Skip to main content

Dale "Deli" Donovan was convicted of several charges, including conspiracy to traffic drugs, possession of proceeds of crime

Dale "Deli" Donovan became the latest casualty of a crime crackdown, receiving eight-and-half years behind bars for his role in a massive drug- trafficking network that was busted by a 2007 year-long undercover police investigation.Donovan follows in the footsteps of former local chapter president Ernie Dew, who is serving a 13-year sentence following his arrest in a similar 2006 police sting.More than 30 gang members and associates have been arrested in the two sweeps, which utilized the services of career criminals turned undercover police agents. Only a handful of the accused remain before the courts.Donovan was convicted of several charges, including conspiracy to traffic drugs, possession of proceeds of crime and participating in a criminal organization.Crown attorney Chris Mainella told court Donovan played several roles in the local organized crime scene. He was an "umpire" to feuding felons and a "tax collector" to people he authorized to sell marijuana and cocaine at various locales throughout Manitoba, such as native reserves and northern communities.Donovan was also trying to recruit people into a criminal lifestyle, Mainella said.Donovan's activities were being closely monitored by police during their Project Drill. Longtime criminal Scotty "Taz" Robertson was able to infiltrate the gang and conduct a series of drug and weapons deals that investigators caught on video and audio surveillance.Robertson was paid more than $600,000 for his work and put in the witness protection program. During the investigation, police seized five machine-guns, three handguns, 11 kilograms of cocaine, 2,000 tablets of methamphetamine and 13 pounds of marijuana. They also broke up a murder-for-hire plot in Thompson.More than 250 police officers across the country were involved in the arrests of 17 accused, which also involved arrests of full-patch Hells Angels members in B.C. and Ontario.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Timothy “Fuzzy” Timms, a 45-year-old member of the Hells Angels Motorcycle club, stood up Monday for his First Amendment right to freedom of expressi

Timothy “Fuzzy” Timms, a 45-year-old member of the Hells Angels Motorcycle club, stood up Monday for his First Amendment right to freedom of expression. Timms, a resident of the San Diego community of South Park, refused to take off a black leather vest with the motorcycle club's “death's head” insignia when he reported for jury duty. He's a big burly man, 5 feet 8 inches, 250 pounds, with a full beard and auburn-colored, shoulder-length hair. At 7:45 a.m., Timms' stance got him booted from the San Diego Superior Court's Hall of Justice by sheriff's deputies, along with another Hells Angel who also refused to remove his insignia vest. Nine hours later, representatives of both the Superior Court and the sheriff's department apologized to Timms and club member Mick Rush for “misunderstanding” an order issued April 24 by Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Fraser. Rush also had been reporting for jury duty. “It all boils down to a misunderstanding of Judge Fraser'

Rashawn and Deon Beneby Someone mowed down the brothers, some 15 yards apart, on a grassy strip

''They may have been into drugs but they didn't do anything to harm anybody,'' said their aunt, Cheryl Watkins. ``It was cold-blooded murder to lay them out like that.''Miami-Dade County's 80th and 81st homicides of 2008: Rashawn and Deon Beneby, brothers and suspects in a string of violent robberies, shot dead Thursday afternoon next to the Liberty City middle school they once attended. ''It's cold-blooded, outright killing out there -- and we're not even in the summer yet,'' said the Rev. Richard Dunn, a community activist who lives three blocks away. Witnesses said a group of men were gathered outside an apartment at the Annie Coleman Gardens housing project when the shooting started.Someone mowed down the brothers, some 15 yards apart, on a grassy strip next to the chain-link fence that separates the community from the baseball field at Charles R. Drew Middle School, 1801 NW 60th St. Rashawn was executed -- shot in the head an

Jorge “Rivi” Ayala, Griselda Blanco, aka the Black Widow

Rivi was, for a time, the hit-man of choice for Griselda Blanco, aka the Black Widow. Griselda was the grande dame of the Miami cocaine business, a Colombian mother of three, of impoverished origins, who slaughtered and intimidated her way to the top of a billion-dollar industry. She is a central character in this movie, the most deadly figure in a story in which the bodies are stacked like dominos. Conspicuous by her absence as an interviewee, she is one of the few key survivors of the era whom the film-makers were unable to coax before the lens. “Her release was imminent at that point, as was her deportation. I think she has changed her mind since, because we have been reapproached,” Corben says. contract killer Jorge “Rivi” Ayala, the director of Cocaine Cowboys Billy Corben says: “He told me where there is a body buried in Miami, by the Florida turnpike. It’s all developed now, malls and condominiums. He knows where all the bodies are buried. We told the police. I think he told the