NOVA SCOTIA’S DARK LINK TO KILLINGS IN CALGARY.
ACCUSED CHILD KILLER LINKED TO N. S. GANG CENTRE
One of t he first things you notice when you enter this c o mmunity northeast of Halifax is a large billboard that tells you you’re in “Canada’s Largest Black Community.” It’s followed by a slogan: “We’ve Come This Far by Faith!”
The second thing you notice is that just about every driver here acknowledges oncoming drivers — even strangers — with a wave of the hand.
It’s not the welcome you expect in a place that has repeatedly been described as the birthplace of North Preston’s Finest, a violent gang that specializes in trafficking young women and girls as young as 14 in the sex trade.
The community came under scrutiny last month when Edward Delton Downey, the prime suspect in the slayings of Calgary mother Sara Baillie and her fiveyear- old daughter, Taliyah Marsman, was linked in several media reports to North Preston’s Finest.
Talk to residents, even local police, and they insist the claims about a criminal gang originating in North Preston are exaggerated, misleading or manufactured by outsiders who don’t know their community.
They point to North Preston’s more famous sons and daughters: Olympic boxer Custio Clayton, basketball s t ar Lindell Wigginton, young l awyer Shanisha Grant and singer/songwriter Reeny Smith.
But police outside the province, gang experts, former prostitutes and court records paint a picture of a community that has churned out generations of ruthless pimps who are spread across the country and unafraid to use brute force to punish women in their “stable” if they step out of line.
North Preston is a “place of Shakespearean irony,” wrote UBC law professor Benjamin Perrin in his 2010 book Invisible Chains documenting Canada’s underground world of human trafficking.
Once a refuge for freed American slaves, it has become a “breeding ground for trafficking in guns, drugs, women and girls,” and North Preston’s Finest is “one of the most notorious street gangs to profit from domestic sex trafficking in the country.”
Within the industry, it’s no secret that pimps from North Preston — sometimes known as “Scotian pimps” — are among the biggest, most inter-connected players, says Natasha Falle, who describes herself as a sex- trafficking survivor and is the founder of Sextrade 101, a Torontobased coalition that provides counselling and support to women seeking to leave the sex trade. Those who say otherwise? “They’re in denial.”
‘ MEAL TICKET’
Surrounded by lakes and trees, this rural community of roughly 1,400 mostly black residents — settled in t he 1700s and 1800s by slaves fleeing colonial United States — boasts a school, a church, a recreation centre and a volunteer firehouse, but lacks other amenities such as a grocery store, park or library.
Filled with meandering, dead- end streets named after prominent families — Downey, Beals, Cain, Simmonds — there are no sidewalks here. And unemployment among African Nova Scotian communities like this one is higher than in the general population.
For some young people, Falle says, sex trafficking is their “meal ticket out of Preston.”
Mark Totten, a criminal justice professor at Toronto’s Humber College, says North Preston’s Finest is not as organized as the Hells Angels or Mafia, but its members are not bottom- rung street thugs, either. They are men who are good at two things: evading police and coercing girls into the sex trade.
The typical profile of a North Preston pimp leans toward the “Gorilla pimp” — someone prone to get what he wants through violence and threats — as opposed to the more laid-back boyfriendpimp, sometimes known as the “Romeo pimp,” Falle says.
Some pimps will force women they’ve recruited to relocate to another city, away from friends and family, to maintain control over them. They are put to work as online escorts, as dancers in strip clubs and masseurs in massage parlours.
It is not uncommon for North Preston pimps to have several women in their stables. The woman he spends the most time with is known as the “main” or “bottom bitch,” while the others are known as “wifeys.” Sometimes these women will be used to help recruit others.
“They tell girls they are their family now, and that no one else will protect and care for them, like they will,” Falle says. “Most girls come from dysfunctional homes.”
The name “North Preston’s Finest” ( NFP) first surfaced in media stories around 2007. But concerns about a national pimping ring originating from North Preston stretch back to the early 1990s.
“Angela” says she was sweet- talked into working the streets for a North Preston pimp in the mid-1990s at a Toronto bar when she was just 18.
“He was a charmer, he was nice, he knew what to say,” says the now 39- year- old whose identity the National Post agreed to shield.
He bought a house in Toronto and they moved in together.
To neighbours, they were just a regular couple, but behind the scenes it was anything but normal. Her pimp had other women in his stable and other homes.
Women working for NPF have to obey strict rules, including no drinking or drugs prior to a meet up with a john and no talking with other pimps.
Sometimes, when business was slow, Angela says she would be given a quota and ordered to make at least $ 1,000 before the night was over.
Failing to follow the rules would result in punishment. Angela says when she skipped work one night to go clubbing with her friends, she was beaten. On another occasion, she was choked until she passed out.
Totten has heard stories of women’s hair being chopped off and hot curling irons being inserted in their vaginas. Falle says women have been whipped with heated coat hangers or been stripped naked and forced to drink from toilet water while wearing a dog collar.
Angela, who stayed with her pimp for several years, says she was caught up in the “financial freedom” — her pimp gave her enough money to go shopping and eat out “to my heart’s content.”
He f l ashed his wealth around to draw other young men into the lifestyle, she says, once buying a new vehicle and driving it back to North Preston to show family.
“They see all their money. They see their uncles have hot, beautiful women.”
Numbers are difficult to pin down but Falle estimates as many as 10 families in North Preston have men working as pimps across Canada. They are supported by siblings, cousins, even their mothers and in return they send some of their earnings back home.
Perrin’s book notes that police crackdowns over the years have pushed NPF pimps farther and farther west.
Getting convictions for human trafficking has not been easy. This week, an Ontario Justice spokeswoman acknowledged that human t rafficking cases “present unique challenges” to prosecutors, which is why a provincial prosecution team is being created with an aim to help police build better cases and respond to “evolving strategies” used by traffickers.
Still, girls are often too scared to come forward and testify, Angela says. Scared of what? “Dying.”
PAROLED
Downey, 46, who is facing two counts of first- degree murder in the deaths of Baillie and her daughter, was not born in North Preston, but 15 kilometres down the road, in Dartmouth. However, residents here confirm he has close family ties in North Preston.
He has four children from previous relationships and once had a 19- year- old girlfriend work as a prostitute, according to parole documents.
His criminal record includes various property offences, mischief, obstructing a peace officer and living off the avails of prostitution.
In 2008, he began servi ng a four- year sentence in Alberta f or drug and weapons offences. During a traffic stop, police found a knife under t he f l oor mat, four cellphones, more than $ 2,500 cash and cocaine with a street value of $ 280,000, parole records state. A search of his home revealed drug paraphernalia and a handgun.
Two years later, he was granted full parole after officials determined he had achieved “credibility and stability” while on day parole. Officials said he had strong support from the community, including from his commonlaw wife, had found full-time work as a truck driver, and made “significant progress” in managing risk factors.
It’s not clear when he met Sara Baillie, but friends have said that she was close to Downey’s girlfriend.
Baillie, 34, was working full-time at a Calgary airport restaurant making $19,000 in wages, but also had a second job as an escort, sources have told the National Post.
On July 11, when Baillie didn’t show up for work, colleagues started calling and texting her. One co- worker, who asked not to be named, says a return text indicated Baillie wasn’t feeling well but that she was on her way. Suspicious, the co- worker asked a friend to call Baillie’s relatives, and she met them outside Baillie’s Panorama Hills basement apartment.
Inside, they saw no signs of trouble, except that Baillie’s purse and other personal items were still there, the co- worker said. They called police.
Baillie’s body was discovered later that evening inside a closet, sources say.
Taliyah’s body was found a few days later in a field east of the city.
Though police have not disclosed a motive, friends of Baillie have said the single mother was trying to leave Downey, according to Falle, who once worked in the Calgary sex industry and was acquainted with Downey. CTV News reported that police believe Baillie may have been killed over a “debt.”
Falle says it is not uncommon for sex- trade workers looking to get out to have to pay their pimps $ 5,000 to $15,000 exit fees.
Gavin Wolch, Downey’s lawyer, says he is unable to comment because evidence has not been disclosed to him yet.
Earlier media reports had suggested a link between Taliyah’s father, Colin Marsman, and North Preston’s Finest. But Marsman’s associates say he grew up near Uniacke Square in Halifax’s north end.
In a brief text message, Marsman said it was unfair to be “called part of a gang because you’re black and from Nova Scotia.
“This has not been easy — not cool at all.”
(PIMPS) TELL GIRLS THEY ARE THEIR FAMILY NOW, AND THAT NO ONE ELSE WILL PROTECT AND CARE FOR THEM, LIKE THEY WILL. MOST GIRLS COME FROM DYSFUNCTIONAL HOMES. — NATASHA FALLE, A SEX-TRAFFICKING SURVIVOR AND FOUNDER OF SEXTRADE 101