Thursday, October 15, 2020

Canada's Anti-Drug Wars

50 kg of methamphetamine  Photo by Azin Ghaffari/Postmedia
"Those two old people were fed to the wolves. The RCMP did not do a proper risk assessment in this case."
"The police were raising the alarm in the community about the damage being done by the proliferation of drug use, particularly methamphetamines. The Saulniers were good people. They thought they were doing the right thing for the community by calling the police. With the information they had, it wouldn't have been difficult for the Mounties to act on it. A couple of days of surveillance and they would be able to get search warrants."
"They [the Saulniers] thought they could carry on with their everyday life and then they got hit out of the blue with a bag of hammers."
"The way that the system works is that any confidential informant is identified and controlled by a handler. That handler knows everything. His supervisor may or may not know about the informant. But when it comes to confidential informants, all the information about them is sent up the line to Ottawa, where all kinds of people see the information."
"You have these review groups in Ottawa where the senior person is being paid $125,000 a year and a clerk is being paid $40,00 a year and they have exactly the same access to everything. They go after the ones at the lower end. That's why the government is checking out everyone's finances every year trying to see who is living above their means."
RCMP unnamed source
"It is tough for us to get intelligence within thse groups  but we know there are people out there that can do that regularly and we certainly need them to call us and work with us."
"It is tough for us to infiltrate."
RCMP St.Michael Sims
Bernard Saulnier, a local entrepreneur, and Rose-Marie, his wife who had a degree in nursing, was a nutritionist and naturopath who owned her own business, Natural\Choice Health Centre, were both murdered on September 7, 2019 in their bungalow located on a main thoroughfare in a Moncton, New Brunswick suburb. He was 78 and his wife 74. Someone intimately familiar with the investigation spoke of the murder scene as "graphic". Investigators speculated that Bernard Saulnier was the intended target, his wife turned out to be collateral damage.

In Canada's maritime provinces with their long unprotected coastline a coveted base of operations for drug smuggling and distribution across North America beckons in a region largely controlled by outlaw biker gangs, Hell's Angels in particular. For years there has been a rise in the use of illegal narcotics and biker gangs want to be part of the action and the profit that comes with it. Which has led the RCMP to attempt to cut off the gangs' activities, to shut down their drug enterprises.

Their most successful weapon has turned on the information they are given by those willing to become informants. It is rare that among gang members that other bikers will become informants, so the RCMP looks for help from ordinary citizens, uninvolved with the drug trade but having a wish to help their communities. In the case of the Saulniers who responded to the RCMP call for community assistance, it was their concern over their son's drug-and-gangs involvement that motivated them to become informants.

Sylvio Saulnier's Facebook page shows connections to quite a few bikers, including Hell's Angels' Nomad members. The Saulniers convinced themselves they were serving the greater good when they responded to the RCMP call for community help.  RCMP forces conduced raids on five properties in Moncton, on August 28, 2019, one of those properties raided was listed as being owned by Sylvio Saulnier. Police seized about 14.5 kilograms of crystal methamphetamine, 880 grams of cocaine and crack cocaine. Charges were laid against five people arrested during the raids.

And that appears to be when the Saulniers were murdered in their home, a murder whose details the police keep under close lock. The RCMP placed an alert for two vehicles seen in the Saulniers' home vicinity before the murder; one, a black BMW with darkened windows, another Black BMW and an Infiniti SUV. In the past, police point out, Angels' hit men preferred to use minivans, not flashy, high-priced vehicles.
"There are Hell's Angel links to this, but it's not the Hell's Angels style. The Hell's Angels will kill their own members for being informers but they don't go after civilians. And they wouldn't be driving flashy cars to do a hit."
"In the past, Angels' hit men preferred minivans. This sounds more like someone hired a street gang member to do the hit. It's definitely related to the bust somehow, but we just don't know how, yet."
RCMP officer
 
"Investigators are working diligently to identify the person or persons responsible for their deaths [Bernard and Rose-Marie Saulnier]."
"We continue to ask anyone with information related to this investigation to contact the RCMP or Crime Stoppers."
Constable Hans Ouellette, media relations officer, RCMP

 

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posted by Pieface @ Thursday, October 15, 2020

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