The “peak” of a bloody dispute which was months of manufacturing and fat with brutality led to bringing arrests to Quebec during the weekend, according to an organized crime expert.
The criminologist and former MP for Quebec Bloc, Maria Mourani, said that the repression of the police results from a conflict between a street gang known as the name Blood family mafia and the Hells Angels who came to the blows.
The Mafia of the Blood family (BFM) would have had a 10% reduction in drug sales at the notorious biker gang and was tired of paying, according to Mourani.
“They never liked working for the Hells Angels,” said Mourani in an interview with Global News.
Quebec provincial police have led raids over the weekend, with a total of 21 people arrested in a large-scale operation targeting organized crime. Investigators described a war on the territory selling drugs in the Quebec region, the Saguenay-Lac-St-Jean region, the lower sta-law and the north bank.
Quebec police captain Marie-Manon Savard said that four arrests on Sunday had links with David (Pic) Turmel, whom she described as the chief of the Blood family.
“What I can tell you is that people arrested today are people who are close to a head of a known criminal group,” Savard told journalists at a press conference.
The conflict has transformed into violence in recent weeks – by practicing tactics that we do not often see among the street gangs of Quebec, according to Mourani.
One man was killed and three others were injured in a hostage situation in St-Malachia, Quebec, just in the south of Quebec last week. Other people related to the dispute have been kidnapped and tortured, police said.
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Mourani said that certain criminal groups are turning to methods such as Molotov cocktails and even armed violence – but abductions and torture are rare.
These practices are seen in street gangs in Central America and “some Mexican cartels”, she explained.
“This is not something that is common in rue du Québec gangs,” said Mourani. “Is it a new way of doing business?” We will see. “
Hells Angels would have urged the police to act
The growing tensions on the sale of drugs between the Hells Angels and the BFM in the Quebec region date back to last winter, according to Mourani. With his potentially endangered life, Mourani said that the BFM chief had fled in Europe a few months later.
But the Hells Angels have aimed to keep a low profile since the wars of fatal bikers on drug trafficking in the 1990s, said Mourani. The fighting of criminal groups led to the death of more than 160 people between 1994 and 2002, including nine passers -by, according to experts.
The biker gang now prefers to negotiate instead of turning to violence to settle the scores, said Mourani.
“Underworks do not want a war,” said Mourani. “They don’t want it to degenerate because it’s not good for business. It’s not good.”
With the recent wave of violence, Mourani learned that the authorities were invited to intervene. She said that the chapters of Hells Angels in Montreal and Trois-Rivières would have been “not very happy” because the Quebec section had not settled the dispute.
“What my sources tell me is that the underworld said to the police:” Do something because otherwise we will be those who will act, “she said.
The repression of the provincial police in Quebec in the eastern parties of the province quickly added, with accusations ranging from torture and drug trafficking. Police said 21 people had been arrested to date and that more arrests could follow.
Former Montreal police detective Pietro Poletti told Global News that street gangs in Quebec were a serious problem, partly because of their lack of respect for the most established criminal groups.
“They don’t care about traditional organized crime or Hells Angels,” said Poletti.
The authorities said that the objective was to send a clear message to the criminal groups: “We are going to go after all the people who commit these crimes and we will translate them into justice.”
The Minister of Public Security of Quebec, François Bonnardel, published a statement on Friday, claiming that the operation showed the gravity with which the authorities were devoted to the fight against organized crime.
– With Mike Armstrong files from Global, Dan Spector and Alessia Simona Maratta and the Canadian press
& Copy 2024 Global News, A Division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
