Police sting leads to arrests, seizure of guns and drugs
Haul estimated to be worth millions
Four men have been arrested and millions of dollars worth of fentanyl and other opioids are off the street after a five-month Vancouver police sting.
Project Tariff was launched in March, 2017, after an incident in south Vancouver where a man fired a number of shots outside a home while police were present.
During the investigation, police executed search warrants in Richmond, Vancouver and Surrey, confiscating eight prohibited weapons, including semi-automatic rifles and a sawedoff shotgun.
Police also seized a large stash of drugs, including 27 grams of heroin, fentanyl and carfentanil, a kilogram of a substance that tested positive for heroin and methylfentanyl, and a kilogram of fentanyl.
“It’s a large-scale seizure as far as fentanyl goes,” said Vancouver Police Supt. Mike Porteous at a news conference Wednesday.
The street value of the drugs is difficult to quantify, but a typical point of heroin, about 1/10th of a gram, sells for $20, Porteous said.
Fentanyl users would typically use less than half of a milligram, or one-thousandth of a gram.
“There’s so many zeros here ... I’m talking in the millions,” said Porteous, referring to the value of the haul.
Simon Fraser University criminologist Rob Gordon said a kilogram of fentanyl is a sizable bust. The impact of taking it off the drug market would depend on where it is going.
“If it was destined only for local consumption that would be quite a hit,” he said.
Police said the four men arrested were part of the Heer/Dhillon/Samra crime group, which police believe is in conflict with other gangs involved in the drug-trafficking trade in Metro Vancouver.
Jagraj Mushki Nijjar, 23, and Jaskaran Singh Heer, 22, both of Vancouver, were charged in March with a slew of weapons-related charges.
On Aug. 10, two more people were charged: Harjot Singh Samra, 21, of Vancouver, with firearms trafficking and drug trafficking; and Gary Gurpreet Dillon, 25, of Richmond, with drug trafficking and possession of the proceeds of crime.
Investigators are working with other agencies to see if any of the seized weapons are related to shootings in the region, Porteous said.
As the number of opioid-related overdose deaths continue to climb in B.C. — Vancouver is on pace for more than 400 deaths in 2017 — police say fentanyl seizures are becoming more common-place.
Jordan Westfall, of the Canadian Association of People Who Use Drugs, a Vancouver-based organization that advocates for drug users, is skeptical of the long-term impact of drug busts.
“We can make as many drug-trafficking busts as possible. It’s going to pop up more, like whack-a-mole where we hit it here, it’ll pop up somewhere else, and it may be more dangerous as it might interrupt how some people access their drugs.”
Westfall, whose group supports legalization of narcotics, including fentanyl, said police resources should be dedicated to other measures, such as drug treatment or housing.
“If we were to change our focus and ensure people have access to safer drugs we would undercut a lot of the organized crime market and the violence,” he said.
Gordon said drug busts aren’t the sole solution to the opioid crisis. But they limit the amount of drugs on the street, and curb the number of traffickers who distribute the drug.
“It’s not much of a deterrent, but police can’t turn their backs on it,” Gordon said. “They can’t say it’s not worth the effort — in the case of fentanyl, it is.”