SWEEP TAKES AIM AT MALVERN CREW

Scarborough Gang Notorious For Intimidating Residents

'This Is A Great Day For The Good Guys,' Police Say

More than 65 people spent the night behind bars after Toronto police carried out a series of pre-dawn house raids yesterday against a major street gang accused of terrorizing northern Scarborough.

The result of 14 months of investigation by an elite anti-gang squad, Project Impact was so secret that not even a major seizure two months ago of 23 guns -- weapons police say were bound for the Malvern Crew -- was allowed to spoil the surprise.

In all, more than 500 criminal charges were laid.

The carefully planned trap was sprung yesterday by officers from the Toronto, York and Peel forces, the Ontario Provincial Police and the RCMP.

"Street gangs are cancers that, left unchecked, consume and destroy our communities," Toronto Police Chief Julian Fantino told reporters later at police headquarters.

"The gangs have used violence to intimidate the community into silence and to maintain their power," added Staff Superintendent Bill Blair, who is chief of detectives with the Toronto force.

"But this time the community has been fighting back, co-operating with us to stop this problem."

What would become Project Impact began about 14 months ago with the formation of a special unit of the Toronto police.  The job of the seasoned veterans was to dismantle street gangs like the Malvern Crew to "put them in jail and out of business," the chief said.

Over the past year, investigators relied on tips from the community, along with a variety of surveillance techniques, such as secretly tailing alleged gang members and meticulously gathering evidence that led to yesterday morning's dramatic arrests in Scarborough, Ajax, Pickering and Barrie.

Prosecutors plan to hit suspected gang members with a three-year-old federal "anti-gang" law that calls for up to an additional 14 years in jail if it can be proved in court that the suspects were part of a "criminal organization."

It is the first time the law will be tested on a street gang like the Malvern Crew, Fantino said.  Defence lawyers have already challenged the legislation, saying the added prison time is too harsh and a possible violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

But the expected legal challenges are for another day.

Yesterday was a chance for the beleaguered Toronto force, rocked by a recent scandal over allegations of corruption, to gloat a little.

"This is a great day for the good guys, all those members of the law-abiding community," Superintendent Tony Warr, the head of 42 Division, on whose turf the gang operated, said in a later interview.

And it was a day that Blair, who oversaw the investigation, won't soon forget.

Blair described the mood in the packed police facility ? he refuses to say where ? as "electric, charged with excitement" as the troops massed around 3 a.m.  for their final instructions before heading out.

"Watching them leave after the briefing ...  well, it made me proud to be policeman," he said later.

Although one woman complained later to the Star that officers were rough with her and her son, Blair said the massive takedown went off without a hitch.

When it was over, police executed a total of 71 search warrants, smashing in doors, in one case hurling stun grenades, and seized five firearms, over a kilogram of the amphetamine crystal meth, 100,000 hits of ecstasy, along with quantities of marijuana, cocaine and hashish.

Included in the more than 500 charges were 82 counts of participation in a criminal organization and 25 charges of commission of offence for criminal organization, under the anti-gang law.

The police also laid charges of conspiracy to import prohibited firearms, possession of prohibited weapons for the purpose of trafficking, conspiracy to traffic in cocaine and possession of the proceeds of crime.

The seizure of the five guns came on top of the other seizure about two months ago, when officers from the provincial weapons enforcement unit ? operating on information gleaned from the Project Impact investigation ? found 22 handguns and a Mac-10 assault pistol in the trunk of a car.

OPP Detective Inspector Al Bush said police believe the driver was a courier for the Malvern Crew, taking drugs to criminal contacts in the U.S.  and making the return trip through the border at Windsor, where he was stopped.  The seized weapons from that arrest were displayed at yesterday's news conference.

Fantino credited the residents of Malvern for helping the police.

"The community has been very, very helpful in terms of assisting us," Fantino said.

"One of the things that have to be taken into account is that part of how these gangs operate is to, in essence, terrorize the community.

"They intimidate people.  They are prone to scaring the living daylights out of people.  That's what they do.

"They demonstrate that time and time again in the way they go about doing their crimes.  They don't care about who they hurt.  I am hoping now that the community will see that by working together great things will happen."

City Councillor Michael Thompson directed his words to gangs operating in Toronto, saying "What you see today is just the beginning."

Chief Kevin McAlpine, of Durham Region police, told the news conference that some gang members arrested in Durham are facing charges of conspiracy to commit murder but wouldn't elaborate further.

Those swept up in yesterday's raids spent the night in Toronto police holding cells.  They were to appear in Scarborough court this morning.

Prosecutors plan to add a novel request to the bail conditions sought for the accused, said Blair.

Crown attorneys will ask the court judges to require those released on bail to not only sign in at the usual bail and parole office but to check in a second time at a community centre in the area where the alleged offences took place, Blair said.

"This gives the community a chance to play a role in monitoring their behaviour."

"These arrests aren't the end of the job," he said.  "It's only the beginning.  It's in everybody's interest to get them out of the gang culture."