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.
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.
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 making international news for all the wrong reasons.
