 |
|
|
BAD BLOOD Almost a century after organized crime first appeared on our streets, things seem relatively quiet. Don’t be fooled, warn experts. Gangsters aren’t just alive and well. They’re more cunning and cutthroat than ever.
A crew is digging outside the north-end dry cleaners run by Anthony Musitano. Men are lifting cracked slabs of asphalt and looking restless and concerned. A construction worker comes to let Musitano know that the store’s parking lot will be closed off for a couple of hours while the backhoes do their stuff. The proprietor, an unremarkable looking middle-aged man, has a word with the worker and returns to the table in the back of the store where we’re having a little impromptu sit-down, revisiting old times. My Sony tape recorder sits on the lunch table. Tony asks if it’s really necessary; I plead my case, flipping through a notebook bursting with chicken scratch. Musitano okays the taping, but whenever an employee ventures near our table, a hard stare directs my attention to the Sony, as if to say: “Shut if off, now.” Like I said, old times. Before we get into his story, a little history. Let’s dial it back to the last day of spring in 1997. On that balmy afternoon, Johnny “Pops” Papalia lay crumpled on the street where he was born and where, a lifetime later, he still plied his trade. Felled by a single .38 slug to the back of the head, the steely Mafia godfather was pronounced dead an hour later. It didn’t take long for journalists to say the same of what some described as the golden age of organized crime. The eminent and once very feared mobster essentially stood alone in the city after rival boss Dominic Musitano succumbed to a heart attack in 1995. Along with a diverse portfolio of declared business interests, Papalia appeared to have most illicit markets cornered as well. His death (and that of his associate, Carmen Barillaro, soon after) left more than a void. It left a vacuum. While the second-tier Musitano crime family had carried on with help from Dominic’s sons, Pat and Angelo, the family’s leadership had been thrown into question by the incarceration and reputed rehabilitation of nephew Tony. A made guy who knew the life and participated in the rackets for years, Tony had been granted early parole on good behaviour and emerged from the penitentiary in 1990. Convicted for extortion, arson, bombings and attempted murder, he had served just eight years of a life sentence (which had been whittled down to 15 years on appeal). Pat and Angelo would eventually be charged with first-degree murder in Papalia’s slaying, convicted and sent to prison for 10-year sentences. The local rackets were starting to look like anybody’s game. Hamilton had been home to organized crime for almost a century — the Black Hand extortion racket, Rocco Perri’s bootlegging bonanza of the prohibition and war years on through to the Luppino, Papalia and Musitano dynasties of the ’60s, ’70s and early ’80s. The city seemed to be a good fit for traditional Mafia business, and although the RCMP mounted a challenge to the reigning families by the end of the ’70s, some beat cops were inclined to view criminal-on-criminal violence as beneficial; as long as no innocent blood was spilled in the process, it was often “one less bad guy for us to worry about.” Eventually the local police would cease to be part of the RCMP Joint Forces Unit, which had investigated and brought to trial so many organized crime cases in the area. Attributed publicly to budgetary constraints, there were cynical whispers that the move was motivated by investigations being compromised by leaks. Now, in the early 21st century, a revitalized JFU is back with more resources than ever. There’s also a new and deadlier gang of criminal apprentices to continue the grand old tradition. SHIFTING GEARS Born in the north end of Hamilton 52 years ago, nothing marked Wolodumyr (later Walter, or “Nurget”) Stadnick as a remarkable individual, someone who would develop the organizational and management skills needed to unite dozens of disparate outlaw biker gangs under the wings of the Hells Angels. But in the estimation of law enforcement and many investigative journalists, Stadnick is just such a man. A diminutive (5’ 4”) but ruthless outlaw who rules with consensus rather than confrontation, Stadnick has long been a leader. He belonged to the obscure Cossacks MC club in the early ’70s, when Satan’s Choice and the Red Devils were the major players in the Hamilton area. Later that decade, he graduated to the Wild Ones, a motorcycle club that delivered bombs to businesses on behalf of local underworld figures. When the Hells Angels announced they’d be moving into Canada in the late ’70s, Stadnick became a charter member of the club’s elite Nomads chapter, entrusted with smoothing the gang’s entry into the Great White North. Ironically, in a line of work where many meet their demise at the end of a gun or a knife or worse, a blunt instrument, the most bodily harm ever done to Stadnick was by a man of the cloth. In Montreal on club business in September, 1984, the biker was struck by a priest who ran a stop sign, racing to see the Pope at Olympic Stadium. Stadnick’s gas tank erupted in the crash, dealing third-degree burns to the biker’s face, arms and upper body, disfiguring his nose and scorching off two fingers. So dire was the biker’s condition that he was airlifted to Hamilton General Hospital, whose burn unit is among the best in the country. Hackles were raised when it was revealed that Stadnick was being guarded by several Hamilton police officers, but with a biker gang war raging in Quebec, the local cops were taking no chances. Stadnick’s stay at the General was uneventful. In fact, the hun invasion predicted by the media never really materialized in Ontario, at least not the bloodbath that the Quebec experiment seemed to foreshadow. Instead, Stadnick and Ancaster-based aide-de-camp Donald “Pup” Stockford quietly and efficiently went about the business of “patching over” rival bike gangs to the Hells Angels – 170 members in all – and mostly avoiding violent escapades and bad blood. Despite constant attention from the RCMP, the OPP’s Biker Enforcement Unit and elements of the Hamilton Police, the cops failed to get the goods on Stadnick and Stockford. By December 2000, the Hells Angels were not only bad, they were nationwide, with chapters from Alberta to Quebec and nearly 300 full-fledged members. It has since been estimated that around 270 Angels reside in Ontario alone. If membership has its privileges, executive perks are especially sweet. One 2002 newspaper story painted Stadnick as a man who liked to dine at expensive Toronto restaurants, decked out in a full-length sable coat and snakeskin money belt, protected by a phalanx of bodyguards. That’s quite a different image than the Walter Stadnick I encountered at a popular Hamilton roadhouse in October 2000. Nursing a cold one while conversing quietly with a large biker buddy, he barely stood out at all. The waitress obviously knew who Stadnick was, but it seemed that no one else in the place even noticed him. That suited Stadnick fine, and he looked happy and at ease. The expression was fleeting. In March 2001, the biker chieftain was netted while vacationing with his wife in the Caribbean, charged with 13 counts of first-degree murder and three counts of attempted murder, and denied bail. Stockford faced identical charges. In September, the pair was convicted of the lesser charges – drug trafficking and gangsterism – and sentenced to 20 years in a federal penitentiary. It is expected that both men will serve at least eight years before release. Trying to get a fix on Stadnick and his compadres, I figured that the best man to talk to would be Detective Inspector Don Bell of the Biker Enforcement Unit, a strike force that has been hot on the Hells’ criminal trail for some time now. Contacted for information on Stadnick and the Hells Angels, Bell was less than forthcoming. “I am not at liberty to discuss any criminal organizations at this time,” he said, sticking to that point despite my coaxing protests. Beyond standard concerns about counterintelligence, the BEU is apparently prickly about what could be a precedent-setting case in Barrie, where two Hells Angels (from the club’s Woodbridge chapter) are being tried on extortion charges. The pair’s defense hinges partly on the contention that the two bikers were targeted by the cops simply because they belong to a motorcycle club. The two Angels have the misfortune to be the first charged under Bill C-24, a sweeping piece of anti-gang legislation passed in 2001 that makes it an offense to commit a crime for “the benefit of, or at the direction of, or in association with a criminal organization.” Anyone unlucky enough to be found guilty of such a charge could spend 14 years in prison. The stakes are high, and not just for rogue bikers. This is sudden-death overtime for law enforcement. Field testing the new law may put a serious dent in the ranks of the Angels, who are making their last stand on the back of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms – which, depending on the outcome of the case, may turn out to be just another piece of red tape. KISSINGER IN LEATHERS If the OPP is loath to discuss the bikers at the moment, Peter Edwards is not. The veteran Toronto Star investigative journalist, who has written four books on organized crime, has been watching Stadnick for some time and is prepared to offer his two cents. “Before Stadnick,” he says, “the bikers were just guys who threw rude parties.” “In the ’70s, he was close to the big Calabrian Mafia groups (Papalia, Musitano) in Hamilton and he was sort of the neighbourhood criminal,” says Edwards of the young Stadnick. “But he could organize people, function anywhere and pull people together, even though he wasn’t an angel – no pun intended – by any means. Walter’s got a lot more brains than people give him credit for. He’s got real people management skills. In Winnipeg, he pulled fighting groups together. And how does a unilingual guy wind up running things in Quebec?” asks Edwards in amazement, referring to Stadnick’s foray as a Nomad into la belle province at a time when hundreds of bikers were getting shot, stabbed, beat up and dumped in the St. Lawrence River as the Hells and the rival Rock Machine MC duked it out. Searching for the right analogy, Edwards describes Stadnick as “the Henry Kissinger of motorcycle groups; he’s got that reach. Yet we still think of him as a Hamilton boy.” “And nobody’s caught him carrying a gun,” he adds with wonder. “When he shows up places, things usually get calmer.” Edwards says he’s reasonably convinced that Stadnick won’t turn informer, like so many bikers before him, but will serve his time – Edwards guesses eight years max, pending an appeal – and return as a high ranking HA sometime around his 60th birthday. “What he’s got going for him is his mind,” says Edwards. “He’s got a really good brain, and he’s not going to get stupid.” The journalist suggests that intangible power will keep Walter on top, even in the joint, doing hard time into the next decade. Even in his absence, the Hells’ aggressive public relations machine rolls on – and sometimes it’s personal. After Stadnick’s conviction last June, I wrote a piece for a local newsweekly that earned an exhaustive letter from Ms. Kathleen Anderson, Stadnick’s wife. Berating me as a “repeater” of previous news reports, Anderson argued that her husband was merely a member of a motorcycle club. The Quebec judicial system, she suggested, had ignored sparse evidence against her husband in order to keep him and others securely behind bars. And what of the $110 million police allege the Hells Angels earned in drug profits in Ontario and Quebec from 1998 to 2000? More police propaganda blithely parroted by the press; Stadnick, she vowed, would appeal his sentence to the Supreme Court of Canada. The Angel’s defence fund, however, took a hit when a Quebec judge ordered that Stadnick pay a $100,000 fine and forfeit three motor vehicles – including his beloved Harley – in addition to a further $140,000, in lieu of forfeiture of the Stadnick family home on Hamilton mountain. (While almost a dozen Angels and numerous other bikers reside in the local area, Hamilton doesn’t have a bona fide chapter, although Toronto, Kitchener and Simcoe do. Ever the tactician, Stadnick seems to have reserved the option at a future date: a HA puppet club called The Foundation could serve as a foothold.) A WIDENING NET Sitting in a King West coffee shop at the agreed-upon time, I scan the exits. A car eases into the parking lot and a man steps out. We’ve never met, but his appearance is familiar enough. Trim, conservative sports coat and tie, dark shoes – a cop. Sgt. Peter Kidd from the RCMP Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit, to be precise. Forty-three and an 18-year veteran of police work, Kidd is based out of Winona but his work takes him trawling for criminal enterprises throughout the Golden Horseshoe. Despite the clandestine nature of much of his work, Kidd says he “may be different from some coppers. I find some are anti-press [and think] anyone doing a story, we shouldn’t be talking to.” “The way I look at it,” he says, “you’re going to find this stuff out anyway. Being silent about everything, I just don’t think it helps anybody. And we come across as somewhat hypocritical in that if, on the one hand, we don’t want to help on a story like this, but on the other hand, soon as we make an arrest, we invite you to our press conference. Having said that, there are some things I can’t tell you... some of the stuff in relation to techniques being used.” Although Kidd and the CFSEU aren’t responsible for the bikers, they’re tasked with taking down any other form of organized crime – the definition of which, under new anti-gang legislation, is three or more individuals involved in a criminal enterprise. “In our office,” says Kidd, “we take a much broader view of things. We hear of all these Hamilton names, like the Musitanos, but we don’t target a group that way. We let the intelligence come to us and obviously develop it. And if there are three nobodies that no one has ever heard of before, but they’re doing something that’s serious, we will attempt to disrupt them.” Case in point: Project Okapi. Coordinated with simultaneous operations in Ottawa (Project Codi) and the U.S. (Operation Candy Box), the huge joint-forces venture involved 64 federal, state, provincial and local law enforcement agencies on both sides of the border and racked up an estimated 170 arrests, among them an Oakville man and a Hamilton woman. Police say the network was responsible for the production of ecstasy and marijuana in Canada, the distribution of these drugs throughout the U.S., and the laundering of illicit funds back to Canada. Police scooped up in excess of $8 million of ecstasy and marijuana and shut down numerous grow-ops. In doing so, police say, they hobbled a narcotics and money-laundering cartel rooted throughout North America that stretched as far as Southeast Asia and is alleged to have laundered something on the order of $5 million a month. A tidy score. As Kidd further explained his unit’s modus operandi, his breezy manner seemed confident in a way that suggested his unit is working on yet another big case, hence the “what, me worry?” routine for my benefit. “You’d think the biker unit, they’d probably go after the Hells Angels, but I’m sure there are other bikers who are not really associated with any particular group, or maybe there is a new group on the go, and we’re all trying to have this more wide-open approach to things. If you just concentrate on the crime families that are well-known, you’re really limiting what you can do.” Kidd admits that the work of his unit may not be as “sexy” as that of squads dealing with marquee mobsters, but says it’s rewarding in its way. There might even be a benefit – perhaps newer groups may lack the police savvy of older, more established crime outfits, and hence more susceptible to takedown. It’s a learning curve for everyone involved. As many of these threats are emerging trends, law enforcement gets a sense of the bigger picture only gradually. On the criminal end of things, the wheat is separated from the chaff as insurgent groups jockey for position. NEW BLOOD There could be an awful lot of chaff. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) has estimated that there may be as many as 18 transnational organized crime groups represented in Canada. These criminal organizations may have a membership with some ethnic similarities, but criminologists take pains to remind us that this in no way suggests that all members of those ethnic groups are de facto criminals. Organized crime, Kidd argues, is global. “We don’t label groups,” he insists. “It may have been done in the past, but it’s pointless now.” To target and concentrate on any one particular group because of country of origin, would severely limit the scope of 21st century policing. All the same, Criminal Intelligence Service Canada (CISC), an umbrella group drawing on the expertise of 380 law enforcement agencies across the country, has identified four groups as targets of concern: traditional Mafia, Eastern-European and Asian-based organized crime and outlaw motorcycle gangs. Eastern European outfits are a logistical headache because they often operate in a multitude of languages. Diverse and tenacious, they were born out of the disintegration of the USSR, which unleashed a crime wave across Eastern Bloc countries. A millennial CSIS survey of transnational crime found that in Russia alone, an estimated 5,000 to 8,000 criminal organizations are said to control as much as 40 per cent of the country’s economy (including almost two-thirds of state-owned enterprises and at least half of the country’s banks – power won, in many cases, by murdering bankers and businessmen) for an annual revenue estimated at $18 billion. With the collapse of monolithic state agencies, criminal outfits absorbed former soldiers and spies and gained their wealth of expertise. Activities have ranged from extortion to smuggling nuclear materials. The Canadian counterparts of these outfits are concentrated in Ontario and are involved in exporting stolen luxury vehicles, credit and debit card fraud, extortion, prostitution, human smuggling and the importation and trafficking of drugs. Asian-based organized crime, an outgrowth of traditional Chinese Triads, is involved in counterfeiting credit cards, identity theft and human smuggling as well as importing, producing or distributing illicit drugs to other organized crime groups. Membership can be vast; the Sun Yee On and 14K Triads (both of which have footholds in Toronto) have a combined global membership of about 90,000. This umbrella would also cover gangs such as Dai Huen Jai (a.k.a. Big Circle Boys, mainly comprised of south Chinese expats), as well as Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian gangs, all of which are more loosely organized than Triads. We tend to think of it as a recent phenomenon, but Asian-based organized crime is almost as entrenched in our history as the traditional Mafia. In his 1992 book Dragons of Crime: Inside the Asian Underworld, author Outlaw motorcycle gangs, linked to drug trafficking (cocaine, marijuana, methamphetamine), prostitution, fraud and extortion, have been targeted obsessively in the wake of the Quebec experiment, which saw outlaw bikers turn the province’s judicial system on its head and fill the streets with blood. Eager to avoid an encore performance, law enforcement has staged repeated clampdowns such as Project Retire, a round-up in September 2002 that netted dozens of Outlaws, among them Stadnick’s nemesis, Outlaw national president (and long-time Hamilton resident) Mario “Wop” Parente. OMGs remain a top priority with law enforcement. That unforeseen and alarmingly swift patch-over is seen as an cautionary example, evidence of the club’s criminal sophistication and proof that the terrain can change almost overnight. On top of all that, officials now express concern that street gangs, a ready pool of recruits to the majors, show signs of becoming as sophisticated and ambitious as more established groups. Should that materialize, police anticipate friction between gangs and those groups who view them as unwanted competition. ESPERANTO OF CRIME Increasingly, however, cooperation is the order of the day. “Now there is a sort of criminal partnership,” says award-winning journalist and organized crime expert Antonio Nicaso, who has served as a consultant on organized crime for agencies such as the FBI and RCMP. “Members of different criminal organizations work together across language barriers – English now is the Esperanto of organized crime. The goal is the same. It is to create money, and through the money to create power so that they can work together as shareholders, buy more narcotics and invest more money in creating legitimate activity.” Eastern European and Asian-based outfits, for example, have been found working in concert with traditional organized crime and outlaw motorcycle gangs, rather than warring openly over market shares. Equally troubling to the intelligence and law enforcement communities is the convergence of organized crime and terrorist groups, where the latter may trade drugs with the former in return for weapons. “We know that it exists,” Nicaso says, pointing to Colombia’s FARC and Afghanistan’s Taliban as examples. “We don’t have to be paranoid of the situation and confuse any diversity with a terrorist trend. But at the same time we have to be very cautious, because our borders are like Swiss cheese and, quite frankly, we have so many people on the run from all over the world that choose to live in Canada.” That includes war criminals; the Canada Border Services Agency’s 2004 War Crimes Report estimates that there are 115 such suspects at large within our borders. “Every major organized crime group in the world has a chapter here,” he adds. “That’s a starting point for a politician – why do they love Canada? But we don’t want to give that answer.” Nicaso, like Kidd, warns against racializing crime or indulging ethnic stereotypes. “Frank Cotroni passed away recently – he was born in Quebec, spoke only French and English, not a word of Italian, yet we continue to call Frank Cotroni an Italian gangster. It’s like Ben Johnson – when he won the Olympic medal he was a Canadian icon; when he lost the gold medal for doping, he returned to ‘Jamaican immigrant.’ I think we have to recognize that organized crime is not an ethnic problem – it’s a criminal problem.” Still, the stereotypes persist, aided by tabloid journalism that, through its coverage, repeatedly typecasts certain ethnic groups with criminal activity. It may seem like mere sensationalism, but some academics argue that it is more than just misleading – in suggesting that isolated incidents are indicative of societal disintegration, this splashy coverage may actually play a role in shaping social policy. It may be a hot-button issue, but Nicaso says pussy-footing around social policy is not the answer. Substantial reforms, he argues, are needed to stem organized crime. “When you allow people in from other countries, you have to make sure you have jobs for them, improve the quality of their lives faster, not relegate them to a ghetto,” Nicaso contends. “When you create a ghetto, you create a place for criminal activity. If we need 10,000 people, let’s bring them in. Let’s put them to work, let’s accelerate the rate of their integration to allow them to feel immediately Canadian.” His prescription also includes stiff sentences for serious crimes, hard-nosed anti-gang legislation and the time and resources to make use of that legislation. Even as he’s laying out his case, however, Nicaso is aware that political willpower is one thing that can’t be legislated. “I fought to change C-95 into C-24, the anti-gang legislation, but we rarely use that piece of legislation. I fought to allow the government to seize the proceeds of organized crime, but we barely use that legislation to fight organized crime. They say it’s too complicated to handle a case with 12 people — a lot of paperwork, a lot of cost. So the solution from the government is to cut a deal to avoid the cost of a trial. That is not the right attitude. You cannot make deals with criminals who import and sell narcotics, because they are encouraged to continue in that business. Two, three years is not the end of the world for them. What they don’t want is to lose their property, to lose their money. That’s what they are scared of. We don’t need the death penalty to fight organized crime. What we need is the certainty of punishment. We need mandatory prison terms. That would help, because now the judicial system is a joke. We tend to consider the possibility of rehabilitation for a mobster, for a mafioso – there is no rehabilitation for a mafioso. Mafia membership is like the priesthood. It’s a lifetime commitment.” It’s critical, Nicaso argues, to recognize that organized crime can’t thrive as a chronic social problem without widespread corruption. “When we deal with organized crime, we deal with criminals capable of building bridges with politicians, with accountants, stockbrokers, people who benefit from the financial landscape. That is the Mafia. If it was just a bunch of criminals, it would be very easy to defeat them. They receive help from very important people.” He points to the subject of his new book, Rocco Perri: The Story of Canada’s Most Notorious Bootlegger. Perri, he says, was able to insinuate himself into the highest corridors of power, gaining influence with the chief of police and members of parliament. “There are so many examples of corruption,” he says. “That’s still the case.” Edwards worries about unforeseen corruption as well, particularly where crime-busting tools like Bill 155 (the Remedies for Organized Crime and Other Unlawful Activities Act) are concerned. Edwards suggests that the journalistic community was unusually merciful on sweeping proceeds of crime legislation after the Angels tried to kill Montreal crime writer Michel Auger. Critics fear that “civil asset forfeiture” (when authorities seize proceeds of crime such as drugs and cash as well as houses and vehicles said to be instrumental in the commission of a crime) could become an addictive source of revenue for cash-strapped forces. Case selection, skeptics say, may be made partly on the size of the nut the cops think they can add to their crime fighting budget. Worse, others argue, in redirecting the profits of organized crime to the government, there is the risk of fostering corruption, of making the government a silent partner. Veteran McMaster University political science professor Henry Jacek is inclined to take a more open-ended view of things. In 1979’s Their Town: The Mafia, The Media, and the Party Machine, Jacek profiled the late, great, Liberal MP John Munro, dogged at the time by rumours of ties to organized crime. While Jacek could find no such relationship, he will credit the strength of leadership the Liberal party machine that stretched throughout the Golden Horseshoe with keeping things somewhat civilized during the ’60s and early ’70s. Jacek refers to a “tacit bargain” between the gangsters and the politicians (and in some cases even the police) of the era, in which the business of drugs and attendant street crime was largely kept from Hamilton, and the authorities accordingly didn’t lean too heavily on the resident wiseguys. “You might ask whether that was good or bad for the average citizen,” says Jacek, “I would argue that Hamilton was better off because of this arrangement.” DISRUPT AND DISMANTLE The battle is no longer so laissez-faire. Yet while the number, variety and sophistication of these criminal operations may tax traditional law enforcement resources, the cops are betting they’re at least as determined and creative as their criminal quarry. “We use a variety of techniques,” says Kidd. “Everything you could imagine. If it’s legal, moral and ethical and it gives us an opportunity to disrupt them (crime groups) or dismantle them. And I always say ‘disrupt and dismantle’ because I find that if you talk about dismantling them, you’re thinking they’re probably arrested and go to jail and that group is finished. But there are ways that we can be just as effective, and that would be disrupting them. They might not get jail time out of it, but we put a dent into their ability to make money or we create doubt in their mind of who they can trust and just generally put a stop to what they’re doing.” To borrow an analogy from another war, it would appear on the surface that the CFSEU is conducting a form of search-and-destroy mission: smoking out the bad guys, but not necessarily running up a body count. It’s hard to win the hearts and minds of common people, let alone cunning criminals with those tactics, but Kidd is hopeful (if less than totally frank) about the future of organized crime control in the Golden Horseshoe. “We’ve had instances in the past where, although we started out with an investigation (the goal is always to take them to court), after having put a certain amount of time into it, it became clear that we were not going to be able to prosecute this person for whatever reasons, we have still come into possession of cocaine and weapons.” “Are the streets safer?” asks Kidd rhetorically. “I think they are. If you judge success in a statistical nature in arrests and convictions, then you’ll probably look at our group and say we are less effective than we should be. But I really believe disrupting them is just as good.” The detective says the input from the local police is invaluable; the unit – described on their website as an “elite” force – would be much more in the dark without the home-growns. “I don’t know if we’re an ‘elite’ force, but the people that are here know what they’re doing,” he boasts. Trouble is, elite criminals aren’t just similarly expert. They’re also free of bureaucracy. When I bring Kidd’s attention to an article in the Globe and Mail chronicling the Herculean problems Crown Attorneys have had with organized crime charges (such as the multiple defendants and deluge of legal paperwork, leading many times to plea bargains that piss off the cops and leave the bad guys on the street), he said it didn’t really matter. He insisted that the work of the unit would continue unabated, taking the fight to the quarterbacks of crime. But the cops, on balance, seem to be in danger of losing the battle in increments, because there’s just too much crime, too much money on the wrong side of the law. Although few on the force will speak candidly on the record about what they think is going on, former police and private analysts will. In former RCMP undercover officer Chris Mathers’ new book, Crime School: Money Laundering, the author writes that for the outlaw biker gangs, “it’s a pretty simple matter to inject illegal cash from drugs and sex into the legal proceeds of a strip bar.” Mathers alleges that, until recently, the bikers totally controlled the strip rackets, although some Russian gangs have been nibbling at their franchise. If police and independent reports are accurate, the Hells have a ton of money to get clean. According to York University’s Nathanson Centre for Organized Crime and Corruption, the Montreal Angels have funnelled untold millions in cocaine into the streets of Quebec. Cooperating with the traditional organized crime families in Montreal (the RCMP has pegged Vito Rizzuto as the current boss) a steady supply of cocaine is smuggled into Canada from Columbia in a variety of ways, relatively few of them intercepted by authorities. In its 2002 Q4 report, the Nathanson Centre pegged Juan Ramon Fernandez as the lieutenant of the Rizutto organization tasked with expansion into the lucrative Ontario drug market, presumably to fill the void created by Stadnick’s arrest. But Fernandez has subsequently been arrested also and faced deportation, and no clear successor has been publicly identified. Even if someone stepped up to the plate, there are few (if any) others of Stadnick’s pedigree. According to Edwards, “technology is the future” of organized crime – including computer crime – and the key will be “who can work with other groups, cut the risk, and maximize profits.” Edwards thinks the critical mass between traditional “organized” crime and the white collar crime of business and government is quickly converging. He suggests that what once was done with guns will in the future be accomplished with lawyers. Nicaso (who collaborated with Edwards on the 1994 book Deadly Silence: Canadian Mafia Murders) echoes that point. “I used to say that I didn’t believe that there was a traditional Mafia of old and that now there’s a different Mafia. The Mafia is always the same; it is an organization capable of adapting itself to new situations, new circumstances.” As the socioeconomic and cultural landscape has shifted, organized crime has been quick to adapt and exploit it. In fact, the proliferation of transnational criminal enterprises around the globe has been so successful that many speak of Mafia in the plural. Though it may be local to some degree, organized crime is often a long-distance operation. In June, a 14-month RCMP investigation dismantled an inter-provincial crime network responsible for large scale cocaine trafficking and money laundering between British Columbia and Ontario, seizing a 15.5 kilo shipment of cocaine shipped by commercial courier to an address in Burlington. As in the case of Project Okapi, it’s an example of the cellular structure favoured by 21st-century organized crime as away of avoid the tactical disadvantages of hierarchical “family” structures. Yet even traditional groups are evolving, becoming bigger but less visible on the street. “Now,” says Nicaso, “the Mafia is more involved with the Internet, taking a percentage of a globalized market, adopting new technologies; they’re more involved in the stock market, they may use the Internet to wash money. It’s a different reality.” RCMP Chief Superintendent Ben Soave invoked a similar analogy when speaking about the Project Okapi arrests. “This network operated in a manner similar to a large corporation,” he said. “In effect, we have arrested the Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer… the finance department, the rest of middle management and the sales force.” A RE-MADE MAN Machines are hammering the street outside and a small TV in the corner flickers with a news bite about the sentencing of Walter Stadnick. It’s a welcome distraction while the proprietor takes care of business with an employee. Anthony Musitano has a quiet, powerful aura about him, a cool but serious gravity. In conversation, you can feel him constantly sizing you up. He can be forceful without words. The fleeting look in his dark eyes when the tape recorder becomes an issue sends lot of old rumours swimming through my head. For the moment, however, the banter is light. We chat about Tony’s better half, who ran for city council in a by-election and was Machines are hammering the street outside and a small TV in the corner flickers with a news bite about the sentencing of Walter Stadnick. It’s a welcome distraction while the proprietor takes care of business with an employee. Anthony Musitano has a quiet, powerful aura about him, a cool but serious gravity. In conversation, you can feel him constantly sizing you up. He can be forceful without words. The fleeting look in his dark eyes when the tape recorder becomes an issue sends lot of old rumours swimming through my head. For the moment, however, the banter is light. We chat about Tony’s better half, who ran for city council in a by-election and was compelled to announce in a televised all-candidates debate that she was “not a member of organized crime.” Musitano dismisses talk of political subterfuge. “Anyone knowing Judy knows that’s the farthest thing from my mind,” he says. “Judy is not one you can tell what to do, when to do it – believe me.” (Voters in the by-election decided on radio stalwart Bob Bratina [see interview page 29], giving Judy just over eight per cent of the vote.) We talk about how things are going for the man once sentenced in connection to a chain of extortion bombings in the late ’70s. Tony, who immigrated to Canada from Calabria, Italy as a six-year-old, starts to reminisce. He eventually gets around to talking about who he considers the real “organized crime”: law enforcement. “In my old world, we used to call them enforcers,” says Musitano of the hard-shelled men who made sure nobody got out of line. “Today, the enforcers have a gun and a badge. Without them, there would be no so-called organized crime.” Musitano suggests that the police and government are the biggest gangs, and has terse words for the new law that allows the Crown to seize any property or asset that they consider to be a proceed of crime. “Walter (Stadnick)’s parents, look what they’ve done to them. The man is dying, and they raided the place (Stadnick’s parents’ home) but made sure they had an ambulance there, just in case. You mean to tell me (the parents) would know what the son does?” A rhetorical question, but even if I had been inclined to answer, I wouldn’t have been much help. No police representative would speak with me on the record about the raid. As for who is filling the void left by Stadnick’s imprisonment, Musitano is cagey. “It is not like the old days,” he says. “There’s no one in power, to my knowledge. People just do what they want. If you want to learn about organized crime, watch Goodfellas – if you can’t fill in the blanks, they’ll fill it in for you.” For the moment, it seems, he’s happy to defer to Scorsese’s expertise. Yet while Musitano recently told the Toronto Star that he “launders shirts, not money” and told me that as far as traditional goodfellas go he was “prehistoric,” he’s not so naïve as to think the police have totally forgotten him. “It’s in their best interest to watch me, or anyone with a name or stigma,” says Musitano when asked if he thinks the cops continue to shadow him. “This is how they make their living. If I had the power to say to everyone this week, ‘No crime, no crime at all,’ do you think that the [police] would be on unemployment insurance? It’s better to keep the hype, because it sells newspapers. It’s great for [police] funding. We are a paycheque. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a charge. It’s ‘We think,’ and that’s what it is. To them we’re just dollars and cents.” The accusation stings, but it’s of dubious accuracy. Beyond Musitano’s obvious bias, it’s all but impossible to determine how much of the manipulation is police-driven and how much results from the media’s screening process: if it bleeds, it leads. Over the years, various agencies have heralded the imminent arrival of a biker war; the Angels were said to be battling for business and opening shop here in 1979, 1985, 1995 and pretty much every year thereafter. Before the bikers took centre stage, swarming youth gangs were a media sensation in 1990 and 1991, when Southern California gangsta culture made the trip to Southern Ontario suburbs. (Detective Tony “Pac-Man” Moreno, an advisor from the LAPD’s organized crime squad – and footnote to the movie Colors – even paid a visit to underline the importance of proactive gang policing.) There were the street battles between Mods and Skinheads circa 1986. Before that, there were the nefarious Parkdale and Barton-Sherman gangs of the late ’70s and early ’80s. Those days aren’t entirely gone. The Hamilton Police Drug and Vice Unit arrested eleven people recently, reportedly seizing $61,000 worth of cocaine and $6,000 in cash, along with stolen property in an investigation begun when an undercover officer made a drug buy. Among those arrested was Luciano Pietrorazio, former leader of the Barton-Sherman gang, said by police to maintain strong ties to the various Mafia groups and bike gangs in the area. In short, the war on crime is being waged on the streets and legal courts of the country, but also in the court of public opinion. Naturally, cynics sense a kind of synergy is at work – readers who, feeling that they live in a dangerous world will look to media for information on the latest threats and look to police for protection from those menaces. Even as the majority of violent crime rates, property crime rates and youth crime have been trending downward, people report feeling less safe, more afraid of criminal threats. While cops often gripe that the media caricatures crime, splashy, fear-tinged reporting is not without its selling points. As long as the city isn’t convulsed in paranoid panic, the pros seem to outnumber the cons. Speaking of cons (or ex-cons), Musitano says he thinks it’s a shame that, almost 15 years since emerging from jail, he’s still a marked man – despite the insistence that he’s gone straight. “We all pay taxes,” he says, which I guess is Tony’s cryptic way of saying he’s no more (or less) than any other ex-Mafia guy. To hear him tell it, the past is the past. Asked when his nephews (still serving time in connection with Papalia’s murder) would be released, Musitano insisted, “I don’t follow that stuff.” He later adds that he doesn’t believe his nephews had anything to do with Papalia’s hit, but that it was the result of an old beef Papalia’s assassin and his dad had with Johnny “Pops.” As for the present, Tony was not surprised that getting useful information out of some police units on the shape and nature of crime rackets these days was as next to impossible. “Well, I wonder why,” says Musitano. “God forbid they say the wrong thing.” He shakes his head. “My record speaks for itself, convictions speak for themselves. That doesn’t necessarily mean they were true, but I was convicted. These people here [the police], it’s a never-ending story with them. They can’t look you in the eye and give you an answer.” A tense moment, but it passes. Despite the frictions of what he calls his “second life,” Anthony Musitano seems relatively content. Above everything, he’s thankful that that he has managed to keep his own family out of the criminal life. “My children do their own thing,” he says. “And I thank God every day for that.” |