Early morning police raids target organized crime

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This article was published 06/03/2024 (548 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

More than a dozen people were arrested by Winnipeg police in raids as part of a wide-sweeping investigation into organized crime Wednesday morning.

The Winnipeg Police Service executed more than a dozen search warrants while working with law enforcement officers in Ontario and British Columbia. Several more people were arrested in those provinces.

Charges have not yet been laid in Winnipeg, organized crime Insp. Elton Hall told reporters outside police headquarters.

“It’s going to involve drugs, guns, people — possibly human or sex trafficking,” Hall, who provided limited details of the ongoing probe, said.

He said several of the “high-risk warrants” were executed at apartments in the Sage Creek and St. James neighbourhoods and the city’s downtown. Police will release details on the investigation at a later date, Hall said.

Organized crime detectives, along with heavily armed tactical officers, began executing warrants in Winnipeg and elsewhere at about 5:30 a.m., the inspector said.

Hall said police executed a second wave of warrants with the armoured tactical vehicle at about 7 a.m., which led many members of the public to call the department to ask what was going on, before conducting a third wave of searches just before 10 a.m.

“There were all kinds of people calling in from the community. I want to thank people in Winnipeg for listening to police on scene. We did block off a lot of streets across the city this morning, preventing people from getting to work on time,” Hall said.

“We weren’t quiet about it this morning, let’s put it that way. So, people were concerned and calling police.”

He said police deem such warrants as high risk because officers believe firearms might be at the locations. The inspector said organized crime detectives would be working on the probe throughout the day Wednesday, but all of the major search warrants were executed early in the day.

The interprovincial investigation, which was led by the WPS organized crime division, began last spring and involved the police services of Vancouver, Hamilton, Toronto, Peel and Halton, Ont., and the Ontario Provincial Police, Hall said.

“All of our targets are under arrest right now,” Hall said.

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca