Sting nets 10-year term for alleged gang leader
Shane Kenneth (Wheels) Maloney, an alleged leader in the West End Gang, was sentenced Thursday to an overall 10-year prison term for trying to buy 25 kilos of cocaine from an undercover agent and for having stored enough firearms and explosives to start a small war.
The 10-year sentence was characterized as light during his hearing at the Montreal courthouse. The joint recommendation on the sentence factors in that Maloney, 39, is paraplegic and uses a wheelchair. His limited mobility caused authorities at the Rivière des Prairies Detention Centre to keep Maloney detained inside an infirmary. This left him isolated for several months, and the Crown acknowledges it affected his mental health.
In 2016, Superior Court Justice James Brunton spent several days hearing a motion in which Maloney complained that the conditions he was experiencing at the detention centre represented cruel and unusual punishment. He also argued he was being discriminated against because of his handicap, caused by a motorcycle accident several years ago. While the motion was heard, staff from the jail described Maloney as a “high security risk,” and explained he was being held in the infirmary to address his medical needs. They also argued that all wheelchair-bound detainees at Rivière des Prairies are held in the health sector because wheelchair parts can be converted into weapons and wheelchairs can be used to conceal contraband.
Superior Court Justice Sophie Bourque, the judge who sentenced Maloney on Thursday, was told that Brunton did not find any fault in how the detention centre jailed Maloney. But Bourque was asked to take into consideration a quote from the decision Brunton made in April 2016: “While (Maloney) appears to be strong mentally, it is not out of the realm of possibility that the combination of his physical disability and his virtual isolation could begin to have a psychological impact.”
Prosecutor Philippe VallièresRoland said Thursday that he was sometimes struck by Maloney’s behaviour while the case was pending.
The sentence recommended on Thursday factored in the difficulties Maloney experienced while detained, Vallières-Roland noted, while adding that, by comparison, one of Maloney’s drug couriers, Kevin Picard Tse, 28, received an overall 11-year prison term last year.
Maloney did not spend all of the last five years detained at Rivière des Prairies. Two of those years were spent inside a maximum-security federal penitentiary as part of a sentence he received, in 2013, for having ordered other people to assault a Quebec police officer who took photographs of Maloney inside a bar in Mexico. A written decision made by the Parole Board of Canada while he was serving that sentence refers to Maloney as “a high-ranking member” of the West End Gang.
Maloney’s physical appearance has changed dramatically since his arrest in 2012 in Operation Loquace, a lengthy investigation into six groups of drug traffickers that resulted in the arrests of more than 130 people, including an alleged Hells Angel. When arrests were made in 2012, Maloney was described by police as one of six leaders in a drug-trafficking consortium who purchased large quantities of cocaine. He has since lost a considerable amount of weight and he often stared blankly during his hearing on Thursday. With time served factored into the sentence, Maloney was left with four years to serve beginning on Thursday.
The charges Maloney pleaded guilty to earlier this year involved two distinct crimes. While police were using a civilian as a double agent who pretended to be offering cocaine to many drug traffickers, Maloney emerged as a buyer interested in 25 kilograms. In September 2012, while he was under investigation for the cocaine deal, the police linked him to a warehouse in Laval where they found a large quantity of dynamite, two pounds of C-4 explosives, 50 detonators, 152 firearms and 216 other prohibited weapons.
“One can only imagine what could have happened if these weapons were used,” VallièresRoland said.
Part of what helped the police link Maloney to the cocaine was his nickname “Wheels” among organized crime circles. When police searched one of his residences, they found several documents, including a birthday card on which friends and associates referred to him as “Wheels.” The nickname helped police link Maloney to many encrypted text messages that were sent between drug traffickers.