‘You should be deported yesterday:’ Brampton mayor on non-Canadian residents committing crimes

Peel Police have arrested over a dozen suspects linked to at least 16 violent extortion incidents targeting members of the South Asian business community.Live now to CP24 Steve Ryan for those details.Tell us more, Steve.

Well, some very good police work by Peel Regional Police and their partners, which included the CBSA, the EOPP, the FBI as well, and Surrey BC Police Services with regards to this extortion multi -agent.jurisdictional investigation which saw here in Peel 17 arrests, 106 charges laid and 16 extortion occurrences cleared.Now I'm joined by Mayor Brown.Sir, you've been an advocate for public safety and you've really spoke about supporting Chief Nish and his investigators when it comes to dealing with extortions.What are your thoughts on today?

Well, first of all, I think we see the best of the best in the Peel Police.They run towards danger, run towards harm's way to keep us safe and extortions have been terrorizing our community.Imagine having your family in a home and the house being shot up.The fact that we've seen international criminal syndicates target Canada in a predatory fashion, target particularly the South Asian community across our country has been harrowing.So to see the police have a major breakthrough, 17 arrests and a gang that was responsible for 50 % of the gunshots of these recent extortion attempts is wonderful news.It's a win for public safety today.

command and they've spoke about the support of the leaders here in Peel Region including yourself.What are your thoughts on that supporting the police and how important is that as one of their leaders?

Well they need to have the resources to do their job and so for me it's it's clear -cut.Support the police, make sure they have the tools to compete with organized crime.Organized crime is well -resourced.They're sophisticated.They're using technology that even our police don't have access to.So I think it's a no -brainer.

If you give the police the tools to do their job, they will do everything they can to keep us safe and to protect us.investigation is an example of it.Eight months of aggressive police work.to hold those accountable.And what's interesting about this is, you know, this was a gang of four brothers that was comprised, the people arrested, all non -Canadian citizens, really international criminals who had targeted Canada as a place where they could operate.

Yeah, I listened to the press conference today and you did make it a point to say that.How constraining is that and how do we get around that?

Well, the fact that you hear cases where it takes five years for deportation is unacceptable.If you commit a crime in Canada as a non -Canadian citizen, you should be deported yesterday.I don't want Canada to be a destination where criminal organizations can operate with impunity, and it's happened for too long.So we need to fix this.We have a porous border where you have criminals that can enter.We need to fix this system.

The fact that you can have this occur, you can have families terrorized.Steve, I get calls from the victims, and they'll ask me as a father myself, how would you feel if your house was shot up with your kids inside?You know, victims tell me their kids can't sleep for months.And so I want to shut the door on this.I want to make sure that we do everything we can to make sure criminal organizations can't operate here.

I want to ask you this real quick.Privacy.Talk about the difficulties with police getting search warrants for some of these social media sites.How difficult is that and what are you doing to try to curb that?

It drives me nuts.We need the lawful access legislation passed immediately.Canada, you know, police have their hands tied.Any other country, you can get this data within hours.In Canada, it takes 45 days.Investigations go cold.

We need police to have modern policing tools.

Well said.Thank you for that.So, just to add very quickly what the mayor was talking about there, the police had to seek the assistance of the FBI to get search warrants to find out where calls were being made here in this country.It's kind of asked backwards, if you will, and the mayor is out front of this with many of the police chiefs trying to get that legislation changed.to make it easier for the police to present a criminal code search warrant to the judge here in this country, in this province, and have them be able to sign that authorization and have the police seek that information on a reasonable grounds, of course, that they are asking for so it'll help them with these investigations.Send it back to you.

Thank you so much for this.