Toronto Police Believe ‘Gun-for-Hire’ Ring Responsible for Series of Shootings

The Hollywood image of a hitman, like in The Professional or John Wick, is largely a creation of the film industry. Someone whose entire job is to kill other people on a job-by-job basis isn’t really something we see in the real world. Yes, people hire hitmen, but those hitmen aren’t doing that full-time. They’re largely petty thugs who get hired to do something more than break a few kneecaps.

And according to Toronto police, a series of shootings in the heavily gun-restricted city are the result of a ring of “gun-for-hire” shooters, which also just happened to target places like synagogues and the US Consulate.

Police in Canada said Tuesday they have linked multiple shootings, including at the U.S. Consulate in Toronto in March, to “multilayered” gun-for-hire networks that have also targeted synagogues in the city.

Toronto police Chief Myron Demkiw told a news conference that young adults are being recruited through encrypted messages and paid by the networks to carry out the shootings and have to film them to get paid. Some of the firearms used in the attacks have since been seized by investigators.

A veteran police officer was killed last week in a raid related to investigation of the shooting.

“What we know is bad actors are using criminal elements in our city to carry out these dangerous incidents,” he said. “It is clear that some of the people hiring these criminals want to create a sense of fear in our communities, including the Jewish community.”

Honestly, I find this a little improbable.

It’s not impossible, but it just seems strange that someone would be approaching random Canadian thugs to carry out very specific anti-semitic shootings in Toronto, as well as the US Consulate–likely due to the close ties the United States has maintained with Israel. Why? What purpose would outside moneymen try to achieve with this kind of thing?

Sure, someone trying to garner sympathy for Jewish Canadians might, and I’m sure some in podcastistan are all over that angle as we speak, but I’m not sure I’d buy that.

What you’d need is someone with money enough to fund this, connections that would direct them toward the right people who would go for something like this, and a reason to do this in Toronto, of all places.

The one suspect named by police in this piece, Nicholas Bennett, doesn’t sound like a jihadi militant eager to take out Jewish people in the name of Allah, after all, so that rules at least some of that out.

Honestly, the whole thing sounds so fanciful that it’s hard for me to take it seriously. Maybe there’s enough evidence to back up the belief. Maybe Bennett has already talked with the authorities–he was shot by police after allegedly killing an officer–and told them everything, showing the messages and all, but that’s not clear from this report, which means I’m supposed to take the chief’s word for it.

And considering that this sounds like the plot of a bad thriller, that’s harder than I’m sure Toronto authorities would like.

But, if that’s what’s happening, there’s a good chance this won’t stay up in Canada indefinitely. This is a case to watch carefully as it goes forward, just in case the improbable happened.

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