, a Spanish man twice deported from Canada. A notable partner for the Rizzuto family was the Toronto-based Tse Chi Lop
Tse Chi Lop ( zh, , first=t, t=謝志樂, s=谢志乐, p=Xiè Zhìlè, j=Ze6 Zi3-lok6, born 1963) is the alleged drug lord, kingpin behind Asia-Pacific based international crime syndicate, crime supersyndicate Sam Gor, also referred to as "The C ...
of the Big Circle Boys who negotiated with Rizzuto to arrange for the Rizzuto family to smuggle into the United States the heroin from the "Golden Triangle" that the Big Circle Boys had smuggled into Canada.
In the summer of 2000, the Hells Angels national president Walter Stadnick made an offer to most Ontario outlaw biker clubs to join the Hells Angels on a "patch for patch" basis (i.e. joining the Hells Angels with patches equivalent to their current patches) provided that they did so by the end of the year. On 29 December 2000, in a ceremony at the Hells Angels' "mother chapter" clubhouse in Sorel, most of the Ontario outlaw biker gangs such as Satan's Choice, the Vagabonds, the Lobos, the Last Chance, the Para-Dice Riders and some of the Loners all joined the Hells Angels, making them at one stroke the dominant outlaw biker club in Ontario. As a result of the mass "patch-over" in Sorel, with 168 outlaw bikers becoming Hells Angels, the greater Toronto area went from having no Hells Angels chapters to having the highest concentration of Hells Angels' chapters in the world. Stadnick changed the relationship of the Hells Angels from being subcontractors of the Mafia to being equals. The journalist Julien Sher stated in 2008: "Stadnick is part of that key cocaine industry that turns the Hells Angels from basically gofer boys of the Mafia into powerbrokers who are sitting down with the Mafia and negotiating the price of cocaine".
Donny Petersen
Robert Donald "Donny" Petersen (17 April 1947 – 12 December 2021) was a Canadian outlaw biker, writer, and alleged gangster. The author of 21 books, Petersen won the International Book Award in 2012, 2013 and 2014, and served as the national sec ...
of the Para-Dice Riders joined the Hells Angels to become their national secretary and principle spokesman. Petersen was a favorite of the Toronto media in the first decade of the 21st century as he always provided a good news story. On 12 January 2002, a Hells Angels convention in Toronto was gate-clashed by the mayor of Toronto, Mel Lastman
Melvin Douglas Lastman (March 9, 1933 – December 11, 2021) was a Canadian businessman and politician who served as the third mayor of North York from 1973 to 1997 and 62nd mayor of Toronto from 1998 to 2003. He was the first person to serve ...
, who was photographed shaking hands with an Angel, Tony Biancaflora, and the mayor told the media that the Angels were "fantastic" for bringing so much "business" to Toronto, saying: "You know, they're just a nice bunch of guys". Lastman's comments caused immense controversy in Toronto. The Rizzuto family is closely allied with the Hells Angels, and the same alliance continued in Ontario. Juan Ramon Fernandez, the Rizzuto family's agent for Ontario, was often talking in Toronto with Steven "Tiger" Lindsay], one of the best known Hells Angels in the Toronto region, about plans to commit various crimes. A leading Hells Angel was David "White Dread" Buchanan, the sergeant-at-arms of the West Toronto chapter, who was also one of Toronto's principle gunrunners who sold guns that the Angels had smuggled in from the United States to various street gangs of Toronto. The white Jamaican immigrant Buchanan had once belonged to the Crips gang, and he served as their principle gunrunner and drug wholesaler after he joined the Hells Angels in 2000. Buchanan was shot and killed by Frank Lenti
Francesco "Cisco" Lenti (born 1947) is a Canadian outlaw biker and gangster, best known as the co-founder of the Loners Motorcycle Club alongside Gennaro Raso.
Satan's Choice
Lenti was born in Woodbridge, Ontario to Italian immigrant parents. Th ...
in a Toronto strip club on 2 December 2006 after he threatened and struck Lenti several times.
The most significant blow the police have inflicted against the Hells Angels in Toronto to date was Project Develop in 2005–2007. In September 2005, David Atwell, the sergeant-at-arms of the Angels downtown Toronto chapter, became an agent source informer for the Ontario Provincial Police. On the basis of the information gathered by Atwell, the police ordered a series of raids on Hell Angels clubhouses across Ontario on 4 April 2007. In 2010–2011, Atwell served as the main witness for the Crown during the trial of the downtown Toronto chapter members. The trial ended on 22 May 2011 with the chapter president John "Winner" Neal together with Mehrdad "Juicy" Bahman and Douglas Myles convicted of trafficking in GMB; Lorne Campbell was convicted of cocaine trafficking; and Larry Pooler convicted of the possession of a banned weapon. All of the accused were acquitted on the charges of gangsterism.
Modern era
Today, the multicultural face of Toronto is well reflected in the city's underworld, which includes everything from Jamaican posses to Eastern European bratvas to American biker gangs. The genesis of many foreign criminal organizations in Toronto has often been linked to the drug trade, as with the large influx of heroin and various Asian triads during the 1970s, or cocaine and South American cartels
A cartel is a group of independent market participants who collude with each other in order to improve their profits and dominate the market. Cartels are usually associations in the same sphere of business, and thus an alliance of rivals. Mos ...
in the 1980s. These criminal groups, however, occasionally have a political bent as well, as with the Tamil
Tamil may refer to:
* Tamils, an ethnic group native to India and some other parts of Asia
**Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka also called ilankai tamils
**Tamil Malaysians, Tamil people native to Malaysia
* Tamil language, nativ ...
organized crime groups such as the VVT and rival AK Kannan gangs, which warred with each other in the city's streets during the 1990s and early 2000s over the brown heroin trade. In recent decades, Toronto has also seen an infiltration of major American street gangs such as the Bloods
The Bloods are a primarily African-American street gang founded in Los Angeles, California. The gang is widely known for its rivalry with the Crips. It is identified by the red color worn by its members and by particular gang symbols, includin ...
, Crips
The Crips is an alliance of street gangs that is based in the coastal regions of Southern California. Founded in Los Angeles, California, in 1969, mainly by Raymond Washington and Stanley Williams, the Crips were initially a single alliance ...
, and Mara Salvatrucha
Mara Salvatrucha, commonly known as MS-13, is an international criminal gang that originated in Los Angeles, California, in the 1970s and 1980s. Originally, the gang was set up to protect Salvadoran immigrants from other gangs in the Los Ange ...
.
In the early 2010s, a consortium known as the Wolfpack Alliance, who were the distributors of high-grade cocaine from the Sinaloa Cartel
The Sinaloa Cartel ( es, link=no, Cártel de Sinaloa), also known as the CDS, the Guzmán-Loera Organization, the Pacific Cartel, the Federation and the Blood Alliance, is a large, international organized crime syndicate that specializes in il ...
was active in Toronto. In the spring of 2012, the Wolfpack was going to bring to Toronto a shipment of 200 kilograms cocaine from Mexico worth $5 million with the profits to be split four ways between Johnny Raposo, Nick Nero, Martino "Lil Guy" Caputo, and Rabih Alkhalil. Nero, Caputo and Alkhalil decided to kill Raposo to take his share of the profits for themselves. In one of Toronto's best known gangland murders, on 18 June 2012, Raposo was shot and killed in the Sicilian Sidewalk Cafe on College Street by a Wolfpack hitman, Dean Michael Wiwchar Dean Michael Wiwchar (born 1986) is a Canadian hitman currently serving a life sentence for murdering Johnny Raposo in 2012.
Entry into crime
Wiwchar was born in Stouffville into a middle-class family. As a teenager, he was a troublesome student in ...
. On 23 May 2016, Sukhvir Singh Deo, a member of the Independent Soldiers gang as well as the Wolfpack consortium, attracted international attention by loudly abusing the referees at the Rogers Center for supposed bias against the Toronto Raptors basketball team, whom Deo supported. The footage of Deo's behavior led to a number of YouTube videos being made about him as an example of a rude and obnoxious Raptors fan, and attracted the attention of Deo's enemies. On 7 June 2016, Deo was murdered in Toronto by two hitmen disguised as construction workers. Later in June 2016, another Wolfpack member, Tassos Leventis, threw a chair at the Commisso brothers in a Toronto restaurant. On 30 January 2017, Leventis was shot on George Street in Toronto and was able to make his way into his condo, where he bled to death.
There has also been recent evidence of significant cooperation between major organized crime groups including in gambling. In 2013 the Platinum Sportsbook a sports betting ring, thought have brought in over $100 million in revenue, was a joint venture between Hells Angels, Italian Mafia and Asian organized crime figures. Most of what is described as being "Mafia" activity in Toronto is more properly the work of the Calabrian 'Ndrangheta, whose operations in Toronto are headed by seven "families" that are reportedly organized into a board. By contrast, organized crime in Montreal is dominated by the Sicilian Mafia, especially the Rizzuto family. According to an Italian police report in July 2010, the "entire complex criminal organization" in Canada is all ultimately under the control of the Rizzuto family.
Critics have argued that organized crime has been allowed to flourish in Canadian cities such as Toronto due to the difficulty and cost of prosecuting organized crime cases compared with individual cases, and the flexible minimum sentencing and the double time served
In criminal law, time served is an informal term that describes the duration of pretrial detention (remand), the time period between when a defendant is arrested and when they are convicted. Time served does not include time served on bail but ...
stipulations that the judicial system utilizes to unburden the penal system. Today, Toronto has become a center for a wide array of organized and transnational criminal activities, including the counterfeiting of currency, bank cards, and digital entertainment products, together with telemarketing fraud
Telemarketing fraud is Phone fraud, fraudulent telemarketing, selling conducted over the telephone. The term is also used for telephone fraud ''not'' involving selling.
Telemarketing fraud is one of the most persuasive deceptions identified by th ...
and the production of marijuana and synthetic drugs. Toronto also has a comparable rate of car theft
Motor vehicle theft (also known as a car theft and, in the United States, grand theft auto) is the criminal act of stealing or attempting to steal a motor vehicle. Nationwide in the United States in 2020, there were 810,400 vehicles reported ...
to various U.S. cities, although this is lower than in some other Canadian cities. Much of this has been attributed to organized crime
Organized crime (or organised crime) is a category of transnational, national, or local groupings of highly centralized enterprises run by criminals to engage in illegal activity, most commonly for profit. While organized crime is generally th ...
, with stolen vehicles ending up being shipped overseas for sale.
Youth gangs
Early history
In his 1945 book ''Street Gangs in Toronto: A Study of the Forgotten Boy'', Kenneth H. Rogers identified the following gangs active at that time in the following areas of the city:
*Moss Park – Riverdale: Brown Gang, Grey Gang, Porter Gang
*Withrow Park: Beavers, Britch Gang, Graphic Gang (Rogers refers to at least 4 other unnamed gangs in this area)
*North Toronto: Evans Gang, King Gang, Wunkies
*Rosedale: Arnot Gang, Basket Gang, Black Gang, Green Gang, Grey Gang (Rogers refers to 2 other unnamed gangs in this area)
*Bathurst & Queen: Aces Gang, Aggies, Bridge Gang, Cardinal Group, George Gang, Harris Gang, Mix Gang, Park Gang, Rustler Gang, Trapper Gang
Most of these gangs were simply loose-knit groups of juvenile delinquents involved mainly in low-level, petty crimes such as gambling, shop-lifting, and pick-pocketing (Rogers was actually robbed by members of the King Gang while attempting to interview them). The composition of the gangs were mainly poor Caucasian youth of British descent, although some were more ethnically diverse such as the George Gang (Jewish), the Mix Gang (black), and the Aggies (Polish & Ukrainian).
Current prevalence of youth gangs
Rates of youth gang activity in Toronto can be challenging to measure due to conflicting definitions of gangs, the smaller size of youth gangs, and their looser organization. Some research found 11% of Toronto high school students and 27% of Toronto homeless youth identified as being gang members at some point in their lives. Other research found under 6% of high school students and 16% of street youth identify as current gang members — but that only 4% of students and 15% of street youth were involved in gangs of a criminal (rather than social) nature.
Criminal activity
One study has reported that approximately 2,400 high school students in Toronto claim to have carried a gun at least once between 2004 and 2005. Research has found that most youth gang-related crime consists of property offenses, drugs sales, drug use, and physical conflicts with other gangs. Social activities are more widely reported amongst self-identified youth gang members than criminal activities. Murder and other more grievous types of crime are uncommon.
Demographics of youth gang members
Although most youth gang members are male, mixed-gender and female youth gangs also exist. Youth from lower-income families are more likely to self-identify as gang members, but membership cuts across lower, middle and upper income categories. One study found that although black, Asian and Hispanic youth in Toronto are more likely to report gang activity than youth of other ethnicities, 27% of criminal youth gang members self-identify as white (followed by 23% black, 3% Aboriginal, 18% South Asian, 17% East Asian, 5% Middle Eastern and 7% Hispanic). A correlation has not been found between youth gang membership and immigration status. Gang-involved youth commonly report a history of abuse and/or neglect, poverty, dysfunctional families, isolation, school failure, and other psychosocial issues.
Community and police response
Efforts to reduce youth gang crime have included police raids,Gang leaders, Jordan Manners' sister netted in raids
www.cbc.ca, Published June 15, 2007 government & social programs, and camera surveillance of public housing projects.
See also
*Crime in Canada
Crime in Canada is generally considered low overall. Under the Canadian constitution, the power to establish criminal law and rules of investigation is vested in the federal Parliament. The provinces share responsibility for law enforcement (altho ...
*Gun politics in Canada
Firearms in Canada are federally regulated through the ''Firearms Act'' and related provisions of the ''Criminal Code''. Regulation is largely about licensing and registration of firearms, including air guns with a muzzle velocity of more than a ...
*2006 Toronto terrorism case
The 2006 Ontario terrorism case refers to the plotting of a series of attacks against targets in Southern Ontario, Canada, and the June 2, 2006 counter-terrorism raids in and around the Greater Toronto Area that resulted in the arrest of 14 adul ...
*Danzig Street shooting
The Danzig Street shooting, or Danzig shooting, was a gang-related shooting that occurred on the evening of 16July 2012 at a block party on Danzig Street in the West Hill, Toronto, West Hill neighbourhood of Toronto, Canada. Rival gang members ...
(2012), a youth-gang mass shooting
Books and articles
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References
{{Toronto