I'll gladly speak.
All I did in my previous police service was work on organized crime files, wiretaps, major investigations, so I know what it takes to run those units, and we don't have what it takes. Even with the removal of that, you have to remember that our police services are now 30 years behind. It takes an incredible amount of training.
The smaller the community, the bigger the unit you need. For something such as a drug unit, there's been evidence to show that you need a minimum of five people, for instance, to do surveillance. Right now with the funding we're looking at, they're saying we're possibly getting a unit with three people in it, so it's already underfunded at the start of it.
The smaller the community, the more you would need. The reason I say that is this. If I were to do surveillance in Toronto right now, I would blend in a lot easier, but to go into a first nation community, I'm telling you that I would be instantly identified. People would be walking up to the car, knocking on the window, asking what I was doing there and who I was with. They would be wondering why I was there. You need bigger units to be able to concentrate a lot better. We need massive amounts of training to get people up to those standards.
When I joined a drug unit, I had heavy mentoring from people who were already in there. We don't have any of that, so I'm the mentor. I'm the chief of police and I'm mentoring people because of my past experience, which is still valid. I'll tell you that, as the chief of police, I've been out on surveillance, as early as this year, on a major project. That was a joint force operation that was running between Toronto and Sudbury, and it came onto the island.
We have major gangs around. I don't want to just say the word “gangs”; I'm going to read some of these names to you. Off the top of my head, we have the Chester Le gang, the Driftwood Crips and the Five Point Generalz.
These aren't people we just think are here. These are confirmed members we work with through the Toronto gun and gang task force, as well as OPP organized crime units, who are able to identify these people. These people are in our communities.
We have motorcycle gangs: the Hells Angels, the Outlaws and the newly re-formed Satan's Choice.
We already have full-patch members of Satan's Choice. This is the reason that's such a concern. For those who are not aware, I'm from Sudbury. That's where I was originally a police officer. Sudbury is the only police station in Canada to have been bombed by an organized crime group. That was the Satan's Choice Motorcycle Club back in December 1996. That group has re-formed, and the son of the group's founder is now running it.
We look at the problems that are coming. This is already in my community. It was not even a month ago we had that. These are major issues we have going on. It's not that we think there are gangs here. There are gangs in our area and they are causing a massive amount of issues, and we do not have the training to bring us up to speed.