This is old news, but better late than never—it happened in June—we missed it then, but now we have it to add to our archives on Somali “refugees” gone wild. Hat tip: ‘pungentpeppers’.
The gang raid resulted in 43 arrests and the whole mess dragged the controversial Mayor into the news (again).
From The Globe and Mail: Readers will have to read down many paragraphs before getting to the word ‘Somali.’ The only hint in the first section of the long report is that reference to ‘Little Mogadishu.’ (We have one of those in the US too—it’s called Minneapolis). Emphasis is mine.
The predawn raids on the Dixon City Bloods – a gang alleged to have committed shootings and robberies in its bid to control a stretch of Toronto’s Little Mogadishu – were one year in the making.
Police Chief Bill Blair held a news conference Thursday to release details on Project Traveller, an investigation that started last June with the goal of cracking down on firearms and drug trafficking, but grew to include allegations of murder and attempted murder.
The chief spent much of the roughly 40-minute news conference swatting aside questions on whether Mayor Rob Ford was linked to the investigation. But he also spoke about the harm the group known as the Dixon City Bloods, or the Dixon Goonies, had done, and the relief their dismantling would bring to those in the community.
“We know many families that have lost their sons to violence and we are endeavouring to bring justice to those people and reassurance to all families who live in fear of losing their sons to similar violent events,” he told the dozens of journalists at Toronto Police headquarters.
Keep reading down many column inches…..
The suspects
The Dixon City Bloods
The massive police bust targeted a loosely organized gang whose turf encompasses a one-kilometre stretch of Dixon Road in North Etobicoke.
The area, known locally as Little Mogadishu for the prevalence of recent Somali immigrants, is largely the domain of the Dixon City Bloods, who go by so many names and tags that many people along the Dixon corridor regard them as disorganized and relatively harmless group of friends.
But in an afternoon press conference on Thursday, Toronto Police singled out the group as a violent drug-running organization that has been the target of an intense one-year investigation.
Mohammed Khattak
One man arrested during the mass police raids will seem familiar to Toronto city hall watchers.
Mohammed Khattak, 19, is one of the men who posed alongside Mayor Rob Ford and homicide victim Anthony Smith in a photograph that emerged with media reports about an alleged video showing Mayor Rob Ford smoking crack cocaine.
The photo shows Mr. Ford with his arm around 23-year-old Anthony Smith, who was murdered in a downtown shooting on March 28. Mr. Khattak escaped the same shooting with serious gunshot wounds to his hand and leg. His face appears blurred in the photo published by the Toronto Star and Gawker.com, but his mother confirmed to The Globe and Mail that it’s her son. She added that he’s been scared for his life since the shooting, which left him with a severe limp and a severely injured arm that remains a source of intense pain.
That’s all I know for now. I don’t have time to see what the follow-up has been since June. If anyone has a minute, send us a comment with a link to the latest on this case and the clearly troubled Mayor. Is he still in office?