Mob case to test new gang legislation:

Expert watching how it will be applied

By Dale Anne Freed / The Toronto Star

New legislation designed to help authorities crack down on
organized crime will get its test in Toronto after the arrest of
dozens of people in a police probe of an Eastern European
criminal organization, experts agree.

"We have the legislation, but it's not being consistently
applied across Canada,'' said RCMP Superintendent Ben Soave, head
of the Newmarket-based Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit,
the multi-force agency that led raids on an alleged criminal
network. "Is it practical? Is it consistent? That's for the
legal people to determine.''

More than 300 officers from a host of Toronto-area police
agencies arrested 38 people in a series of pre-dawn raids
Thursday and charged them with crimes ranging from participating
in a criminal organization to drug smuggling and credit-card
fraud.

The question now, police and legal experts agree, is whether the
anti-gang law passed by Parliament in 1997 as part of a concerted
attack against Quebec biker gangs will work.

Under Bill C-95, prosecutors must prove the "rule of fives,'' as
it's known in legal circles. "It's a lot to prove,'' Soave
conceded:

At least five people must be involved in the criminal
organization.

They must have engaged in a series of indictable offences in the
past five years.

The alleged offences (other than the accessory charge of being
part of organized crime group) must carry at least a five-year
prison sentence.

The sentence for being involved in an organized-crime group is up
to a maximum 14 years to be served consecutive to the other
convictions. But the legislation is fraught with problems,
experts say.

"If the court is not successful in proving an accused has
committed a crime other than being a member of a crime syndicate,
then he cannot be convicted only under the anti-gang
legislation,'' warns Antonio Nicaso, an author and authority on
the mob.

Defence lawyer Dennis Morris, who is acting for 15 of those
arrested in the raids, calls the new law "an untenable . . . and
costly situation'' that he estimates will cost hundreds of
thousands of dollars in extra court resources.

Dec. 11, 1999