This story is part of a Metroland-wide series on drugs, guns and human trafficking happening along the major highways that run through our communities. For more on this topic visit Highway Pirates — guns, drugs and human trafficking.
 |
| Former gang leader Marcell Wilson says guns are easily accessible to youth as young as 13 in some Toronto neighbourhoods. |
Youth as young as 13 can buy a gun for a couple hundred bucks in some Toronto neighbourhoods, says a former gang leader who’s now involved in anti-violence work.
“There’s definitely a huge change as far as who has access,” said Marcell Wilson, who led a Toronto street gang in the late 1990s and then went on to work with organized crime groups.
“Even at the height of my heights … we did take into consideration putting a gun into a young person’s hands, like that’s something we thought about and we didn’t do just willy-nilly. … Even if I had a crate of guns that I wanted to make money with, we were very selective as to who we would sell those to.”
But that part of the gangster code is now gone.
“Somewhere along the line from the new guard taking over from the old guard, that care for who has access became blurred,” said Wilson. “It’s actually quite shocking how much access (there is to guns) and how many of them seem to be out there right now.”
Wilson, who founded a crime prevention group called One by One in 2018, stressed there are now more guns in the projects than ever before.
So how are they getting there?
“Guns are not made and manufactured in the hoods,” Wilson said. “It’s very organized groups that flood them into our streets.”
Wilson noted the ways both guns and drugs get to Toronto neighbourhoods from the U.S. have generally remained the same for decades.
“We’re talking about a loose border,” he said. “The most popular method from my era that is still very popular now is the tricked-out car or vehicles that have been reconstructed with all these little compartments.”
Wilson said that in the past these vehicles would have some modifications to the undercarriage. “They’ve gotten a lot more complicated over the years.”
Then there’s the forced mule method.
“I’ve actually heard of people being threatened as far as, ‘I’m going to hold your friend or family hostage on this side (of the border) and you’re going to go pick up this package for me, and if you get caught we’ll help you and pay for lawyers, but if you snitch we have your family,’” Wilson said.
Another method involves “certain Indigenous reservations” that have “easier access” to both sides of the border, according to Wilson. “I’m not going to name the reservations, but that’s been a problem for a long time.”
Louis March, founder of the Toronto-based Zero Gun Violence Movement, suggested that 15 years ago there were one or two guns in a community “that were borrowed, rented or stolen,” whereas now many people have one or two guns themselves.
“The police are telling us that 80 per cent of (guns) come from across the border, from the States. The people on the streets are saying that they (guns) are coming in (with) people less likely to be searched, people with a NEXUS pass,” he said. “They’re saying getting guns is not a problem … It’s easier for them to get guns than jobs.”
March noted the market for hard drugs has also expanded to municipalities outside of Toronto.
“And if you’re going to be travelling with drugs to these places, guns will go along with it. You’re not going to travel with X amount of drugs and not be able to defend the property.”
To tackle the issues, March said, all key stakeholders, including ex-gang members, victims, youth, government and social media experts, must be brought to the table.
“But we cannot get ahead of it by only speaking to one player, the police. By the time the police get involved in something, it’s after (the fact),” he said. “The landscape is changing around them, and we’re expecting them to change without doing the proper analysis and informing them properly. We’re waiting for them to do everything.”
March said key stakeholders were brought together and a strategic action plan was developed to deal with other crises, such as welcoming more than 25,000 Syrian refugees a few years ago and the current coronavirus pandemic.
“There’s a crisis in (the) Driftwood (neighbourhood). You go into Lawrence Heights, there’s a crisis. The adults, the children are afraid to walk at night for fear that something will happen to them,” March said. “You go into (the) Jane and Finch (area) at night, there’s a certain fear and despair in the air – you’ve got to be careful, you’ve got to walk fast, you’ve got to get to your destination quickly in case something happens. This is Toronto 2020, not Toronto 1920. We have the means, we have the resources, but is there political (will)? Why is it so difficult to bring all the stakeholders together?”
Wilson noted more resources should also go toward border security.
“And then they need to really internally review the existing mechanism in place right now as far as weeding out the corrupt and the inept.”
But Wilson stressed that killing the demand for guns and drugs is far more critical.
“Let’s deal with the demand rather than the supply, the cause rather than the effect,” he said. “So if we deal with poverty and with things like mental health, I believe we’ll put a much bigger dent in people wanting to harm each other or themselves.”
March said that if people look at gun crime as the problem, they will have difficulty eliminating it, “because gun violence doesn’t happen in a vacuum.”
