Innocent at risk in crime feud: cops

Paul Morse
The Hamilton Spectator
(Dec 21, 2007)

A "feud" between organized crime factions has broken out in Hamilton that police fear will escalate into the death of innocent victims.
"This has to come to an end before there is the loss of innocent life," said Detective Sergeant Ian Matthews of the homicide (formerly major crimes) unit yesterday. "Unfortunately, if this thing continues to escalate the way it is, that's a very good possibility."
Police say two organized crime factions in the city began feuding earlier this summer. Investigators refuse to reveal who they are or what sparked the violence, but say several similar incidents throughout the city this year are tied to the crime groups.
According to police, a central figure in the feud is Dino Dalpra, 47, whose Ancaster home has been firebombed twice since October. On Tuesday, a man walked up to the front of Dalpra's home and fired at least five shots into a child's bedroom window.
The brazen attack by a man dressed in black took place around 8:30 p.m. while neighbours were still outside on their street. Police say it showed a complete disregard for human life.
"These were aimed shots fired into a child's room," Matthews said. "Had a child been in that room, they would have been struck."
Five children, all under age 10, live in Dalpra's stone facade house at 4 Playfair Court, an exclusive cul-de-sac with homes worth more than $500,000 near Stone Church and Golf Links roads.
Dalpra was associated with the Outlaws biker gang that was targeted during a massive OPP operation called Project Retire in 2002, police said. More than 50 people, including Dalpra, were charged with a raft of drug and firearm offences.
About a dozen Outlaw members were also charged with belonging to a criminal organization.
Dalpra was charged with trafficking and conspiracy to traffic hashish. His lawyer David Rose yesterday said Dalpra was not an Outlaw and was never charged with belonging to a criminal organization.
Rose said prosecutors withdrew all charges against Dalpra because he had waited almost three years without ever coming to trial.
"The case was weak and, ultimately, the Crown just threw in the towel," Rose said.
On Dec. 14, a minivan parked in Dalpra's driveway was destroyed by a firebomb thrown through the window. In mid-October, another Molotov cocktail was tossed onto the home's back deck.
"Mr. Dalpra, in his activities, has obviously upset somebody, and the violence is escalating rapidly in that dispute," Matthews said.
"When they're going to the extreme of endangering the lives of innocent children to further a feud that exists, that's taking this to a whole different realm where innocent lives ... are now being placed in serious jeopardy."
A second homicide unit team, led by Detective Sergeant Steve Hrab, has joined the investigation because some of the people involved "are persons of interest" in cases Hrab is investigating.
Yesterday, Hrab alluded to a war that broke out in Quebec between the Hells Angels and Rock Machine outlaw biker gangs in the 1990s that fuelled more than 150 murders, including an 11-year-old boy killed by a car bomb.
That infamous clash is not connected to what's happening here, Hrab said, but when that war broke out, it escalated to the point where a child was killed.
"Here in Hamilton ... we are taking this very seriously and we are joining forces with all resources available to have this activity end," he said.
Organized crime expert Antonio Nicaso said generally speaking a war between criminal gangs indicates an "imbalance" between members or groups, most likely over money from the lucrative narcotics trade.
He said Hamilton is not a traditional organized crime city anymore, dominated by the Mafia or the Hells Angels, but has many small groups that join forces to make money.
"Hamilton has many small groups, many street gangs, many criminals which I call no-name criminal groups," said Nicaso, who has written numerous books on organized crime, including a 2004 book on Hamilton's own Rocco Perri, the King of the Bootleggers.
"There are many players and there is now a huge demand for drugs. When you have too many, at the level of distribution on the street, sooner or later there will be a clash."
He said people should not be surprised children are being targeted.
"Always violence was the one main characteristic of organized crime."
Nicaso applauds Hamilton police for putting new resources into dealing with the violence, but believes that won't end it altogether until prison sentences are toughened and lengthened for organized crime participants.