Is the Tingley family a criminal organization or is the definition flawed?
By Richard Warnica - Monday, January 30, 2012 - 0 Comments
The initial case against the “Salisbury sopranos” stalled, but the Crown is eager for a new trial
Adam Huras/Telegraph-Journal
Rodney Tingley, a white-haired 58-year-old grandfather who police said was the head of one of New Brunswick’s most notorious crime families, lay in bed the night officers came for him. His wife, Gayle, was next to him; their six-year-old grandson was in between. The police raid didn’t come as a surprise, exactly. Mounties had been investigating Tingley for more than 14 months. But the pure force of it shocked him. “I woke up and all I could hear was someone hollering, ‘Cops! Cops! Cops!’ ” Tingley says. “So I jumped up, looked out the hall, and all I seen was SWAT teams with machine guns and masks and all this stuff.”
Tingley didn’t know the half of it. More than 100 Mounties from three provinces were raiding Tingley homes that morning, Dec. 10, 2008. Nine Tingleys or close relatives were arrested, and eight of them were eventually brought up on 57 charges. (The ninth, Rodney Tingley’s 78-year-old mother-in-law, was released without charge.)
The raid was hailed at the time as a major crackdown on a significant organized crime group. It was the first time in New Brunswick’s history that criminal organization charges had been laid since the definition of the term was broadened by the federal government in 2002. The RCMP wasted no time painting the so-called “Salisbury Sopranos”—as the family was dubbed—as a dangerous posse of gunrunners and drug dealers.
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The fall of the Salisbury Sopranos
By Colin Campbell - Thursday, December 18, 2008 at 12:20 PM - 0 Comments
Marking their crime compound with a huge billboard didn’t help
Known in the local press as the “Salisbury Sopranos,” the Tingley crime family is not what one would call discreet. Their compound, located in Salisbury, just outside of Moncton, N.B., is clearly marked by a large, purple billboard, which, aside from the skulls in the background, wouldn’t look out of place on a Nevada highway. “The Tingley Compound,” it reads, “What you see here . . . what you do here . . . what you hear here . . . STAYS HERE.”
Not any more. Last week, 100 RCMP officers stormed the compound and several other locations, arresting eight Tingley family members and laying 57 charges, including “conspiracy to traffic in cocaine, OxyContin, marijuana, contraband tobacco, weapons and firearms, and being members of an organized crime group,” say the police. The arrests capped a 14-month-long investigation which the police say was dogged by a lack of co-operation from witnesses who were intimidated by the notorious Tingley twins, 54-year-old brothers Roger and Rodney, who head up the clan. “Nobody wanted to mess with them,” says RCMP Sgt. Maurice Comeau.
