Community hub
Community hub
Recent from talks
Knowledge base stats:
Talk channels stats:
Members stats:
North Preston's Finest
North Preston's Finest, also known as NPF, the Scotians, or the North Preston gang, is a gang of pimps based in North Preston, a satellite of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada.
The town of North Preston has a population of 3,700, and is located just northeast of Metropolitan Halifax. Benjamin Perrin, a University of British Columbia faculty member who is involved with human trafficking research and activism, wrote extensively about NPF in his 2010 book Invisible Chains, calling North Preston "a place of Shakespearean irony" because of the town's conversion from a sanctuary for Black Loyalists (former American slaves) in the 1780s into the hub of a major gang that deals in modern-day slavery and drug and arms trafficking. There are approximately ten gangs in the Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM), of which NPF is the most prominent. Most of the gang members are Black Canadians from North Preston. In 1996, Phonse Jessome, an investigative journalist, wrote the book Somebody's Daughter about a gang he called the "Toronto/Halifax pimping ring", a gang that Perrin's Invisible Chains identifies with NPF. Despite Jessome's investigation into this gang in the early 1990s, NPF's power has consistently increased since then.
In 2007, the gang was believed to be composed of approximately 50 men. An estimate in 2009 by Michael Chettleburgh, an expert on street gangs who works as a consultant on issues of criminal justice, put NPF's membership between 60 and 80. He also asserts that the age of NPF members mostly ranges between 18 and 28. NPF members have criminal tattoos to signal their membership in the gang, with the neck being the standard location for these tattoos. According to Chettleburgh, NPF first formed in the mid-to-late 1980s. In 1993, Morris Glasgow was sentenced to jail for seven years once he was identified as the crime boss of a nationwide pimping ring, possibly NPF. Peel Regional Police (PRP) vice detective Randy Cowan stated in 2007 that NPF is a family-based gang, with members of the 2000s being the relatives of 1990s members. A warning has been issued to police officers to be extremely careful when encountering NPF members because of the gang's "armed and dangerous" status. Both the Nova Scotia Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Halifax Regional Police monitor the gang. Like Independent Soldiers, Indian Posse, United Nations, Bo-Gars, Native Syndicate, and Crazy Dragons, NPF has an interprovincial presence. Chettleburgh, the author of Young Thugs: Inside the Dangerous World of Canadian Street Gangs, stated in 2009 that NPF's activities west of Nova Scotia only began approximately ten years earlier, but that the gang's presence had subsequently become well-established in the area of Ontario stretching between Niagara Falls and the Regional Municipality of Peel. The commencement of NPF's activities in southwestern Ontario coincided with their expansion into Quebec. In 2008, Chettleburgh stated that there were approximately 12 confirmed NPF members in Peel. According to Chettleburgh, outlaw motorcycle gangs in the Regional Municipality of Niagara frequently collaborate with NPF. NPF used to have a presence in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) as well, although Chettleburgh has stated that NPF is no longer very active there. In 2010, PRP Constable Mike Viozzi claimed that NPF had an even stronger presence in Montreal than in Ontario. In Invisible Chains, Perrin argues that NPF has also become active in Western Canada.
Commercial sexual exploitation and prostitution are NPF's primary activities. NPF is one of the most well-known sex trafficking gangs in Canada, and their sex trafficking activities stretch back at least as far as the 1990s. NPF is one of the few HRM-based gangs that has a presence further west in Canada, and most of these gangs' activities outside the HRM relate to sex trafficking. Perrin argues in Invisible Chains that NPF's relationship with motorcycle gangs is one of competition for control of domestic sex trafficking. Before NPF's expansion into Quebec and southwestern Ontario, motorcycle gangs had controlled sex trafficking in both provinces, but the police had organized major operations to combat these motorcycle gangs, leaving NPF to largely take control of the regional sex industry.
The PRP is Canada's leading police force in the investigation of human trafficking. In 1995, this police force took down another gang that was similar to NPF in its trafficking of young Nova Scotian women into Ontario; in that case, the PRP arrested seven people and issued more than 60 charges. The PRP has investigated the NPF and claims that the gang engages in the trafficking of children, specifically girls. According to the PRP, NPF members live off the earnings of those they procure into prostitution. Chettleburgh has asserted that NPF also controls many girls who work for strip clubs and escort agencies.
NPF members use only a little physical manipulation and a lot of psychological manipulation in controlling the girls and young women they sexually exploit; in this way, NPF's tactics are both effective and comparable to those of many other sex trafficking gangs. Gang members groom the girls, often by approaching them as boyfriends. The PRP suggests that men in the gang often groom three or four girls at the same time without the girls finding out about each other. After grooming a girl in Halifax, her NPF boyfriend has her travel to Niagara-on-the-Lake by way of Peel, Ontario to live in a motel. He then convinces her to work at a strip club in order to help finance the purchase of a condominium in which the two of them might then live. The condominium is a ruse, however. At the strip club, the girl is expected to make $1,000 each night and is not allowed to leave the club until she has done so. This requirement pressures many of the girls into prostitution in the clubs themselves. While performing arrests in these clubs, police officers have seen girls text their pimps in order to beg for permission to leave the club, and the pimps respond stating the requirement that each girl must make $1,000 every night. The girls are also pressured into prostitution by way of violence, intimidation, or threats. For example, the man might threaten to kill the girl's parents. In this way, the gang forces girls into prostitution and into stripping. When a girl tries to get out of prostitution, her pimp demands a fee before she can leave; this fee can be as high as $5,000. One young woman who told the police about how she had been trafficked was subsequently threatened by several of her traffickers, and she therefore retracted her statement, claiming that the police had manipulated her into a false accusation. In response, one police officer recommended that future victims who make statements to the police should be kept away from their pimps and their pimps' associates; this officer stated that sex trafficking victims are used to being under hourly surveillance by their traffickers, and that therefore, once they have made a statement to the police, they need to have constant human contact simply in order to replace the constant contact they previously had with their traffickers.
In late June 2007, a 19-year-old woman was abducted and sexually assaulted. She was from Dartmouth, and said that Tyson Cain, who the PRP identified as being involved with NPF, befriended her and then forced her into prostitution and stripping. She further claimed that she had been gang raped in an apartment in Mississauga's City Centre that month. The head of the PRP Special Victims Unit, Detective-Sergeant Greg Knapton, suggested that the gang rape was intended to instill enough fear in the woman to manipulate her into the sex industry. On June 27, Cain was arrested; a .22 caliber revolver was found on his person and he was charged with uttering threats, human trafficking, material benefit from prostitution, and gun possession. On July 10, Thomas Junior Downey was arrested in connection with the abduction and assault, as were Spencer Sinclair Thompson and Ernest Downey, Thomas Downey's cousin, on July 27. Anthony Christopher Roberts was also wanted in connection with the crime, and he walked into a police station with his lawyer to turn himself in on the morning of July 31. Both Downeys, Roberts, and Thompson were all charged by the PRP with human trafficking, gang sexual assault, kidnapping, forcible confinement, withholding or destroying documents, and assault. The police claimed that these four men were all either members or affiliates of NPF. Both Ernest Downey and Thompson previously lived in Nova Scotia. Cain went under house arrest in August.
On August 2, Madame Justice Karen Jensen granted Roberts bail in Brampton and allowed him to return to Nova Scotia to go under house arrest in the house where his mother and girlfriend lived. This allowance was unusual in comparison to other similar cases. Roberts' house arrest stipulations required him to stay in the house at all times except when absence was for medical, school, or work purposes; he was also prohibited from obtaining a firearms license. The morning after Roberts' bail hearing, Jensen denied Thomas Downey bail. The evidence presented at both of these bail hearings was kept under a publication ban until the corresponding trials, as was Jensen's reasoning for her differing bail decisions. Thompson's and Ernest Downey's bail hearings were initially scheduled for August 10, but they were postponed to August 13, only to be postponed again because of procedural matters. Ernest Downey's bail was eventually denied, as was Thompson's at a hearing on August 31. On November 28, Cain pleaded guilty to his charge of gun possession. According to the Toronto Sun, it was expected at the time that his other charges would be withdrawn on his January 5 court date the following year. Thomas Downey, Roberts, and Thompson were to go on trial in May 2009, but Roberts' charges were withdrawn before the trial took place. On March 15, 2010, Thomas Downey and Thompson were convicted by jury of aggravated assault, sexual assault, gang sexual assault, kidnapping, and other violent offences. Justice Terry O'Connor sentenced both Thomas Downey and Thompson to 15 years of jail time and deducted 5 years from this sentence in order to account for remand. Both Thomas Downey and Thompson were ordered to submit DNA samples to Canada's DNA registry and were prohibited from owning or handling firearms.
Hub AI
North Preston's Finest AI simulator
(@North Preston's Finest_simulator)
North Preston's Finest
North Preston's Finest, also known as NPF, the Scotians, or the North Preston gang, is a gang of pimps based in North Preston, a satellite of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada.
The town of North Preston has a population of 3,700, and is located just northeast of Metropolitan Halifax. Benjamin Perrin, a University of British Columbia faculty member who is involved with human trafficking research and activism, wrote extensively about NPF in his 2010 book Invisible Chains, calling North Preston "a place of Shakespearean irony" because of the town's conversion from a sanctuary for Black Loyalists (former American slaves) in the 1780s into the hub of a major gang that deals in modern-day slavery and drug and arms trafficking. There are approximately ten gangs in the Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM), of which NPF is the most prominent. Most of the gang members are Black Canadians from North Preston. In 1996, Phonse Jessome, an investigative journalist, wrote the book Somebody's Daughter about a gang he called the "Toronto/Halifax pimping ring", a gang that Perrin's Invisible Chains identifies with NPF. Despite Jessome's investigation into this gang in the early 1990s, NPF's power has consistently increased since then.
In 2007, the gang was believed to be composed of approximately 50 men. An estimate in 2009 by Michael Chettleburgh, an expert on street gangs who works as a consultant on issues of criminal justice, put NPF's membership between 60 and 80. He also asserts that the age of NPF members mostly ranges between 18 and 28. NPF members have criminal tattoos to signal their membership in the gang, with the neck being the standard location for these tattoos. According to Chettleburgh, NPF first formed in the mid-to-late 1980s. In 1993, Morris Glasgow was sentenced to jail for seven years once he was identified as the crime boss of a nationwide pimping ring, possibly NPF. Peel Regional Police (PRP) vice detective Randy Cowan stated in 2007 that NPF is a family-based gang, with members of the 2000s being the relatives of 1990s members. A warning has been issued to police officers to be extremely careful when encountering NPF members because of the gang's "armed and dangerous" status. Both the Nova Scotia Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Halifax Regional Police monitor the gang. Like Independent Soldiers, Indian Posse, United Nations, Bo-Gars, Native Syndicate, and Crazy Dragons, NPF has an interprovincial presence. Chettleburgh, the author of Young Thugs: Inside the Dangerous World of Canadian Street Gangs, stated in 2009 that NPF's activities west of Nova Scotia only began approximately ten years earlier, but that the gang's presence had subsequently become well-established in the area of Ontario stretching between Niagara Falls and the Regional Municipality of Peel. The commencement of NPF's activities in southwestern Ontario coincided with their expansion into Quebec. In 2008, Chettleburgh stated that there were approximately 12 confirmed NPF members in Peel. According to Chettleburgh, outlaw motorcycle gangs in the Regional Municipality of Niagara frequently collaborate with NPF. NPF used to have a presence in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) as well, although Chettleburgh has stated that NPF is no longer very active there. In 2010, PRP Constable Mike Viozzi claimed that NPF had an even stronger presence in Montreal than in Ontario. In Invisible Chains, Perrin argues that NPF has also become active in Western Canada.
Commercial sexual exploitation and prostitution are NPF's primary activities. NPF is one of the most well-known sex trafficking gangs in Canada, and their sex trafficking activities stretch back at least as far as the 1990s. NPF is one of the few HRM-based gangs that has a presence further west in Canada, and most of these gangs' activities outside the HRM relate to sex trafficking. Perrin argues in Invisible Chains that NPF's relationship with motorcycle gangs is one of competition for control of domestic sex trafficking. Before NPF's expansion into Quebec and southwestern Ontario, motorcycle gangs had controlled sex trafficking in both provinces, but the police had organized major operations to combat these motorcycle gangs, leaving NPF to largely take control of the regional sex industry.
The PRP is Canada's leading police force in the investigation of human trafficking. In 1995, this police force took down another gang that was similar to NPF in its trafficking of young Nova Scotian women into Ontario; in that case, the PRP arrested seven people and issued more than 60 charges. The PRP has investigated the NPF and claims that the gang engages in the trafficking of children, specifically girls. According to the PRP, NPF members live off the earnings of those they procure into prostitution. Chettleburgh has asserted that NPF also controls many girls who work for strip clubs and escort agencies.
NPF members use only a little physical manipulation and a lot of psychological manipulation in controlling the girls and young women they sexually exploit; in this way, NPF's tactics are both effective and comparable to those of many other sex trafficking gangs. Gang members groom the girls, often by approaching them as boyfriends. The PRP suggests that men in the gang often groom three or four girls at the same time without the girls finding out about each other. After grooming a girl in Halifax, her NPF boyfriend has her travel to Niagara-on-the-Lake by way of Peel, Ontario to live in a motel. He then convinces her to work at a strip club in order to help finance the purchase of a condominium in which the two of them might then live. The condominium is a ruse, however. At the strip club, the girl is expected to make $1,000 each night and is not allowed to leave the club until she has done so. This requirement pressures many of the girls into prostitution in the clubs themselves. While performing arrests in these clubs, police officers have seen girls text their pimps in order to beg for permission to leave the club, and the pimps respond stating the requirement that each girl must make $1,000 every night. The girls are also pressured into prostitution by way of violence, intimidation, or threats. For example, the man might threaten to kill the girl's parents. In this way, the gang forces girls into prostitution and into stripping. When a girl tries to get out of prostitution, her pimp demands a fee before she can leave; this fee can be as high as $5,000. One young woman who told the police about how she had been trafficked was subsequently threatened by several of her traffickers, and she therefore retracted her statement, claiming that the police had manipulated her into a false accusation. In response, one police officer recommended that future victims who make statements to the police should be kept away from their pimps and their pimps' associates; this officer stated that sex trafficking victims are used to being under hourly surveillance by their traffickers, and that therefore, once they have made a statement to the police, they need to have constant human contact simply in order to replace the constant contact they previously had with their traffickers.
In late June 2007, a 19-year-old woman was abducted and sexually assaulted. She was from Dartmouth, and said that Tyson Cain, who the PRP identified as being involved with NPF, befriended her and then forced her into prostitution and stripping. She further claimed that she had been gang raped in an apartment in Mississauga's City Centre that month. The head of the PRP Special Victims Unit, Detective-Sergeant Greg Knapton, suggested that the gang rape was intended to instill enough fear in the woman to manipulate her into the sex industry. On June 27, Cain was arrested; a .22 caliber revolver was found on his person and he was charged with uttering threats, human trafficking, material benefit from prostitution, and gun possession. On July 10, Thomas Junior Downey was arrested in connection with the abduction and assault, as were Spencer Sinclair Thompson and Ernest Downey, Thomas Downey's cousin, on July 27. Anthony Christopher Roberts was also wanted in connection with the crime, and he walked into a police station with his lawyer to turn himself in on the morning of July 31. Both Downeys, Roberts, and Thompson were all charged by the PRP with human trafficking, gang sexual assault, kidnapping, forcible confinement, withholding or destroying documents, and assault. The police claimed that these four men were all either members or affiliates of NPF. Both Ernest Downey and Thompson previously lived in Nova Scotia. Cain went under house arrest in August.
On August 2, Madame Justice Karen Jensen granted Roberts bail in Brampton and allowed him to return to Nova Scotia to go under house arrest in the house where his mother and girlfriend lived. This allowance was unusual in comparison to other similar cases. Roberts' house arrest stipulations required him to stay in the house at all times except when absence was for medical, school, or work purposes; he was also prohibited from obtaining a firearms license. The morning after Roberts' bail hearing, Jensen denied Thomas Downey bail. The evidence presented at both of these bail hearings was kept under a publication ban until the corresponding trials, as was Jensen's reasoning for her differing bail decisions. Thompson's and Ernest Downey's bail hearings were initially scheduled for August 10, but they were postponed to August 13, only to be postponed again because of procedural matters. Ernest Downey's bail was eventually denied, as was Thompson's at a hearing on August 31. On November 28, Cain pleaded guilty to his charge of gun possession. According to the Toronto Sun, it was expected at the time that his other charges would be withdrawn on his January 5 court date the following year. Thomas Downey, Roberts, and Thompson were to go on trial in May 2009, but Roberts' charges were withdrawn before the trial took place. On March 15, 2010, Thomas Downey and Thompson were convicted by jury of aggravated assault, sexual assault, gang sexual assault, kidnapping, and other violent offences. Justice Terry O'Connor sentenced both Thomas Downey and Thompson to 15 years of jail time and deducted 5 years from this sentence in order to account for remand. Both Thomas Downey and Thompson were ordered to submit DNA samples to Canada's DNA registry and were prohibited from owning or handling firearms.