[3] Benjamin Perrin, a University of British Columbia faculty member who is involved with human trafficking research and activism, wrote extensively about NPF in his 2010 book Invisible Chains,[6] calling North Preston "a place of Shakespearean irony" because of the town's conversion from a sanctuary for Black Loyalists (former American slaves) in the 1780s into the hub of a major gang that deals in modern-day slavery and drug and arms trafficking.
[3] An estimate in 2009 by Michael Chettleburgh, an expert on street gangs who works as a consultant on issues of criminal justice, put NPF's membership between 60 and 80.
[8] In 1993, Morris Glasgow was sentenced to jail for seven years once he was identified as the crime boss of a nationwide pimping ring, possibly NPF.
[3] A warning has been issued to police officers to be extremely careful when encountering NPF members because of the gang's "armed and dangerous" status.
[11] Like Independent Soldiers, Indian Posse, United Nations, Bo-Gars, Native Syndicate, and Crazy Dragons, NPF has an interprovincial presence.
[12] Chettleburgh, the author of Young Thugs: Inside the Dangerous World of Canadian Street Gangs, stated in 2009 that NPF's activities west of Nova Scotia only began approximately ten years earlier, but that the gang's presence had subsequently become well-established in the area of Ontario stretching between Niagara Falls and the Regional Municipality of Peel.
[4] Perrin argues in Invisible Chains that NPF's relationship with motorcycle gangs is one of competition for control of domestic sex trafficking.
[6] Before NPF's expansion into Quebec and southwestern Ontario, motorcycle gangs had controlled sex trafficking in both provinces, but the police had organized major operations to combat these motorcycle gangs, leaving NPF to largely take control of the regional sex industry.
[14] In 1995, this police force took down another gang that was similar to NPF in its trafficking of young Nova Scotian women into Ontario; in that case, the PRP arrested seven people and issued more than 60 charges.
[16] The head of the PRP Special Victims Unit, Detective-Sergeant Greg Knapton, suggested that the gang rape was intended to instill enough fear in the woman to manipulate her into the sex industry.
[20] On June 27, Cain was arrested; a .22 caliber revolver was found on his person and he was charged with uttering threats, human trafficking, material benefit from prostitution, and gun possession.
[15] Anthony Christopher Roberts was also wanted in connection with the crime, and he walked into a police station with his lawyer to turn himself in on the morning of July 31.
[22] In October 2007, the PRP vice squad investigated NPF's activities in strip clubs in Southern Ontario, finding girls who were performing lap dances and allowing other sex acts.
[2] Cowan stated that the investigation led to NPF members moving away from Toronto and into other areas,[10] primarily in Western Canada.
[10] Since then, officers in several major Western Canadian cities have reported members of NPF staking out territorial claims and actively manipulating girls and young women into being sexually trafficked.
[2] There were also individual non-gang-members and gangs of Jamaican Canadians that took over some of the illegal sex-trafficking activities that NPF had previously undertaken in the area.
[19] The PRP was maintaining nine human trafficking charges before the courts by December 2008, including two cases allegedly involving NPF.
[28] HRPS Detective-Sergeant Al Albano stated that the girl had first been introduced to one of the men through friends, after which point the man seduced her in the manner typical of NPF, resulting in her starting to work at the strip club.
[14][27] A year prior, this townhouse was identified as linked to NPF by a Burlington police force specializing in gangs and gun violence.
[27] Early in the morning on December 3, while Dixon and Cromwell were sleeping, the girl successfully escaped,[14] after which point she found friends.
[28] In late August 2009,[25] a 19-year-old woman flew from Edmonton, Alberta to Toronto to meet a man she had met online.
[30] The stripper introduced the 19-year-old woman to Marlo Williams, a man with connections to Nova Scotia and possibly to NPF.
[30] She later claimed that Williams caught her and dragged her by the hair back to his condominium, where she was verbally abused, assaulted, and strangled to the point of unconsciousness.
[30] On the day after his arrest, Williams was charged with human trafficking, forcible confinement, choking, kidnapping, assault, and theft.
[30] Hourigan also asserted that Williams' victim has since suffered from depression, low self-esteem, identity crises, nightmares, and insomnia, and has turned to binge drinking as a form of self-medication.
[9] In 2006, the Niagara Regional Police Service (NRPS) were investigating drug dealers who were using mobile phones to make transactions involving cocaine.
[8] After NRPS investigators called a number and ordered $120 worth of cocaine from someone self-identifying as "T", the drugs were delivered by Tyrone Johnston, a man from North Preston with suspected connections to NPF.
[8] In a 2008 raid of a townhouse in Burlington inhabited by two alleged members of NPF, HRPS officers discovered 3 grams of cannabis.
[14] In 2003, Johnston and Lloyd "Butchie" Orman, also of North Preston, were implicated in a shooting at the intersection of Queen Street and St. Lawrence Avenue in Niagara Falls.
[8] Orman fatally shot Phillip James "Rabbit" Simmons, a 33-year-old man also from North Preston, on Niagara Falls' Malibu Drive in March 2006.