| Founded | mid-to-late 1980s |
|---|---|
| Named after | North Preston |
| Founding location | North Preston,Nova Scotia,Canada |
| Ethnicity | African Canadians |
| Membership | 60 - 80 members (as of 2009[update]) |
| Activities | Pimping, weapons and drug trafficking, money laundering and murder |
North Preston's Finest, also known asNPF, theScotians,[1] or theNorth Preston gang,[2] is agang ofpimps based inNorth Preston,[3] asatellite ofDartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada.[4]
The town of North Preston has a population of 3,700,[5] and is located just northeast ofMetropolitan Halifax.[3]Benjamin Perrin, aUniversity of British Columbia faculty member who is involved withhuman trafficking research and activism, wrote extensively about NPF in his 2010 bookInvisible Chains,[6] calling North Preston "a place of Shakespearean irony" because of the town's conversion from a sanctuary forBlack Loyalists (formerAmerican slaves) in the 1780s into the hub of a major gang that deals inmodern-day slavery and drug andarms trafficking.[1] There are approximately ten gangs in theHalifax Regional Municipality (HRM), of which NPF is the most prominent.[4] Most of the gang members areBlack Canadians from North Preston.[4] In 1996, Phonse Jessome, aninvestigative journalist, wrote the bookSomebody's Daughter about a gang he called the "Toronto/Halifax pimping ring", a gang that Perrin'sInvisible Chains identifies with NPF.[7] Despite Jessome's investigation into this gang in the early 1990s, NPF's power has consistently increased since then.[2]
In 2007, the gang was believed to be composed of approximately 50 men.[3] An estimate in 2009 by Michael Chettleburgh, an expert on street gangs who works as a consultant on issues ofcriminal justice, put NPF's membership between 60 and 80.[5] He also asserts that the age of NPF members mostly ranges between 18 and 28.[8] NPF members havecriminal tattoos to signal their membership in the gang,[9] with the neck being the standard location for these tattoos.[7] According to Chettleburgh, NPF first formed in the mid-to-late 1980s.[5] In 1993, Morris Glasgow wassentenced to jail for seven years once he was identified as thecrime boss of a nationwide pimping ring, possibly NPF.[3]Peel Regional Police (PRP)vicedetective Randy Cowan stated in 2007 that NPF is a family-based gang, with members of the 2000s being the relatives of 1990s members.[3] A warning has been issued to police officers to be extremely careful when encountering NPF members because of the gang's "armed and dangerous" status.[7] Both the Nova ScotiaRoyal Canadian Mounted Police and theHalifax Regional Police monitor the gang.[10] LikeIndependent Soldiers,Indian Posse,United Nations, Bo-Gars,Native Syndicate, and Crazy Dragons, NPF has an interprovincial presence.[11] Chettleburgh, the author ofYoung Thugs: Inside the Dangerous World of Canadian Street Gangs, stated in 2009 that NPF's activities west of Nova Scotia only began approximately ten years earlier, but that the gang's presence had subsequently become well-established in the area of Ontario stretching betweenNiagara Falls and theRegional Municipality of Peel.[5] The commencement of NPF's activities insouthwestern Ontario coincided with their expansion intoQuebec.[1] In 2008, Chettleburgh stated that there were approximately 12 confirmed NPF members in Peel.[8] According to Chettleburgh,outlaw motorcycle gangs in theRegional Municipality of Niagara frequently collaborate with NPF.[5] NPF used to have a presence in theGreater Toronto Area (GTA) as well,[2] although Chettleburgh has stated that NPF is no longer very active there.[5] In 2010, PRPConstable Mike Viozzi claimed that NPF had an even stronger presence inMontreal than in Ontario.[2] InInvisible Chains, Perrin argues that NPF has also become active inWestern Canada.[6]
Commercial sexual exploitation and prostitution are NPF's primary activities.[4] NPF is one of the most well-known sex traffickinggangs in Canada, and their sex trafficking activities stretch back at least as far as the 1990s.[12] NPF is one of the fewHRM-based gangs that has a presence further west in Canada, and most of these gangs' activities outside the HRM relate to sex trafficking.[4] Perrin argues inInvisible Chains that NPF's relationship with motorcycle gangs is one of competition for control of domestic sex trafficking.[6] Before NPF's expansion into Quebec and southwestern Ontario, motorcycle gangs had controlled sex trafficking in both provinces, but the police had organized major operations to combat these motorcycle gangs, leaving NPF to largely take control of the regional sex industry.[1]
The PRP is Canada's leading police force in the investigation of human trafficking.[13] In 1995, this police force took down another gang that was similar to NPF in its trafficking of youngNova Scotian women into Ontario; in that case, the PRP arrested seven people and issued more than 60 charges.[14] The PRP has investigated the NPF and claims that the gang engages in thetrafficking of children, specifically girls.[3] According to the PRP, NPF members live off the earnings of those theyprocure intoprostitution.[15] Chettleburgh has asserted that NPF also controls many girls who work for strip clubs andescort agencies.[5]
NPF members use only a little physical manipulation and a lot ofpsychological manipulation in controlling the girls and young women they sexually exploit; in this way, NPF's tactics are both effective and comparable to those of many other sex trafficking gangs.[2] Gang membersgroom the girls, often by approaching them asboyfriends.[3] The PRP suggests that men in the gang often groom three or four girls at the same time without the girls finding out about each other.[3] After grooming a girl in Halifax, her NPF boyfriend has her travel toNiagara-on-the-Lake by way of Peel,Ontario to live in amotel.[3] He then convinces her to work at astrip club in order to help finance the purchase of acondominium in which the two of them might then live.[3] The condominium is a ruse, however.[3] At the strip club, the girl is expected to make $1,000 each night and is not allowed to leave the club until she has done so.[3] This requirement pressures many of the girls into prostitution in the clubs themselves.[3] While performing arrests in these clubs,police officers have seen girls text their pimps in order to beg for permission to leave the club, and the pimps respond stating the requirement that each girl must make $1,000 every night.[3] The girls are also pressured into prostitution by way ofviolence,intimidation, orthreats.[3] For example, the man might threaten to kill the girl's parents.[3] In this way, the gangforces girls into prostitution and intostripping.[9] When a girl tries to get out of prostitution, her pimp demands a fee before she can leave; this fee can be as high as $5,000.[3] One young woman who told the police about how she had been trafficked was subsequently threatened by several of her traffickers, and she therefore retracted her statement, claiming that the police had manipulated her into afalse accusation. In response, one police officer recommended that future victims who make statements to the police should be kept away from their pimps and their pimps' associates; this officer stated that sex trafficking victims are used to being under hourly surveillance by their traffickers, and that therefore, once they have made a statement to the police, they need to have constant human contact simply in order to replace the constant contact they previously had with their traffickers.[16]
In late June 2007,[15] a 19-year-old woman was abducted andsexually assaulted.[3] She was from Dartmouth,[17] and said that Tyson Cain, who the PRP identified as being involved with NPF, befriended her and then forced her into prostitution and stripping.[18] She further claimed that she had beengang raped in an apartment in Mississauga's City Centre that month.[15] The head of the PRP Special Victims Unit, Detective-Sergeant Greg Knapton, suggested that the gang rape was intended to instill enough fear in the woman to manipulate her into the sex industry.[19] On June 27, Cain was arrested; a .22caliberrevolver was found on his person and he was charged with uttering threats, human trafficking, material benefit from prostitution, and gun possession.[18] On July 10, Thomas Junior Downey was arrested in connection with the abduction and assault,[17] as were Spencer Sinclair Thompson and Ernest Downey,[14] Thomas Downey's cousin,[17] on July 27.[14] Anthony Christopher Roberts was also wanted in connection with the crime, and he walked into apolice station with his lawyer to turn himself in on the morning of July 31.[14] Both Downeys,[17] Roberts, and Thompson were all charged by the PRP with human trafficking,[15] gang sexual assault,kidnapping, forcible confinement, withholding or destroying documents, and assault.[3] The police claimed that these four men were all either members or affiliates of NPF.[3] Both Ernest Downey and Thompson previously lived in Nova Scotia.[14] Cain went underhouse arrest in August.[18]
On August 2, Madame Justice Karen Jensen granted Robertsbail inBrampton and allowed him to return to Nova Scotia to go under house arrest in the house where his mother and girlfriend lived.[17] This allowance was unusual in comparison to other similar cases.[17] Roberts' house arrest stipulations required him to stay in the house at all times except when absence was for medical, school, or work purposes; he was also prohibited from obtaining afirearms license.[17] The morning after Roberts' bail hearing, Jensen denied Thomas Downey bail.[17] The evidence presented at both of these bail hearings was kept under apublication ban until the corresponding trials, as was Jensen's reasoning for her differing bail decisions.[17] Thompson's and Ernest Downey's bail hearings were initially scheduled for August 10,[17] but they were postponed to August 13, only to be postponed again because of procedural matters.[19] Ernest Downey's bail was eventually denied, as was Thompson's at a hearing on August 31.[20] On November 28, Cain pleaded guilty tohis charge of gun possession.[18] According to theToronto Sun, it was expected at the time that his other charges would be withdrawn on his January 5 court date the following year.[18] Thomas Downey, Roberts, and Thompson were to go on trial in May 2009,[15] but Roberts' charges were withdrawn before the trial took place.[21] On March 15, 2010, Thomas Downey and Thompson were convictedby jury of aggravated assault, sexual assault, gang sexual assault, kidnapping, and other violent offences.[21] JusticeTerry O'Connor sentenced both Thomas Downey and Thompson to 15 years of jail time and deducted 5 years from this sentence in order to account forremand.[21] Both Thomas Downey and Thompson were ordered to submitDNA samples to Canada's DNA registry and were prohibited from owning or handling firearms.[21]
In October 2007, the PRP vice squad investigated NPF's activities in strip clubs inSouthern Ontario, finding girls who were performinglap dances and allowing other sex acts.[22] The PRP checked the identification of these girls to see if their addresses were in theMaritimes.[22] Randy Cowan subsequently issued a public warning to Maritime girls not to trust NPF,[3] namely because girls who do are at risk of becoming human trafficking victims.[22] Cowan stated that the PRP targets the pimps becauseprostitution law in Canada makes it difficult to combat prostitution.[22] The following month, the PRP spent three consecutive weekends investigating NPF's activities at strip clubs in the GTA.[9] One GTA police investigator stated that NPF had unrestrained control of the area'sbars, and the officer further claimed that NPF members regularly transferred their girls between the bars of Peel and Niagara.[2] The PRP also looked into forming atask force to target NPF specifically.[22] One of the PRP's persistent tactics was to identify NPF members and restrict them from entering strip clubs.[2] Cowan stated that the investigation led to NPF members moving away from Toronto and into other areas,[9] primarily in Western Canada.[2]
PRP investigations into NPF continued in these other areas in hopes of retrieving the required information to shut down NPF's operations.[9] Since then, officers in several major Western Canadian cities have reported members of NPF staking out territorial claims and actively manipulating girls and young women into being sexually trafficked.[2] Previously operating sex traffickers in Western Canada began to fear NPF so much that they began to pay NPF for the right to traffic.[2]Calgary Police Service Sergeant Mark Schwartz claimed thatCalgary's non-NPF pimps pay NPF a fee for every girl they prostitute so as to avoid violent confrontations with NPF.[2] Because NPF began their human trafficking activities in Western Canada partially in response to the PRP's investigations into their activities in southwestern Ontario, Benjamin Perrin argues inInvisible Chains that municipal and provincial police forces and theRoyal Canadian Mounted Police need to work together to combat gangs involved in human trafficking; in this way, Perrin advocates a Canadian version of the United States Human Trafficking Task Forces, whereby police units would be created specifically to counter human trafficking acrossjurisdictions.[23] NPF's move away from Toronto led to several other gangs taking control of the sex trafficking in the area.[2] Two of these gangs were made up ofHaitian Canadians who called themselves the "Bloods" and the "Crips" after two prominentAmerican gangs.[2] There were also individual non-gang-members and gangs ofJamaican Canadians that took over some of the illegal sex-trafficking activities that NPF had previously undertaken in the area.[2] One strip-club manager blamed NPF for manipulating his employees and gaining control of various parts of his business.[22] PRP Constable Mike Viozzi asserted that NPF and the Haitian gangs were more deadly than the area's motorcycle gangs because both NPF and the Haitian gangs readily shot people to death.[2]
In 2008, the PRP sealed Canada's first two convictions for human trafficking, setting aprecedent for future human trafficking cases.[18] TheCanadian law against human trafficking was instituted in theCriminal Code three years earlier.[24] In both of these cases, females were forced into prostitution and required to relinquish their earnings to their traffickers.[18] The PRP was maintaining nine human trafficking charges before the courts by December 2008, including two cases allegedly involving NPF.[13]
Also in 2008, 19-year-old Stefano Jemile Dixon and 21-year-old Jordan Isaiah Cromwell, both believed by theHalton Regional Police Service (HRPS) to be members of NPF, were charged in connection with a case in which the HRPS stated that a 17-year-old girl was forced to work as astripper.[13] The HRPS claimed that the girl had beencoerced into stripping at a strip club inMississauga by Dixon and Cromwell,[13] two men she had met in November of that year,[25] when she was still 16 years old.[26] The HRPS initially kept the name of the strip club a secret from the public so that interviews would be untainted with the information.[27] HRPS Detective-Sergeant Al Albano stated that the girl had first been introduced to one of the men through friends, after which point the man seduced her in the manner typical of NPF, resulting in her starting to work at the strip club.[8] The girl told the police that Dixon and Cromwell promised her monetary recompense for working at the club and that she was givenforged ID so she would be able to do so,[13] but that after stripping at the club on two occasions,[28] she was required to give all of her earnings to Dixon and Cromwell, who also attempted to prostitute her.[13] Albano asserted that Dixon and Cromwell continued to tell the girl that she would receive money eventually if she continued to strip at the club, but she never received any money.[8] The HRPS contended that the girl tried to escape on two ccasions, but was assaulted on both occasions and was forced to continue stripping at the club,[13] unless she was able to pay an exit fee of thousands of dollars, a fee which she could not pay because Dixon and Cromwell confiscated all of her money.[26] The police stated that she was thenceforward forcibly transported to and from the club.[28] The girl was kept at atownhouse inBurlington.[13][26] A year prior, this townhouse was identified as linked to NPF by a Burlington police force specializing in gangs andgun violence.[8] A senior NPF member was the townhouse'slandlord.[26]
Early in the morning on December 3, while Dixon and Cromwell were sleeping, the girl successfully escaped,[13] after which point she found friends.[8] Out of concern, one of these friends contacted the HRPS.[28] On December 4,[26] the HRPS raided the townhouse the girl had escaped from, to discover $3,870 in cash along with other evidence against Dixon and Cromwell.[13] The policeSWAT team, which was heavily armed,[26] arrested Dixon and Cromwell along with a young woman, although the woman was released without charges.[8] Both men were charged withsexual exploitation, human trafficking, withholding documents for human trafficking, material benefit from human trafficking, and forcible confinement, as well asdrug possession.[13] Dixon was additionally charged with sexual exploitation and assault.[27]
In late August 2009,[24] a 19-year-old woman flew fromEdmonton,Alberta to Toronto to meet a man she had met online.[29] According to this woman, she had only planned on staying in Ontario for a week.[29] The man she was visiting introduced her to another woman[29] who worked as a stripper[24] and who then brought her to a strip club in Mississauga.[29] The stripper introduced the 19-year-old woman to Marlo Williams, a man with connections to Nova Scotia and possibly to NPF.[24] The 19-year-old woman ostensibly became Williams'girlfriend, and she moved into Williams' condominium in Mississauga.[24] In September, Williams allegedly forced her through intimidation into stripping at one of the city's strip clubs and into giving him all her earnings,[24] which amounted to approximately $1,500 in the space of a week.[29] Investigators stated that she was only allowed to leave Williams' condominium to strip at the club.[24] The woman tried to escape on August 18, but was unsuccessful.[29] She later claimed that Williams caught her and dragged her by the hair back to his condominium, where she wasverbally abused, assaulted, and strangled to the point of unconsciousness.[29] When she revived, she conducted asuicide attempt.[29] Because the woman knew no one in the province and had no money, she felt that she had no other choice but to continue stripping and relinquishing her earnings to Williams.[29] Before the end of September, she tried to escape Williams' condominium again and succeeded, eventually going to the police.[24]
On October 15, Williams was arrested,[24] andammunition was found in his condominium.[29] Williams' victim later testified that he had shown her a gun, although a gun was not found in the condominium.[29] By the time of his arrest, Williams was already wanted for breaching probation,failure to appear in court, and driving while disqualified.[29] On the day after his arrest, Williams was charged with human trafficking, forcible confinement,choking, kidnapping, assault, andtheft.[24] Williams received the first human trafficking charge issued byYork Regional Police (YRP).[24] Because of the similarity between this case and several NPF-related cases involving men trafficking in women and young girls at strip clubs in Mississauga, YRP Detective-Sergeant Henry Deruiter considered the possibility that Williams had connections to NPF.[24] On June 11, 2010, Williams pleaded guilty to six charges:possession of ammunition contrary to a prohibition order, forcible confinement, breach ofrecognizance, assault,resisting arrest, and breach ofprobation.[29] Williams'criminal defence lawyer, Peter Thorning, argued that Williams should receive a jail sentence equal to the time Williams had spent in remand, and that Williams' sentence should therefore be considered to have already been served.[29] Michael Demczur, theCrown attorney argued for a four-year sentence for Williams.[29] The sentence that Justice Anne-Marie Hourigan gave Williams was halfway between the two: a three-year sentence with one year deducted for time already served.[29]
Before his 2010 conviction, Williams had received other convictions: he was convicted ofassault causing bodily harm in 2005,failure to stop at the scene of an accident and refusal to provide abreath sample in 2007, and uttering threats to his landlord in 2009.[29] For his conviction in 2005, he was sentenced a 12-month probation and a $100 fine, while his 2007 convictions resulted in a $1200 fine and a year-long licence suspension.[29]
At the end of the 2010 trial, Hourigan concluded that Williams' relationship with his 19-year-old victim was "exploitive and oppressive in nature".[29] Hourigan also asserted that Williams' victim has since suffered fromdepression,low self-esteem,identity crises,nightmares, andinsomnia, and has turned tobinge drinking as a form ofself-medication.[29] Hourigan's sentencing decision was not primarily based on the crimes to which Williams pleaded guilty but rather on Williams'aggravation of those crimes by way of his treatment of the victim.[29] Thorning found the sentence disappointingly long for a young man, but Hourigan stated that she wanted Williams' sentence to stand as a warning "that persons in the position of the defendant cannot take advantage of persons... in the position of the complainant".[29] Demczur concurred that the punishment of "individuals who prey on the vulnerable" is not the only purpose of such sentences, but that these sentences also grant protection to people "in desperate need of that protection".[29]
Chettleburgh claims that theillegal drug trade is one of NPF's two main activities, the other being human trafficking.[5] He also claims that NPF combines these activities.[8] In 2006, theNiagara Regional Police Service (NRPS) were investigating drug dealers who were usingmobile phones to make transactions involvingcocaine.[5] After NRPS investigators called a number and ordered $120 worth of cocaine from someone self-identifying as "T", the drugs were delivered by Tyrone Johnston, a man from North Preston with suspected connections to NPF.[5] The NRPS then arrested Johnston, who was later sentenced to 90 days in jail.[5] Bobbie Walker served as Johnston'scriminal defense lawyer and told the court that Johnston accepted responsibility both for his long criminal record and for recently impregnating hisgirlfriend.[5] In a 2008 raid of a townhouse in Burlington inhabited by two alleged members of NPF, HRPS officers discovered 3 grams ofcannabis.[13] Dixon and Cromwell, the two inhabitants of the house, were both subsequently charged with drug possession in addition to human-trafficking-related crimes.[13]
In 2003, Johnston and Lloyd "Butchie" Orman, also of North Preston, were implicated in a shooting at the intersection of Queen Street and St. Lawrence Avenue in Niagara Falls.[5] The NRPS stated that Orman and Johnston robbed three males after having ordered them out of a car.[5] The police further asserted that Orman and Johnston shot guns during the robbery, stabbed two of their victims, and gave the third a hit to the head, leaving the three victims with wounds that were not life-threatening.[5] The NRPS released anarrest warrant for both Orman and Johnston, calling them armed and dangerous.[5] Johnston was arrested in 2006 and served 90 days of jail time for various crimes.[5] The following July, Johnston was again brought before court, this time inSt. Catharines, where it was stated that Johnston had accused two men of robbery.[5] When the two men denied the accusation, Johnston struck two men in the face and let them go.[5] Johnston was sentenced to 90 days in jail, one year ofprobation, and 10 years' restriction from owningfirearms and otherweapons.[5]
The PRP asserts that members of the NPF have been implicated inhomicide cases.[3] NPF members have been allegedly involved in two homicides inNiagara Falls, Ontario, one case being the homicide of a tourist and another involving ashooting near ahouse party.[3] This crowded house party was attended primarily by young men from Nova Scotia and young female strippers.[3] Orman was convicted of the homicide associated with this party.[5] Orman fatally shot Phillip James "Rabbit" Simmons, a 33-year-old man also from North Preston, on Niagara Falls' Malibu Drive in March 2006.[5] Orman shot between eleven and twelve times, hitting Simmons in thegroin,abdomen, andhand.[5] The house party quickly dispersed, and Simmons was later discovered covered in blood and lying in the doorway of the house.[5] More than two years later, in December 2008, Orman pleaded guilty to bothmanslaughter and forcible confinement, after which he was sentenced to six years and four months in prison.[5] Even though NPF was not mentioned in sentencing, Orman had an NPF tattoo on his neck that was visible in court.[5]
On October 4, 2009, Johnston was found shot to death at a townhouse in Niagara Falls.[5] Witnesses saw two men leave the townhouse soon after at least three gunshots were fired.[5] Johnston's homicide was investigated by the head of the NRPS, DetectiveStaff Sergeant Brett Flynn,[5] who stated that it was possible that Johnston's death was the result of gang violence.[5] Flynn furthermore stated that he hoped the investigation would reveal whether or not Johnston was a NPF member.[5]