The Up-Top Driftwood Crips are a large African-Canadian street gang from the Jane and Finch neighbourhood in north/west Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Considered to be aggressive and extremely violent by Authorities, members of this gang grew up in the sprawling Ontario Housing community of Driftwood Court, where it and much of the surrounding area along Driftwood Avenue, north of Finch Ave. West has been claimed as their turf. It is believed that the Driftwood Crips are the most prominent of all Up-Top Crips with members and associates ranging in the hundreds. This gang has gained the reputation as being aggressive, trigger-happy stick-up artists who generates a fair portion of their income through robbery. Police also contend members of the Driftwood Crips are involved in the drug trade activity concentrated around Toronto's northwest corner. Made up mainly of first generation African-Canadians of Caribbean and African descent, the Driftwood Crips were heavily influenced by Jamaican gang sub-culture during the 1980's with the influx of West Indian immigrants moving out of Toronto's inner city core and into the suburbs. The lure of belonging, status and the potential money from selling drugs or theft caused many of the children of these immigrants to choose membership within local crews. By the early 1990's, the youths within Jane and Finch began identifying themselves as Bloods in response to roaming rival Crip gangs from Rexdale who would constantly clash them at local clubs and public events. But the 1990's would unveil an even bigger threat than those from outside the Jane and Finch community had posed. Growing animosity between youth from Up-Top Jane and Finch and Down-Bottom began to manifest itself. By the mid to late 1990s, the beef became an all-out war between residence from Driftwood Court and Grassways with adjective neighbourhoods choosing allegiances. The Driftwood Crips were the first gang in Jane and Finch to claim the Up-Top Crips card. Members have traditionally been rivals of the South Side Connection Bloods, The Lanes Crew, Ardwick Blood Crew, Chalkfarm Bloods, Jungle City Goonz, the Doomstown Rexdale Crips, Stovetop Rexdale Crips, O-Blocc Rexdale Crips and Five Point Generalz. The Driftwood Crips are cliqued up with the Up-Top Shoreham Crips and are friendly towards the Up-Top G-Side Crips, Young Buck Killers, the South Side Falstaff Crips and the South Side Gatorz gang. On June 12, 2007, hundreds of police officers (including the RCMP and several other southern Ontario police departments) executed 130 search warrants in the Jane and Finch area and beyond targeting the Driftwood Crips. Code named "Project Kryptic" (named so for sounding a little like Crips), police seized more than 30 kilograms of cocaine in the raids as well as several kilograms of hashish oil, marijuana and a cache of weapons [1]. Among those arrested were six workers from Toronto's Pearson International Airport, who police claim helped the Driftwood Crips import their own drugs and weapons from the USA.
