THUNDER BAY -- Local police officers are putting out-of-town drug dealers on notice, following last week's largest crack seizure in Thunder Bay history.
Four of the five people charged with powder and crack cocaine in Thursday's warrant executions were from Southern Ontario. Drug dealers traveling north to feed the lucrative cocaine and opioid markets constitute a trend Thunder Bay Police Service Staff Sgt. Ryan Gibson has seen an increase over the last 18 months.
"We want them to know we're out there," he said.
"If they're going to come here, we're going to target them. We're going to disrupt their activity, as seen this past weekend. We're going to take away their drugs and their profit, which is really what hurts them in the long run."
While Gibson insisted Thunder Bay is a safe city, he pointed to a body of evidence suggesting the drug trade is bringing violence to the city, including the seizure of firearms in a number of recent arrests as well as reported and unreported crimes.
"The goal is always to disrupt that activity and also to strongly discourage individuals who want to bring a high level of violence along with their negative activities," he said.
"We're going to focus on you. If you want to come here and bring handguns to our city, we're going to know about that and we're going to work on you, whatever it takes -- and we're going to put you in jail."
That severe violence is the tip of the iceberg, Gibson said, as addicts are forced into situations that increase the city's violent and property crime incidents.
The fallout of particularly opioid use is growing so quickly that residential drug treatment programs are expanding and a February study found the need for two local safe injection sites.
Gibson said the drug trade is "poisoning the city," for profit.
"It's strictly financially-driven. They come from different areas of the province. They're branching out. There's a lot of money to be made, unfortunately, in the Northwest. You just have to look at the number of methadone clinics in our city to know there's a real opioid crisis within the Northwest. These individuals prey on people like that. They're here to make a buck."
