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The anatomy of a bust

"It affects everyone in the communities"

JANE GEORGE

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Members of Quebec's aboriginal police forces stand behind a mound of drugs and other items seized in a series of raids around Montreal and in Nunavik. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

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MONTREAL - The war against drug trafficking in the North is scoring some points, judging from the heaps of seized drugs on show at a Montreal press conference last week.

The spoils were displayed for all to see: hundreds of tiny one-gram, zip-lock bags filled with marijuana, carefully wrapped larger packages of fresh weed, crisp cash, cell phones, pagers, red and white Canada Post express envelopes, two handguns and a rifle.

"Look at the progress we've made," said Stephen Covey from the RCMP, as he addressed journalists from a table backed by flags from Canada, Quebec and Nunavut.

On May 31, the Aboriginal Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit broke, in a series of early morning raids, a drug pipeline from Montreal to Nunavik and Nunavut that functioned for about seven years. The operation resulted in 325 charges against more than 40 people.

This is how police say the mail-order drug delivery scheme worked: every week, pushers in the North called a special pager number in Montreal. They received a return phone call from "Mike," a drug dealer in Montreal, calling from a cellular phone. Then they placed their weekly order.

The supplier then packaged up individual gram-bags of pot, disguising the odor of the packages with pepper. Small quantities of cocaine were often included in the packages, as rewards for local pushers. Then, the suppliers mailed the packages, which each contained from 100 to 300 grams.

All of the packages contained quantities under 500 grams; Canada Post employees aren't allowed to open packages that size.

Jeannie May, the executive director of Nunavik's health and social services board, says the social cost of drug abuse in Nunavik is much too high: "It affects everyone in the communities," she said. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

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Every week, local pushers sent their cash back south by cheque and money order. Sometimes they found a local courier who would carry down the money, taped on to their bodies or stuffed into boxes.

The money, $125,000 to $250,000 a week, allowed the alleged kingpin of the operation, Marcello "Mike" Ruggiero, 39, and his buddies to acquire luxurious mansions and drive around in posh sports cars and SUVs.

When police moved in to arrest Ruggiero, he was found sitting on his living room couch, unaware that a SWAT team was about to disturb his early morning coffee.

In addition to drugs taken in 14 raids around Montreal, police also found 42 pot plants in a greenhouse as well as cash, money orders and cheques. Money was still flowing in through the mail after the bust last week. The total amount seized by police to date adds up to more than $1.4 million.

But the social cost of a drug ring like this is much, much higher, says Nunavik's health and social services director, Jeannie May.

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Larry Hubert, Jobie Epoo, Jason Bennett and Giovanna Taddeo from the Kativik Regional Police Force can breathe a bit easier with the demise of one drug network in Nunavik. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

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"It affects everyone in the communities," she told the packed press conference last week. "We can link a lot of social problems to substance abuse."

These social problems include violence, suicide and even death.

Police confirmed that earlier this year, a young boy froze to death in Kangirsuk when he went out in a blizzard to fetch drugs for his mother.

The RCMP and other police forces involved in "Crystal," the joint operation to knock down Ruggiero's ring, warn that the war against drug trafficking in Quebec's aboriginal communities is just beginning.

This means organized crime may expect similar police operations in the future.

At the same time, members of the Aboriginal Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit want to get a reassuring message out to aboriginal communities: they say this unit is determined to make aboriginal communities "safer and more secure" by restoring the social peace - something police in Quebec have to date failed at in southern aboriginal communities, in places like the troubled Mohawk reserve of Kanesatake.

For members of the KRPF and Sûreté du Québec provincial police force who work in Nunavik, the success of the recent police operation became a moment of personal triumph, following a painstaking investigation into the web of drug connections.

However, the network allegedly headed by Ruggiero accounts for only a very small portion of the estimated $60 million of drug sales every year in Nunavik and Nunavut.

"It tells you there are lots of guys like Ruggiero selling drugs in the North," says KRPF chief Brian Jones.

Jones admits breaking Ruggiero's operation is like chipping away a small piece of ice from a large iceberg, but he says the new collaboration between Quebec, aboriginal police and Nunavut means drug traffickers will start feeling the heat and fall in the next round of arrests.

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