Five victims and their killer are dead after a December 18 shooting in a condominium north of Toronto. Police say the 73-yer-old shooter who live in the gated complex killed five other residents with a handgun before he was shot by officers. [node:read-more:link]
The Canada Border Services Agency reported today that its officers have seized nearly 2.5 tonnes of opium in Vancouver with the help of the RCMP. The opium was found in 247 shipping pallets. [node:read-more:link]
Canada’s UN envoy, Bob Rae, says the federal government will send more armoured vehicles to Haiti to help its national police deal with gang violence that has escalated over five years and effectively paralyzed the country. Canada shipped three Mine-Resistant, Ambush-Protected vehicles and three commercial-pattern AVs in October and details of the next batch evidently will await an in-country assessment by three Canadian experts. [node:read-more:link]
Against the backdrop of a corruption scandal in the European Parliament, the information technology systems in 10 politicians’ offices have been “frozen” to prevent the disappearance of data. A total of 20 IT searches have been carried out and more than €750,000 seized since the scandal broke December 11. In addition, several socialist politicians were asked today by their party to step down from key posts. [node:read-more:link]
A British Columbia man and two from the U.S. face mandatory minimum sentences of 10 years after beachcombers in Washington state found duffel banks containing methamphetamines and Fentanyl worth some $7 million. Their grand jury indictment in Seattle was delivered after an extensive investigation by the RCMP and U.S. agencies. [node:read-more:link]
Former military and RCMP personal are calling for changes to Veterans Affairs Canada, saying it has been too slow in implementing health service changes announced by the government years ago. “Benefits and services are accessible,” said one vet at a December 8 rally in Nova Scotia, suggesting also that privatization of some services in 2021 is part of the problem. “If you’re in the system already, it’s not hard,” Rollie Lawless said. “It’s those trying to get into the system that seems to be the hiccup.” [node:read-more:link]
Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino’s office said today that the government has suspended a contract with a Toronto-area company, Sinclair Technologies, to supply the RCMP with communications equipment designed to prevent eavesdropping. The company’s corporate parent in B.C., Norsat International, is owned by a Chinese entity the U.S. considers an “unacceptable” national security risk. [node:read-more:link]
Members of a disparate right-wing German group widely derided for years as “crackpots” evidently were part of an alleged attempt to overthrow the government this week. Twenty-five persons arrested in 150 police operations in 11 states included members of the Reichsbürger group which security services have becoming more radical and more dangerous in recent years. [node:read-more:link]
The U.S. Secret Service says hackers linked to the Chinese government stole at least $20 million on pandemic relief funds destined for more than a dozen states. Based in Chengdu, the APT41 hacker group is the first foreign state-sponsored cybercriminal organization the U.S. has acknowledged publicly. “It would be crazy to think this group didn’t target all 50 states,” said an official coordinating fraud recovery efforts which are part of more than 1,000 ongoing investigations involving domestic as well as foreign actors. [node:read-more:link]
A Public Services and Procurement Canada contract with a Toronto-area company to supply the RCMP with a radio-frequency filtering system is to be investigated after it was found that its parent company in B.C. is owned by a Chinese telecommunications firm. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said today that “we’re going to be finding out first of all what needs to be done to ensure that our communications technology is secure . . . and make sure that Canada is not signing contracts with the lowest bidder that then turn around and leave us exposed to security flaws.” [node:read-more:link]
Kiashke Zaaging Anishinaabek, an Ojibway First Nation in Northern Ontario, is suing the federal government in a bid to increase funding of reserve policing. “It happens more often than not where our officers couldn't execute an arrest because they had no backup,” Chief Wilfred King said December 4 before filing a statement of claim with the Federal Court. [node:read-more:link]
Six persons face a combined 260 criminal charges after a months-long firearms trafficking investigation in Toronto which resulted in the seizure of 62 long guns and handguns, all but five having been brought in from the U.S. “Our youth are dying over this issue,” Interim Toronto Police Chief James Ramer said December 5. “Shootings devastate families and erode the sense of security for entire communities.” [node:read-more:link]
More than 18 months after he was suddenly removed as the face of the federal government’s pandemic vaccine response, Major General Dany Fortin was acquitted today of sexual assault in 1988 while he was at military college in St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec. The unidentified complainant, a fellow student, said she had not come forward until she had retired from the military for fear of how it might have affected her career. [node:read-more:link]
Unable to deal with widespread gang violence through conventional policing, the government of El Salvador deployed some 10,000 troops to surround the city of Soyapango December 3 as part of a massive crackdown. President Nayib Bukele said “extraction teams from the police and the army are tasked with extricating all the gang members still there one by one.” [node:read-more:link]
Iranian Prosecutor General Mohammad Jafar Montazeri is reported to have suspended operations by morality police after weeks of widespread rioting. There has been no corroboration of his order, whether it is permanent, or any indication that the law mandating women’s dress code would be terminated. [node:read-more:link]
