THUNDER BAY – The Thunder Bay Police Services are seeing a worrying rise in illegal firearms in the city, since 2018, eight attempted homicides and three homicides were firearm related.
Det.-Insp. John Fennell attributes much of the growing gun related violence to the drug trade, which is moving up to the city mainly from the south.
“The thing that concerns us is exactly that, drug trade is a great deal of money, up in this area now, you can see that there’s a little more completion and now all of a sudden, the firearms and the retaliation is starting because they’re all fighting for that same dollar,” said Fennell,
“This is the problem when there’s competition, and these guys do not care because there’s a great deal of money at stake, and they will do what it takes and unfortunately, our concern is innocent bystanders or our officers responding to these calls are going to be put in positions where they’ll have to use their own firearms, or that they could get hurt.”
According to the 2020 annual report, a total of 39 guns were seized in 2020, 34 were seized in relation to investigations carried out by TBPS Intellligence Unit and five were seized by the uniformed patrol branch, 15 were seized in direct relation to drug activity. To date in 2021, the intelligence unit has seized 24 firearms, with 15 of those seizures being directly tied to the drug trade. To put this trend in perspective, in 2017, no firearms were seized and 2018 saw six seizures.
“Like the inspector said, it revolves around competition, the violence, the intimidation, those are all factors that the drug dealers take advantage of, the addiction rate, they take advantage of that,” said Intelligence Unit Det. Sgt. Dan Irwin.
“Now with more and more individuals coming from southern Ontario, It creates competition, just like running a store, you have more competition, everybody wants their name out front, or their product out front, whether it be fentanyl, crack cocaine, and it’s killing people, it’s hurting people, it’s making people scared.”
According to the 2020 report, TBPS officers seized 7,041 grams of cocaine, 1,640 grams of crack cocaine, and 14,525 grams of fentanyl, with a total of 118 people arrested, 61 not from the Thunder Bay District. In 2021, of the 221 arrested to date in connection with drug-trafficking investigations, 138 resided outside of the district.
For more information or to view the Thunder Bay Police service’s annual report from 2020, visit their website
Update: This story has been updated to include the 2021 numbers.
