True Patriot Love - June 24, 2026


[Sneak Peek] TPL Crime Update： Gun-for-Hire Networks & Canada's Bail Reform

Hosted by
Shara Micucci Mike Wixson
Mentioned
Mike
From Broadcasting Icon to Best-Selling Author： A Life in Sports Media ft Jim Lang The State of Film & Television in 2026 ft Joel Stewart

Episode Stats


Length

9 minutes

Words per minute

191.52

Word count

1,913

Sentence count

48

Harmful content

Toxicity

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this week's Crime Update, we take a deep dive into the Toronto Police Service's multi-layered gun network. Chief Bill Blair and his top gun expert, Paul Micucci, join us to talk about the tragic shooting of two people in the city's west end.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.320 why why are we these young people doing this you know who are they who's their family who
00:00:06.080 are their connections what are what is prompting them to take these actions i i'd like to know
00:00:11.440 because quite frankly there's got to be a reason well whether it's psychological whether it's
00:00:15.600 social or whether it's criminal like i think we just to say that it happened i guess mike where
00:00:20.880 my frustration is coming a little bit i i don't want to do that anymore i don't think the public
00:00:25.360 wants to hear that anymore they want to hear okay why is this happening who prompted them to do it
00:00:31.520 why did they do where did they get the gun again where are the guns coming from
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00:01:10.880 hey there thank you for joining us this is tplmedia.ca and tplmedia.ca slash local go ahead
00:01:17.680 you can say that 10 times fast uh and i'm going to encourage you by the way to check out whether
00:01:22.640 Whether or not, tplmedia.ca slash local has a local version of what we do here.
00:01:29.200 It's a great place to visit.
00:01:30.460 This is our crime update.
00:01:32.880 We do it every week.
00:01:34.100 And joining me, as he does, to talk about that, Paul Micucci.
00:01:37.320 Thanks, Paul.
00:01:37.920 I'm ready, Mike.
00:01:38.620 I woke up this morning, and I was raring to go.
00:01:41.800 My son, my youngest one, is actually starting summer school.
00:01:47.980 I should point out, when you say that, generally speaking,
00:01:51.040 And people are like, oh, he struggles.
00:01:53.440 No, he's advancing himself.
00:01:56.100 These kids.
00:01:56.580 So we jump in the car, and we actually head to school.
00:01:59.920 And I get a call from the office here, and they say,
00:02:03.600 you're late for a conference call, which I missed for some reason.
00:02:07.660 It's early in the March, like 8 o'clock.
00:02:09.760 So I'm in the car, and I'm rolling along.
00:02:12.680 I'm on this conference call.
00:02:13.840 I get to the school, and I wave goodbye.
00:02:15.880 And just as I wave goodbye, I remembered, and it just hit me,
00:02:18.980 because I look forward in the car, and there's a bunch of cruisers,
00:02:22.980 and there's one of those investigation units, the motorhomes that they set up.
00:02:27.780 And I remember the news from late last night that in my neighborhood,
00:02:31.840 a gentleman actually shot two people, and he's on the run, armed and dangerous,
00:02:35.800 right beside my kid's school.
00:02:39.380 So anyway.
00:02:40.440 So you're on a conference call.
00:02:41.620 So I'm on a conference call.
00:02:43.540 He's be lying across to the football field to meet his buddies, probably, you know, to do whatever.
00:02:48.200 and quite frankly he's not heading into the school so i said to my wife i put it on mute i say do me
00:02:53.620 a favor go get him get him in the bloody school right so you know what a what a start to the
00:02:59.360 morning that is a that's startling right it's scary and the the whole drive for the next six
00:03:05.300 blocks was barricaded off with cruisers trying to triangulate this person who's now uh armed
00:03:12.080 and dangerous moving in this community and he shot two people last night shot two people they're in
00:03:16.620 a critical condition so let's uh hope for them ah yeah and uh the police uh catch the guy in the
00:03:22.700 neighborhood yeah did you check the garage before you left yeah well you know it's funny i was out
00:03:27.020 this morning doing some things and it did come across my mind the only thing i came across was a 0.73
00:03:31.500 bloody coyote who was as big as a freaking uh husky uh running through my front yard i don't
00:03:37.820 know where these coyotes are coming from a story for another day but indeed are they getting bigger
00:03:42.940 or are they getting bigger well i've heard estimates of 50 000 plus in the gta in the way
00:03:47.900 of population there's got to be and this thing looks like a large dog like this is not a small
00:03:52.860 animal and it's coming straight through literally i'm standing there and it's coming straight through
00:03:56.860 my front yard at full clip yeah it's uh every day more and more sightings and people like right at
00:04:01.900 the front doors and stuff they're yeah they're getting less afraid of humans and interacting
00:04:06.060 more isn't working well i'm glad you you know what two close misses this morning i'm glad you're here
00:04:11.260 yeah thank you uh story number one toronto police linked dozens of shootings to multi-layered gun
00:04:17.260 for hire network you know we we caught a sort of a glimpse of this discussion uh last week after the
00:04:24.780 tragic shooting of uh constable mark uh pinazato and uh now as they go deeper into this uh chief
00:04:34.300 of police saying yes in fact this is a gun for hire network that focuses on using youth right
00:04:39.900 and they're communicating them with them through a social email whatsapp app and uh quite frankly
00:04:46.620 it's it's a little crazy because he uh you know police chief demke who i'm a fan of i said that
00:04:51.980 in other shows i i'm like okay we're trying to figure out who is behind this and i'm like okay
00:04:58.380 you have all their social now right you must be able to track somewhere where these messages are
00:05:04.220 coming from and where the where the monies are being sent to pay them and and so now i'm gonna
00:05:10.060 make okay there's got to be a there's got to be a link here and how fast do we move because this has
00:05:15.580 to be with everything going on in vancouver and toronto right now this has to be like number one
00:05:22.540 or up there in the priority list it's got to be okay we need to cap this because we don't know
00:05:26.300 how big this is and how many communications is it like how many people is this how big is the message
00:05:31.580 these people are trying to deliver at a time where we have mass crowds from around the world and
00:05:37.900 at these games well are you following this ufc story that's breaking actually this morning in
00:05:42.540 the us no so so this is crazy remember uh freedom 250 you know the ufc 250 right so you know they
00:05:50.460 barricaded these people in a park and had them watch the the game on the screen okay right there
00:05:56.460 was uh there are uh a group that was trying to uh basically that had snipers and a plan to rush the
00:06:06.060 white house and everything and they arrested them this morning it was all over the news in the us
00:06:10.300 i did see a glimpse of that yeah yeah and i'm like wow this is crazy like that's a crazy story and
00:06:15.580 they they wanted to get the crowd rolling uh towards the sniper group that they had set up in
00:06:21.500 the park to start shooting certain people and then move towards the white house so they wanted
00:06:26.780 to cause a disruption have everyone stampede in a certain way strategically shoot people with the
00:06:32.140 snipers and then move towards the white house this is and they're i think they're they've got now
00:06:37.180 six or eight people arrested well so when i'm listening to this i'm like okay make that
00:06:41.980 connection yeah i'm trying to figure out like you know how bad are these stories we're hearing right
00:06:48.060 now 27 separate incidents thought to be executed through this network and now if you had this
00:06:56.220 network of ready to shoot individuals you probably would test them out in a couple of places that sent
00:07:02.700 a message before you actually executed what you wanted to do with them because i mean 27 separate
00:07:09.260 incidents i'm i'm gonna say we've only got two of the people so far that are in this network right
00:07:15.020 That could be fairly expansive.
00:07:16.960 This is scary stuff.
00:07:18.080 It's very frightening.
00:07:18.960 Very scary stuff.
00:07:19.860 Next one on the docket today, kind of related.
00:07:24.000 And see if we make a connection here.
00:07:25.780 Saskatoon guns and gangs investigation.
00:07:28.520 Youth charged after a shooting.
00:07:30.100 Saskatoon police say that their guns and gangs unit is charged
00:07:32.940 for youth following an investigation into a shooting in the Fairlight Drive area.
00:07:36.740 The case adds to ongoing concerns about youth involvement in violent crime
00:07:40.580 and repeat firearm incidents in Canadian cities
00:07:43.240 and where they're sourcing their inspiration and firearms.
00:07:47.740 So once again, police in Saskatoon facing similar frightening moments.
00:07:54.980 Yeah.
00:07:56.060 Again, you know, on the last show we went into it,
00:07:59.140 the who, what, why, where, how.
00:08:00.840 So that's where I'm kind of, I want to break it down now
00:08:03.520 when you hear these incidents.
00:08:05.040 Why?
00:08:05.460 Why are these young people doing this?
00:08:08.160 You know, who are they?
00:08:10.060 Who's their family?
00:08:10.900 Who are their connections?
00:08:12.080 What is prompting them to take these actions?
00:08:15.420 I'd like to know because, quite frankly, there's got to be a reason.
00:08:18.640 Whether it's psychological, whether it's social, or whether it's criminal.
00:08:22.380 I think we, just to say that it happened, I guess, Mike, where my frustration is coming a little bit,
00:08:27.860 I don't want to do that anymore.
00:08:29.320 I don't think the public wants to hear that anymore.
00:08:31.300 They want to hear, okay, why is this happening?
00:08:34.920 Who prompted them to do it?
00:08:36.420 Why did they do it?
00:08:37.080 Where did they get the gun?
00:08:38.480 Again, where are the guns coming from?
00:08:40.360 This is the thing.
00:08:41.180 it's so wild to me they're recruited through encrypted messaging apps yeah how do you recruit
00:08:47.040 how i need to understand how are you doing this like what do you why do i get on an encrypted
00:08:52.620 messaging app like why all of a sudden do i actually find myself in front of a computer
00:08:57.940 on a map and then i action it how's your headspace as a youth to receive a gun okay what's the
00:09:05.480 process we're gonna set we're gonna mail you a gun yeah go find a gun at learn to shoot it
00:09:10.680 go online and read this do you already have a gun like how like what's the process here to recruit
00:09:16.200 i think it's important that we find this out yeah we got to break these down i think it just you
00:09:19.960 know just reporting them in 30 seconds and never saying oh that's too bad and going on never hearing
00:09:24.520 about it again i will tell you that we reached out to uh toronto police service this week i think
00:09:29.480 they're very busy this week of course they've got uh pretty major uh pretty major things going on
00:09:34.760 here in the city but they did contact me back and say we'll have a conversation about this maybe i'll
00:09:39.880 be able to find out if they have any more detailed connectivity is this a an act of terrorism is this
00:09:47.720 a foreign body is this somebody from within is this cartel related what where where is the
00:09:53.480 the inspiration coming from and why are the youth being able to accept it and act on?