THE THIN WHITE LINE: the history of a future avian influenza pandemic

Chapter 3: Pandemic

Interview with Constable First Class John Cooper, Toronto Police Service

TORONTO, ONTARIO

[Constable First Class John Cooper has served in the Street Crimes Unit of the 56 division of the Toronto Police Service since 2007. Like many cities, Toronto experienced a severe crime wave during the Pandemic——looting, break-ins, muggings, robberies, domestic abuse, assaults, shootings. The Street Crimes Unit specializes in gang activity. He is currently on leave due to “critical incident stress.” I meet him at his home.]

    The foot soldiers were out wasting each other over the generals’ dying crack trade. With the drought, hardly anybody was carrying and life was seriously sucking for the bingers. You couldn’t score. Then during the Pandemic you had zoomers dropping zulu all over the street. The gangs were trying to run an honest business for the most part but demand exceeded supply, and the black market didn’t mind that at all; they came in and burned the garbage heads with gank. The black market’s specialty was perp, which is fake crack made from candle wax and baking soda. The gangs didn’t know who was doing what, only that foreigners were stepping in their territory and dealing. And that started the war between the gangs.
    That’s how a typical member of one of the larger organized street gangs was likely to describe the situation on Toronto’s streets last November. The Pandemic disrupted the drug trade and made hard drugs, particularly the imports, increasingly scarce over time. The scarcity made the addicts desperate; some of them resorted to violent crime to get their next fix. The black market stepped in and soon you had hundreds of individuals selling fake drugs or substitutes they could make locally when they had the raw materials. The gangs responded violently when they caught people doing this, and fought each over the dying drug trade, and then some of their generals had a bright idea: They took over the black market, organized it, made it efficient.
    Before the Pandemic, more than 80 street gangs and 2,000 gang members were operating in the City, with names like The Latin Locos, the L.A. Boys and the Parkside Crips. We closely watched 25 of the larger crews. Many of the gangs are ethnic and interested mostly in defending their turf; gang members often come from lower-income neighborhoods——such as the Regent Park housing project and the Parkdale housing project—and join for respect, security and belonging. The larger, entrepreneurial gangs ran the drug trade, dividing the City up into markets. The generals, or the heads of the gangs, made all the money; the foot soldiers made about three dollars an hour dealing until they usually got shot and killed in some pointless territorial dispute.

Firefighters in Saskatoon work to put out a fire in a bed-and-breakfast being used as a fever clinic. First responder services such as police and firefighters faced increased pressure due to a spike in fires and crime——including a thriving black market for essentials and luxuries——with total losses due to the flu of about 25 percent.(56)

    As the drug trade got disrupted, the bigger gangs shifted to the black market, where you had criminals dealing in stolen goods that had gotten scarce because of the Pandemic, and that people wanted. The gangs took over this market, especially in poorer neighborhoods. They sold everything——winter coats, liquor, cigarettes, diapers, toilet paper, antivirals, aspirin, handguns, candy bars——and under-priced the stores. They even had their own delivery guys: You would walk up to a dealer, tell him what you wanted, and then a delivery guy would bring it out to you almost anywhere you wanted. The black market was one of the country’s biggest problems during the Pandemic, yielding huge profits for the street gangs while undermining tax revenues and public confidence in government.
    As for me, I just wanted to put the gangs out of business.
    One advantage we had is that the market had gotten shaken up and there were new buyers and sellers, so it was easier for an undercover cop to pose as either. After an Army truck carrying antivirals got taken out, the soldiers killed, we started buying Tamiflu and seeing where the sales led us. Usually, with a drug operation, you try to buy larger and larger quantities over time until your dealer can’t front you the money anymore, so you get to start buying from the next guy up the ladder. This way, you work your way up until you get to the top guy and can make a real arrest.     After all, you want the generals, not the foot soldiers. But this didn’t work during the Pandemic. The gangs only dealt in small quantities; if you wanted to buy a lot of product, they thought you were trying to become a seller yourself and saw you as competition. One of our guys posed as a doctor at a fever clinic, for example, and was trying to buy large quantities of antivirals; the gangs wouldn’t sell anything larger than a single bottle to him. Another idea is to nab some foot soldiers and threaten them with jail time unless they become informers, but the criminal penalties for selling on the black market are much lighter than dealing drugs.
    In the end, we decided to search for the stolen goods, guessing that they were in or close to the City, and unless they were hidden in multiple houses, then they might be in a warehouse. We made a bunch of purchases of antivirals and by the response times we made guesses about how far away the distribution point might be. We conducted surveillance on a rotating list of abandoned warehouses, and eventually hit pay dirt.     We could only get a dozen officers for the operation, but it was considered sufficient; we believed there were six gang members inside. Nine officers would go in the front; me and two other officers would snag any who came out the back exit.
    That night we pulled up, tires screeching, and got behind our cars, while Team A assaulted from the front. We were outfitted with bullet-proof vests, Glock pistols and Remington shotguns. I had my shotgun aimed, over the roof of the car, at the exit.
    We heard a muffled roar inside the warehouse, and looked at each other. What the hell was going on in there?
    The radio squealed: Officer down! Officer down!
    In the background, a major firefight was in progress.
    Team A had burst in, surprised the suspects and got two of them down on the ground, but the remaining gang members opened up on them with C7A1 combat rifles, the same as the Army uses, with laser pointers and night vision scopes. Most gang bangers, see, usually the most they’re carrying is a .40 or .45 caliber handgun, maybe a 9mm. Somehow they had gotten Army issue firepower. The gang bangers couldn’t shoot for shit, and Team A took cover among the boxes, but that didn’t matter when the enemy outgunned you with automatic rifles firing about 900 rounds per minute, the bullets coming at you at about 3,000 feet per second shredding your only cover.
    We called in for backup from the ETF [Emergency Task Force, the tactical unit of the Toronto Police Service specializing in high-risk situations] and hunkered down while Team A continued to exchange fire as they retreated. I wanted to go in to back them up, but was ordered to hold steady. This was obviously a job for ETF, I was told. They have tear gas, sniper rifles, MP5A3 submachine guns.
    Meanwhile, Team A pulled out.
    We settled down to wait, but we didn’t wait long. The back exit doors burst open and four teenage kids came running out, skidding to a halt at our order to freeze and drop their weapons. Instantly, they fired their automatic rifles at us at close range, and once they started firing, we opened up on them.
    Bullets stitched hundreds of holes in the cars, blew out the tires, sprayed glass that sliced up my arms. The red laser pointers danced around, sparkling in my eyes as they swept over my face. Ricochets caught me in the vest and hurt like hell but didn’t penetrate. I emptied my shotgun, fired my Glock. Then the shooting stopped. The smoke obscured everything. My ears rang. As the smoke cleared, I could see that it was over. The entire incident had felt like 10 minutes, but had taken seconds.
    All of the gang members were lying on the ground, dead or screaming. So was the rest of my team. I was the only one alive and standing, leaning against the smoking metal ruin that was my car, my face and arms bleeding and starting to hurt like hell. I don’t remember what happened after that, but Team A found me administering first aid to my partners lying on the broken glass.
    The Service gave me a medal for this.
    We took down a major black market operation, arrested six gang members, and secured $1 million in stolen merchandise, not to mention a lot of medical supplies, including the antivirals from the Army truck that got knocked over, which at that point were virtually priceless. The operation was a success. It was in all the papers.
    We lost a good man that day, however——Phil Reed. Four other officers were seriously wounded and ended up in the hospital. They all made it, thank God. And all I can do is play it over and over in my mind and each time try to figure out how I could have done my job better——maybe just better enough that Phil could be alive and with his family today.
    There would be many more operations, and in future assaults, the ETF or the Army always went in with us as the gangs became increasingly violent and better armed. We took down a few big gangs, but overall, honestly, we did little to put them out of business. Flu or no flu, the generals could always recruit more soldiers among the poor kids in the projects, while our ranks thinned over time.
    For everybody, those months were an epidemic. For some of us, it was a war. A war, with no real winners or losers, that we’re still living with.