Up to 40 3D-printed Glocks on Winnipeg streets

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This article was published 23/07/2024 (532 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Winnipeg police inspector has warned that more than three dozen 3D-printed pistols recently sold by a trafficking ring may still be in criminal hands — but emphasized that police efforts to keep gun violence from escalating appear to be working.

Insp. Elton Hall, who commands the organized crime division of the Winnipeg Police Service, made the comments Tuesday as he released further details about an investigation into a 3D-printed gun manufacturing and trafficking ring, dubbed Project Gauge, that culminated this spring.

The project led to the arrest of 26-year-old Blake Ellison-Crate, who had been serving a sentence for similar offences at Stony Mountain prison, along with his mother and several others who have yet to face the charges in court.

Hall noted Ellison-Crate instructed his accomplices by using an illicit cellphone and prison phones while he was incarcerated.

Ellison-Crate was sentenced on July 16 on one count each of manufacturing firearms and trafficking in firearms. He was given 10 years — on top of the 12-year sentence he was serving for trafficking firearms made with a 3D printer.

Hall said his investigators estimate as many as 30 to 40 Glock pistols made and sold by the traffickers remain on the street.

“The situation’s absolutely horrific. It’s alarming. These people are the scourge of the city right now in my opinion,” Hall said.

“3D-printed guns are used for shooting human beings — that’s why they’re made, there’s no other use for them.”

He offered some comfort by pointing to police statistics that suggest gun crime has remained relatively stable this year, compared with last year. He said it’s evidence of the work Winnipeg police are doing to keep the violence at bay.

“There’s been no real spikes in violence, as of yet,” Hall said, though he warned August and September tend to be the busiest months of the year for gun violence.

Hall also railed against unscrupulous Canadian retailers that sell gun parts without proper paperwork, and he warned he’s willing to send investigators across the country if any are found to be mailing parts to Winnipeg improperly.

Ellison-Crate’s earlier sentence, issued in December 2023, is the longest imposed in Canada for offences related to 3D-printed gun manufacturing.

He was arrested in 2021 after Winnipeg police found he had been using online marketplace Kijiji to recruit people to use the printers to make handgun receivers for him. Two of his guns were linked to shootings: at Red River Ex in June 2022, when two boys were shot and in April 2022, when St. Norbert resident Brandon Richard was killed after his vehicle was ambushed by two gunmen on Burrows Avenue.

Hall said the record prison sentence given to Ellison-Crate appears to have been noticed by suspects.

“The first thing they’re saying when they get in here, even before they’re charged and cautioned, is, ‘I’m not involved in the firearms printing or the manufacturing part of it. I want nothing to do with that,’” said Hall, calling the sentences issued “very strong” and “very fair.”

Project Gauge began in November, after a welding business in Winnipeg warned police about a suspicious person who had asked for gun parts to be manufactured.

Police executed search warrants at four homes in Winnipeg on March 20. Ellison-Crate was arrested in prison on April 19.

Hall said Tuesday that as part of the probe, officers seized a 3D-printed Glock-style handgun, 9 mm ammunition, a 3D printer and other weapons and knives.

The 3D-printed gun and the 3D printer were found in a home on Setter Street that’s connected to one of the people charged with weapons offences, 26-year-old Michael Rivers.

In court last week it was alleged he was Ellison-Crate’s partner and the “suspicious customer” who had shown up at the welding business.

Court was told Ellison-Crate had recruited his mother, Twyla Ellison, and his stepfather to deposit thousands of dollars into a bank account he could access, which he immediately spent on gun components. Ellison-Crate claimed he had been pressured and threatened by gang-affiliated inmates to get back into manufacturing.

Twyla Ellison was arrested May 8 and is charged with weapons offences. Kinew Daniels, 25, and a 46-year-old man, whose name has not yet been released, also face weapons offences.

Danielle Deleau, 25, is charged with one count of conspiracy to commit an indictable offence, while Ashlen Parris, 25, is charged with two counts of the same offence.

Parris was arrested at Headingley provincial jail on May 14, where he was serving a 21-month sentence for unrelated offences.

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca