Article content
Five Londoners are among two dozen people charged amid a crackdown on a Hamilton street gang linked to shootings across southern Ontario, police say.
Article content
The investigation, Project Churchill, was launched in response to a spike in shootings and other violent crime in downtown Hamilton dating back to 2019, linked to the Hot Mali Squad (HMS) street gang, Hamilton police said Tuesday.
Article content
“Targeting this violent street gang was crucial in addressing the surge in Hamilton shootings, because this group acted at the epicentre of gun violence, fuelling fear, instability and harm in the community,” Hamilton police Chief Frank Bergen said in a statement.
Project Churchill investigators, including Hamilton, Halton and provincial police officers, determined HMS had forged strong links with members of the Dirty South, a Toronto-area faction of the Bahamas-based street gang One Order, police said.
Dirty South members are involved in smuggling and distributing guns from the United States, police said.
London police was one of several forces that helped Hamilton police carry out 17 searches across southern Ontario on Nov. 13. Officers seized 14 guns, 880 grams of cocaine and 1.2 kilograms of fentanyl, police said.
Twenty-four people face charges, police said. Among them are four men and one woman from London, who face a total of 19 counts, including possessing drugs for trafficking, possessing a prohibited firearm and possessing property obtained by crime.
Weapons seized during Project Churchill weren’t registered guns, said acting Det.-Supt. Lee Fulford of the OPP’s organized crime enforcement bureau.
“They are obtained illegally with the intent to be used in criminal offences or trafficked to people who intend to use them in criminal offences,” he said in a statement.
There have been a record 58 shootings this year in Hamilton, compared to nine in London.
Recommended from Editorial
Share this article in your social network
