'Just so many of them': J-Tornado trial hears of multiple drug suspects

Police were having so much success intercepting drug suspect phone messages during operation J-Tornado, they routinely beat drug dealers to meetings and sometimes sat metres away while transactions occurred, court heard Thursday.

Kennebecasis Valley Const.Mitch Mercer testified he was assigned to the J-Tornado surveillance team and directed to locations around Saint John as police read about upcoming meetings between suspects in real time from their emails to each other.

Mercer was testifying at the ongoing trial ofShane Williams, 34, and Joshua Kindred, 39, who are facing various drug possession, trafficking and conspiracy charges.

They were among 28 people arrested by police in 2014 as part of OperationJ-Tornado, a three year long investigation into drug trafficking in New Brunswick that saw police supplyBlackBerrysto local drug suspects that were linked to anRCMPserver.

In one videotape shown to the court, Mercer filmed two drug suspects meeting in front of Saint John's Princess Elizabeth School, after the interception ofemailsbetween the two.

Mercersaid he arrived to observe one Saint John drug meeting in the north end Shoppers Drug Mart parking lot in July, only to have one suspect arrive and park in front of him and another squeeze into the space next to his, oblivious as to why he was sitting there in his undercover car.

"She was about as far from me as the judge's bench," Mercer said from the witness box, indicating a distance of less than one metre.

"She had just enough room to get out of her car."

Mercer told court he was sent to tail,observeand videotape so many suspects through the spring and summer of 2014 he could not remember them all when asked to name them by Crown prosecutor Nicole Poirier.

"There was a lot," said Mercer. "There were just so many of them."

The Crown believes once all of the emailand surveillance evidence isbefore the court, itwill show a large drug ring was operating in the city,with Williams and Kindred at the top.

Also testifyingThursdaywas Saint John Police Sgt. Mike McCaig.He said he was put in charge of the local surveillance unit, even though he and Shane Williams know each other personally.

"I'm friends with his uncles and aunts," McCaig told Poirier. "I've met Shane through those associations through the years."

Despite that, McCaig said he often tailed Williams during the investigation, even following him into quiet suburban streets, apparently undetected.

Defence lawyer Brian Munro asked if McCaig's team was ever asked to conduct surveillance on the Crown's key witness in the case the Saint John businessman police hired to help collect evidence in the case to see if he was behaving himself.

McCaig said no.