When Cameron moved his family to a suburb north of Toronto last year, neighbours told him it one of the safest streets in the area. The roads were lined with cream-brick houses and manicured lawns. In summer, kids played between driveways; in winter, they dug tunnels through snowbanks.
But any hope of a peaceful life on Allison Ann Way was shattered when a house across the street was shot at four times in five months. The most recent attack came in early February, as Cameron was leaving for work. Moments after his children had headed out for school, gunfire tore into the neighbour’s garage and a dark SUV sped off.
“Whoever was doing this was trying to send us a message, and they did,” Cameron said, peering out from his garage. “This street is now empty, like a ghost town.”
Police say that the daylight shooting was the latest in a string of violent incidents linked to Toronto’s towing industry, a sector which has long been dogged by allegations of links to organised crime and aggressive turf wars.
links to organised crime and aggressive turf wars.
Include TPS in the list of gangs supporting this.
why hasn’t this industry been eliminated and replaced with a municipal or provincial service?
Socialism!!! /s
They are all competing to deliver us a better, lower cost service, like phone companies and insurance.
Toronto has a long history with the turf wars and cops have been involved since the beginning.
Police were also involved in the matter, and not in a crime-solving sort of way. Suspected involvement stretches back to 2007 when four officers were disciplined for mishandling road collisions, having been accused of requiring vehicles to be towed and handing off the tows to agencies not on the department’s list of approved vendors (note that this was before the first available method was used.)
The following source is a great place to read about how and why it began.
Toronto making international news for all the wrong reasons.
I swear this was covered years ago in a CBC Marketplace segment or such.
it’s been going on over a decade, and filthy cops were giving out home addresses to hitmen and planned to kill a detention center unit officer.
Seven…so far.
“It’s beyond one … rogue cop. This appears to be much more of a systemic issue,” said Ian Scott, who served as the director of Ontario’s police watchdog from 2008 to 2013. “No matter how you cut it, it indicates some big problems in the police service.”
“Police are notoriously reluctant to investigate their own and charge their own unless the evidence is overwhelmingly clear," he said.
“It can be very difficult to prosecute police officers for things.”
HaaSS? Hitmen as a Social Service. For when the police don’t police themselves, you can hire someone to clean out the police trash.
“allegations” it’s fairly common knowledge here in Toronto and the GTA they they’re all linked to mob families. Hell just yesterday two tow trucks were lit on fire in Brampton. Bars that tow drivers frequent are routinely shot up. and the OPP/TPS/York Reigional Police/etc are all in on it.
