In Canada, Youth Hired to Carry Out Violent Criminal Acts

"This is ridiculous now. This is a new phenomenon in Canada."

"The Hells would hire adults. They wouldn't hire juveniles. They were a different breed, the older ones. they respected authority to a certain point."

"We have to start concentrating on the street gangs. They're going to be a bigger threat for society. It's out of control. You have to go at them, jabbing them constantly."

"We spent 40 years on Vito Rizzuto and he never got arrested on Canadian law. We extradited him. We spent millions and millions."

"It's going to be a hot summer in Canada. It's going to be crazy." 

Piero Poletti, newly retired, veteran organized crime investigator, Montreal Police Service

 

"Mistakes are huge and there's no room for them when you're talking murder. You're sending guys with no loyalty to you. They get  caught, they're telling."

"We never hired anyone. Ever. Never. Anything we did, we did ourselves."

"None of us were paid a single dollar for anything or any work we ever did."

"Our circle was tight. And our shooter circle was small." 

Dean Michael Wiwchar, Stouffville, Wolfpack Alliance 

Yannick Desmarais, a commander with the Montreal Police Service (SPVM), speaks to members of the House Committee on Public Safety and National Security about the growing problem of car thefts on Thursday, April 18, 2024. (Source: House of Commons)

 

Criminal youth for hire. First publicly revealed by police investigators several years ago, when the issue of stolen vehicles first became a feature story in Canadian newspapers. Where criminal gangs would hire willing youth to steal cars and a flood of stolen vehicles became front page news. As did the accompanying aftermath; shipping those vehicles abroad for sale in foreign countries. Profit from that enterprise was made use of for the purpose of acquiring and smuggling guns from the United States into Canada.

 

This kind of operation and the use of underage thieves to carry out the thefts -- some as young as 14 and up -- was based on the understanding that Canadian law and courts go easy on young offenders. They're tried as juvenile, not adults, and when convicted of the crimes they're charged with, the punishment they're faced with fails to compete with the earnings they score as hired and armed thugs; threats to society. The youth involved feel fairly nonchalant over being caught and charged, given the virtual wrist-slip that ensues through the courts. It doesn't take long before they're back in business, hiring out once again to criminal gangs. 

"The ones that have contacts with people on the ground. They're the ones pulling the strings. They're the ones that are hiring and recruiting the recruits."

"I think if we really want to have an impact and really want to dismantle and lower this crisis, we really have to go to the people pulling the strings and concentrate on the networks that are exporting and transporting and have the contacts with people overseas."

Michel Patenaude, chief inspector, SQ (Sûreté du Québec)

Between mid-December and the end of March, police inspected about 400 shipping containers at the Port of Montreal and found nearly 600 stolen vehicles, most of them from the Toronto area. A shipping container is loaded onto a container ship in the Port of Montreal on Tuesday, Sept.19, 2023. (Christinne Muschi, The Canadian Press)

 

Youth appear to have graduated from stealing vehicles to carrying firearms and hiring out as hitmen, or just to shoot up businesses as part of the process of intimidation favoured by gangs to impress their targets that they mean business. That business is extortion. From within the South Asia and South-East Asia demographic in Canada. Now, it appears that foreign entities have joined the fray, to anonymously hire young thugs for their own purposes. And recently in Canada that might mean an operative representing the Islamic Republic of Iran hiring young men to shoot at synagogues and in Toronto, the U.S. Consulate.

 

When Toronto's Police Emergency Task Force moved in at a highrise apartment complex on Martha Eaton Way in northwest Toronto last week with a warrant to arrest several suspects in the Consulate shoot-up, a firefight ensued. Constable Marc Pinizzotto, age 43 and an 18-year veteran of the Toronto Police Service was shot to death. The shooter identified as19-yearold Nicholas Bennett, was shot and wounded. He was also charged with first-degree murder. A companion also connected with the police probe who managed to get away, 19-year-old Zara Jabbi is now being actively sought.  

 

A procession to a Thornhill funeral home for fallen Toronto police officer Const. Marc Pinizzotto got underway around 3:30 p.m. on June 14   CP24

According to police, Nicholas Bennett was inside a fourth-floor unit of the apartment complex at the time of the raid, when he fired a single shot at Constable Pinizzotto who was rushed to Sunnybrook Hospital, and there pronounced dead. The 19-year-old Bennett was shot himself multiple times remains unconscious in hospital. A former professional hockey player in Europe, Constable Pinizzotto's wife and two teen-age children are in deep mourning, as family, friends, colleagues and the public-at-large support them in their dreadful loss.

 

Toronto Police Constable Marc Pinizzotto is shown with his wife and children in this undated handout photo. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Handout - X, @TorontoPolice