Drug busts reveal how dealers do business in a small N.W.T. community

Search warrant documents offer some insight into the brazen ways police say drug dealers are plying their trade in one small N.W.T. community.

The insights come from sworn statements police gave to obtain search warrants that led to the arrests, charges and seizures in Fort Providence, N.W.T. None of the allegations have been proven in court.

Cabin takeover

Last August, police got a call from someone in the community who said four young men she had never met before were living in a cabin she had let a relative live in. The caller was nervous about the group and wanted them gone.

Police say they received a Crime Stoppers tip about the men at about the same time. The tipster said the men were selling crack cocaine.

RCMP officers went to the cabin. According to the search warrant documents, they saw a scale typically used for weighing drugs, multiple cellphones, more than $4,700 in cash and a rifle.

Police arrested the four men for unlawfully being in the cabin. All of the men were from Edmonton; two of them were in their early 20s, and the other two just 16 years old. They were also later charged with possessing the proceeds of crime.

Police later went back and searched the cabin and a nearby shack, where they say they seized four long guns, ammunition, and a small amount of cocaine.

'Set up shop and go'

A few months before that, police initiated another drug investigation after arresting a man on unrelated charges and finding cocaine on him. They found one bag with three grams of powdered cocaine in it. In a fanny pack the man was wearing across his chest, police say they found a crack pipe and another bag that contained five individually-wrapped bags of cocaine with a total weight of 2.54 grams.

The man told police that while in jail he had received a phone call notifying him that someone was going to be coming into Fort Providence when he was there. When he was back in Fort Providence, he got a text one day telling him to go to an address on C Street. A man he met there gave him cocaine, saying he could pay him back later.

The informant described himself as a "runner" and the drug operation as a "set up shop and go," saying the man he met was only in town for a short period of time and was relying on locals to serve as drug runners.

The informant was charged with possessing drugs for the purpose of trafficking, but those charges were dropped three months later.

Attractive market

The busts did not seem to deter other dealers.

Fort Providence is one of the first two communities people driving up from the south, including drug dealers, reach when they enter the Northwest Territories. It has seen a dramatic increase in illegal drug activity in recent years.

Two weeks after the four Edmonton men were arrested at the cabin, police reported that they had received a report of two youth loitering around a Fort Providence business. The RCMP who responded found a 16-year-old and a 17-year-old, both from Saskatchewan and both subjects of arrest warrants.

Police say they seized a restricted firearm from them, 108 grams of suspected crack cocaine and just over $1,200 in cash. They charged the two teenagers with possessing crack cocaine for the purpose of trafficking and a host of other charges.