Organized crime in Canada (Part 1)
I was present at several United Nations conferences when the discussions
were about organized crime. This doesn’t make me an expert in this subject but
I have researched this issue quite thoroughly so I am submitting to my readers
some of what I have learned.
Often in the media, criminal
organizations are spoken of in great detail, but their back stories are only
given a cursory treatment. This is reinforced by our entertainment industry.
Most Hollywood films, for instance, portray criminals in purely pathological
terms such as unredeemable ‘thugs’ who are so innately reprehensible that one
imagines them having their own wing of the maternity ward in the hospital as
babies. This trend is hardly unintentional or new. Consider the 1953 film about
outlaw bikers called The Wild One and
which was loosely based on the Hollister riot. It was originally supposed to
portray biker gangs as being the product of the inability of World War II
veterans to integrate into suburban, post-war America. This conceit, however,
was nixed due to Hollywood’s self-enforcement of the infamous Hays Code which tried to avoid
government censorship by stripping films of any potentially subversive or worse
depictions of ordinary life in America.
There is probably no
country in the world that doesn’t have some form of organized crime within its
borders and that includes Canada.
A gang is a group of good friends or family with identifiable
leadership and internal organization, identifying with or claiming control over
territory in a community, and engaging either individually or collectively in
illegal or violent behavior. Some criminal gang members join them after going
through the process of initiation) or proved their loyalty and right to belong
to a group by committing certain acts, usually a theft or violence act. A
member of a gang may be called a gangster or a thug but
however he or she is called, he and she are definitely criminals.
In
2007, there were approximately 785,000 active street gang members in the United
States, according to the National Youth
Gang Center. In 2011, the National
Gang Intelligence Center of the Federal Bureau of Investigation asserted
that “There are approximately 1.4 million active street, prison, and outlaw gang members
comprising more than 33,500 gangs in the United States. Approximately 230,000
gang members were in U.S. prisons or jails in 2011. In 2016, the total number of gang members in the U.S. was 1,150,000. The number
of street and prison gangs was 24,150. That is scary. Canada doesn’t have
figures like that because the population of Canada is considerably lower than that
of the United States.
Organized crime is defined in the Criminal Code of Canada as a group
of three or more people whose purpose is the commission of one or more serious
offences that would likely result in the direct or indirect receipt of a
material benefit, including a financial benefit, by the group.
But perhaps a more succinct definition was
given by a former United States mob boss who described organized crime as “just
a bunch of people getting together to take all the money they can from all the
suckers they can.”
Canada is lauded the world over as
a law abiding, peaceful country—a shining example to all nations.
Unfortunately, such a view is shared by most Canadians who are typically naïve and
who are also misinformed. Throughout Canada’s history, to present day and
beyond, Canada has been and will continue to be home to criminals and crime
organizations that are adept at finding ways to make money—a lot of money and
do it illegally.
There is more to organized crime in Canada
than just the Italian criminal
association known as the Mafia or the Mob however, that
criminal organization is the best known and most documented group of criminals.
In North
America, just about every major national or ethnic group and every segment of
society has been involved in organized crime. Thus we have seen Irish, Jewish,
Chinese, Japanese, Jamaican, Haitian, Vietnamese, Somali and many other
ethnically-recruited or centered crime gangs such as biker gangs.
For decades, law enforcement
strategies have focused on identifying and prosecuting the leaders of criminal
enterprises. Members of these gangs may be charged or arrested for relatively
minor infractions. Charges for even small infractions provides prosecutors with
the leverage to conduct further investigations of the group. The goal is to get
"smaller fish" to "flip" and testify against the heads of
the organization. The ultimate aim is to disrupt the group. This
"headhunting" strategy is predicated on the assumption that organized
criminal gang’s operations are too complex to be proven in court without the
information gleaned from the informers.
Of course, being an informer
in these gangs is fraught with considerable risk. One such informer was caught
by members of one such gang and hoisted upwards with a meat hook in his anus
and then castrated, blinded and then had his flesh slowly carved from his
body. The use of a blow torch was also
used. Apparently he suffered for hours before he died.
According to the President’s
Commission on Organized Crime there have been no rigorous assessments of the
headhunting strategy. However, there is evidence that the US government
incapacitated many OC leaders during the 1980s. By 1985, about two-thirds of
the alleged Mafia bosses in the US were under indictment or convicted
(President’s Crime Commission. In 1984
alone, a total of 2,194 indictments occurred, almost all of which involved
alleged Mafia members.). By 1988, 19 bosses, 13 underbosses, and 43 captains
had been convicted. Furthermore, the prison sentences imposed on high-ranking organized
crime figures during the 1980s tended to be very lengthy.
The problem with
all this activity is that the US government had failed to produce even a
scintilla of evidence that any of these prosecutions had resulted in a
diminution of organized crime’s illicit ventures. The federal government simply
had no means to determine amount of harm caused by organized crime with which
to measure such an impact. But other indicators seem to suggest that organized
crime was still alive and quite healthy despite these law enforcement efforts.
The traditional
prosecutorial model of attacking organized crime—the conviction and temporary
incapacitation of the heads of a crime family for discrete crimes—has not
greatly diminished the family’s power and ability to survive, if not flourish.
No doubt, the unenviable record of short term success in prosecuting the
leaders while leaving intact the infrastructure of organized crime weighed
heavily on the Congress in 1970 as it considered remedial legislation.
Organized crime
in Canada
It was only in the 1970s that the existence of a highly
organized criminal network in Canada become known to the public thanks to
various court cases as well as Québec inquiries
into the Mafia, the widely publicized report of the Waisberg Commission into construction violence in Ontario, and a
series of mob killings in Montréal and
Toronto.
In 1984 a joint federal-provincial committee of justice
officials estimated that organized crime in Canada took in about $20
billion in revenues annually. The committee was formed in response to a 1980
report by the British Columbia Attorney
General's office, which claimed that organized crime figures had interests in
Canada's textile, cheese and disposal industries, as well as vending machine
companies, meat companies, home-insulation companies, auto body shops and car
dealerships, among others.
Further, the joint committee
calculated that organized crime revenue also came from pornography,
prostitution, bookmaking, gaming houses, illegal lotteries and other gambling,
as well as loan sharking and extortion. These and other activities such as
white collar crime—insurance and construction fraud and illegal bankruptcy,
arson, bank robbery, motor vehicle theft, computer crime and counterfeit in
credit cards. These crimes made up about
$10 billion in organized crime revenues. Narcotics accounted for the other $10
billion in gang revenues.
Organized crime provides illegal services desired by some
members of the general public, such as gambling, prostitution, and contraband
alcohol and tobacco sales. In every large Canadian city, local bookmakers used
to be involved in organized crime through an elaborate system established to
protect the individual bookie from large losses. Today organized crime provides
many underground sports betting and illicit card game operations.
Other
organized crime activities are not driven as much by public demand. They
involve the importation and distribution of harder drugs such as heroin and
cocaine, Internet and credit card fraud, and murder and extortion. Other
activities that aid and abet organized crime include the ongoing corruption of
public officials and the laundering of the proceeds of criminal activities.
One of
the simplest ways to ‘launder’ money is to engage in activities in which there
is a constant flow of cash, such as slot machines and gambling. If the owner of
a gambling casino claims to have taken in $1 million when he has actually taken
in only $100 000 in which has been added $900 000 of illegally obtained money, it
is almost impossible to demonstrate that the $1 million was not procured in the
normal course of business. Neighbourhood coin laundries have also been popular
ways of laundering organized crime money in Canada.
Without
the corruption of government officials, organized crime groups would find it
difficult to exist. The efforts of organized crime members to corrupt police
officers, judges, politicians, lawyers, and government and civilian officials
are probably more harmful to society than any other form of organized
crime.
A number of
countries have passed legislation prohibiting participation in the activities
of a criminal entity or organization. Perhaps the best known of these laws is
the American Racketeer Influenced and
Corrupt Organizations (RICO) statute. Enacted in 1970, RICO defines
racketeering very broadly, including murder, kidnapping, gambling, arson,
robbery, bribery, extortion, drug dealing, and a list of federal offences, such
as loansharking, counterfeiting, mail and wire fraud
RICO also contains provisions
according to which citizens can sue for damages to their business or property.
They stand to recover threefold the damages sustained, as well as the cost of
the suit. RICO also has asset forfeiture provisions, as well as those
pertaining to the divestiture of the interests of criminals in businesses and
unions. These issues are discussed in the sections on the Seizure and
Forfeiture of Assets and Injunctions, Divestitures, and Trusteeships. Canada
has a similar provision of seizing the property of criminals.
Determining if a person is a
member of a criminal organization
In Canada,
for a court to determine whether an
individual participates in or actively contributes to any activity of any
criminal organizations, the Court will look at the following to determine if
any persons in Canada are members of criminal organizations;
They use a
name, word, symbol, or other representation that identifies, or is associated
with, that criminal organization;
They
frequently associate with any of the persons who constitute the criminal
organizations;
They receive
any benefit from the criminal organizations;
They
repeatedly engage in activities at the instruction of any of the persons who
constitute the criminal organizations.
Police powers under Bill
C-95 in Canada
This legislation
provides police agencies new powers to use in their fight against organized
crime. The amendments include:
1.
A new offence – participation in a criminal organization – with a
penalty of up to 14 years in jail.
2.
Greater police discretion in using electronic surveillance against gangs
for up to a year compared with the previous 60 days.
3.
Expanded proceeds of crime laws to allow seizure of all proceeds from
gang-related offences.
4.
Additions to the Criminal Code concerning the use of explosives in
criminal gang activity.
5.
A new peace bond, designed to target gang leadership, would allow a
judge to prohibit associating or communicating with other gang members.
6.
A change in bail provisions. Anyone charged with a gang-related offence
would be held without bail until trial, unless he/she could show why detention
was not justified.
7.
Tougher sentencing.
8.
New sentencing provisions
in the Criminal Code aimed at
delaying parole eligibility for certain organized gang offences.
The story
of organized crime in Canada is as old as this nation's founding, with pirates ravaging
the east coast, even as hired guns by colonial governments. Since our nation's
earliest times, government and crime groups have found that collusion can have
its mutual benefits. Organized crime has had a
significant impact on the shaping of this country and the lives of its people.
The most violent and thuggish outlaw motorcycle gangs like Hells
Angels have been raised to mythic proportions. The mafia in Montreal
created and controlled the largest heroin and cocaine smuggling empire in the
world, feeding the insatiable appetite of our American neighbours. Even today, criminal
gangs are taking control of some of the streets in Vancouver, Toronto Montreal and other cities in Canada in which in some
gangs, their members are in their teens and twenties.
In Part two, I will present to my
readers some of the organized criminal gangs existing in Canada.
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