TIME TO PAY ATTENTION TO ORGANIZED CRIME

It's no longer bucolic Ontario or Toronto the Good. Not this weekend,
not in the eyes of the international media. And, according to crime
experts, what was discovered in a farmer's field in southwestern
Ontario probably affects us all.

News of the massacre of eight men, found Saturday by a farmer out on
his land, flashed around the world. BBC, CNN, ABC -- the big networks
were all on the story, with media calls flooding in from as far away
as Australia and New Zealand.

A TV crew arrived at the crime scene -- near Shedden in rural Elgin
Country -- from Detroit, whose citizens used to recoil, some 20, 30
years ago, at their nickname, "Murder City U.S.A."

We used to cover them. Now they cover us.

It's not the kind of publicity a province or -- with yesterday's
confirmation by the Ontario Provincial Police that the dead men "were
known to each other and from the Greater Toronto Area" -- a city like
Toronto wants to garner internationally.

So far, speculation has focused on organized crime. It's an area
known for turf wars among rival motorcycle gangs and, as one expert
pointed out to Canadian Press, "This isn't a dispute between the 4-H
Club or the Lions or the Masons."

If true, then these killings -- the worst mass murder in Ontario
history -- should be a warning to politicians that the violence is
out of control and has reached the point where an international
reputation is at risk, as well as the lives and livelihood of
ordinary citizens.

"These murders should be a huge wake-up call for the government to
pay attention to what's going on here," said Mike Davis, a 30-year
Toronto police veteran who recently retired to set up a consulting
practice with former homicide detective Mark Mendelson.

He said police agencies, including the OPP, Toronto police and a
joint task force, have been warning for years that "biker elements
have become increasingly organized. Their tentacles reach out greatly
into the community in general and into the business community."

During last fall's scandal at Toronto's municipal licensing and
standards bureau, there was concern that organized-crime elements
were trying to infiltrate the tow-truck industry. One of the
unanswered questions in Saturday's macabre discovery of four vehicles
and eight bodies was the presence of a tow truck from Toronto.

Davis said people tend to say, "As long as it doesn't touch me
directly, I don't want to know about it."

On Saturday, Elgin County residents were quickly reassured by police.
OPP Sgt. David Rektor wasted no time in telling reporters there was
nothing to indicate "a threat to people in the area," and local
residents, while expressing shock, didn't seem to be particularly
fearful that they could be next.

But organized crime does touch people directly. Officers make that
point, both on and off the record.

A police source said yesterday that "organized crime is alive and
well in Toronto. You always have to stay vigilant. Their whole
purpose is to make money from criminal means and they're not going away."

Criminals murdering criminals may not be seen as the first concern
for either politicians or residents, whether in Elgin County, the
suburban GTA or downtown Toronto.

However, organized crime, including biker gangs, is responsible for
the drugs on the streets of Toronto, including imported ecstasy and
cocaine. They control a big chunk of the massive fraud, including
credit-card fraud, which is increasing in the city and across the country.

They control marijuana grow-ops -- and in Toronto, police busted 300
last year -- which devalue property values and redeploy valuable
police services. And now they're gunrunners, a business that strikes
out at families every time a victim is gunned down in the streets.

"We are all victimized on the commodities side," the source said,
referring to the millions being made in the drug and gun trade, while
police services are stretched thinner and thinner.

A city, a province, a country can quickly slide out of control. In
Mexico in the 1990s, for example, people pointed out that, just a
quarter-century earlier, their country had been a relatively peaceful
place, free of the drug cartels and criminal gangs that had
infiltrated almost every area of public and private life.

Just as Mike Davis says police have been warning in Ontario for years.