Police taking Mafia stories seriously

Local police continue to work with international authorities to try to get to the bottom of an alleged Mafia link between this city and Siderno, Italy.

The connection has been the subject of several recent articles in the National Post, including a new one this week that suggests Thunder Bay is a mob hot spot.

The newspaper has obtained information from police wire taps in Italy that indicate there's a longstanding local branch of the Calabrese Mafia group known as the 'Ndrangheta. The taped conversations involved alleged mob boss Giuseppe Commisso and several unnamed Thunder Bay residents discussing bringing in new members and waking up the dormant Mafia cell in the city.

Thunder Bay Police Service spokesman Chris Adams said their organized crime branch is looking into the allegations.

"We are working with other police and other law enforcement agencies," Adams confirmed Tuesday. "We would do this for anything of this scale and magnitude, especially something that has global reach the way this organization does.

"We would be naive to say that there isn’t (a Mafia presence in this region). There have been different organized crime groups over the years that have certainly been investigated in this city. We are not immune in Thunder Bay, or any other part of the country, from having an interest in organized crime."

He added that police have been successful in tackling other criminal organization such as the Hells Angels in the past, and will look seriously into this alleged Mafia threat.