CAFÉ ARSON ATTACKS IN MONTREAL

Tuesday, Nov. 24, 2009
Ingrid Peritz and Les Perreaux

It's a good time to be in the plywood business in Montreal. In one month, the windows of nine cafés and bars have been shattered by Molotov cocktails in a string of targeted but unexplained nighttime attacks.

Every few days, a merchant in the city sweeps up pellets of glass, orders plywood and stays mostly mum about his misfortune. Tuesday morning, a firebomb smashed the front window of the Café Ferrari in eastern Montreal, the third café hit by arson in only 24 hours.

Theories about the crimes are almost as numerous as the targets themselves: mob intimidation, protection rackets, street gang offensives, loan sharks or sheer violence for its own sake.

Whatever the motives, a former RCMP intelligence analyst says the attacks are a symptom of a Montreal street crime scene in disarray.

The mob holds an iron grip on big chunks of the billions being poured into the province's infrastructure, including the roof of Montreal city hall, but the street tells a different tale, according to Pierre de Champlain, who analyzed organized crime for the Mounties.

The high-ranked mob or "alta mafia," of fixed bidding and kickbacks, is a world away from the "bassa mafia" grunts who run Montreal's drug trade and protection racket, Mr. de Champlain said. Many key figures in street-level operations are locked up.

"The Montreal underworld is in a state of anarchy because there is an absence of dominant organizations and charismatic leaders," said Mr. de Champlain, author of Mobsters, Gangsters and Men of Honour.

"Street gangs have matured to challenge the lower echelons of the mafia. They are taking advantage of the vacuum left behind by [imprisoned] figures like Francesco Arcadi and Vito Rizzuto and [former Hells Angels leader] Mom Boucher."

While the firebombs have grabbed headlines in the past few weeks, police say they began even earlier, totalling 12 in the past two months.

They note virtually all the targets have been Italian cafés, and the victims are not co-operating.

Many are nondescript espresso and sports bars concentrated within a 10-minute drive of one another around Montreal's north-end St. Michel district. At one of them, the Pirandello Sports Bar, workers On Tuesday were busy replacing the front window after a firebombing Oct. 28.

The establishment was packed with men of various ages, who were joined at lunchtime by none other than Nicolo Rizzuto.

Mr. Rizzuto, a kingpin of the Montreal Mafia, was released from jail last year after serving time for crimes ranging from bookmaking to extortion. He wore his trademark fedora as he walked past a reporter into the bar.

The man identified as the bar's boss offered no comments about the recent attack. Merchants in the other cafés, most of them stripped-down spots where espresso machines often shared space with video lottery terminals, answered questions with shrugs.

"I don't know what this is about. If someone had come around to say this was about drugs or protection, I'd understand. But I don't know nothing," said one bar owner, who refused to give his name.

In each case, attackers broke windows in the wee hours of the night and tossed small incendiary devices inside.

"The fires don't really do much damage," said André Leclerc, a Montreal police spokesman. "The incendiary device is left near the front of the building, and the fire doesn't spread. These aren't bombs."

Police and local gang experts have put forward various theories about the attacks, saying they could be tied to a Mafia turf battle or even copycat arsonists.

Or maybe the attacks are just about coffee.

Wiretaps from a police crackdown on the Mafia show members of the Rizzuto crime family intimidating bar and café owners into buying coffee from a mob-approved distributor in 2004 and 2005.

Francesco Arcadi, a key associate of Nicolo Rizzuto, was recorded telling underlings that owners were to be told they had no choice but to buy the mob-approved brand, Moka d'Oro.

Moka d'Oro was associated with Nicodermo Cotroni, the son of long-time mafia leader Frank Cotroni. "As soon as you see a different package of coffee, you tell him I'll break down the whole place," Mr. Arcadi tells his muscle in one conversation.

Mr. Arcadi is serving 15 years for a host of charges, including racketeering and extortion.

Mr. de Champlain said cornering the market is always the name of the mob game, whether the product is protection, drugs, coffee or even ice cream.

"It may seem funny to say, but there was a firebomb war in the 1980s over a certain brand of ice cream they were forcing into Montreal restaurants," said Mr. Champlain. "The goal is always to create a monopoly."

Turf and money are undoubtedly at stake, according to Julian Sher, the Montreal-based author of a book about biker gangs.

The biggest question is whether the fire-bombings mark the renewal of some gang war involving the mob, Hells Angels or street gangs, or whether they are serving as an internal warning that some payment is due, said Mr. Sher.

"This is a classic intimidation technique, and it's a warning message designed to carve out territory, to bring into line someone who is not paying up," he said.