BC

California vote on marijuana legalization could make waves in B.C., compassion club says

Submitted by Jacob Hunter on Tue, 08/17/2010 - 2:42pm
in
By Carlito Pablo, Georgia Straight
 
Jeet-Kei Leung has high hopes about a statewide vote to be held in California on November 2.
 
That’s when residents of the Golden State decide whether or not they want to legalize recreational marijuana use.
 
Leung’s interest in this matter shouldn’t be surprising. He’s the spokesperson for the Vancouver-based B.C. Compassion Club, which is the oldest and biggest of its kind in Canada.
 
According to him, the California referendum holds a lot of promise.
 
“If the whole context changes with California being the first to adopt a legalization stance on marijuana, then definitely we could see a lot of social ripples that would hit here soon enough,” Leung told the Straight in a phone interview on August 10.
 
Known as Proposition 19, the proposal formally called the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act seeks to allow persons over 21 years of age to possess one ounce (28 grams) of marijuana for personal use. Read more »

Responding to crime: Fear is driving the agenda

Submitted by Jacob Hunter on Mon, 06/07/2010 - 6:05pm
in
By. Neil Boyd, Vancouver Sun
 
In 1910, Winston Churchill stated that one of the "unfailing tests" of a civilization lies in how it treats crime and criminals. In 1967, Pierre Trudeau told Canadians that the state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation.
 
Pronouncements from our current politicians are rather different in tone. Conservative Public Safety Minister Vic Toews has opposed same-sex unions, argued in favour of reducing the age of criminal responsibility to 10, and suggested that if sexual orientation was to become a protected category under Canada's hate crime legislation, "homosexual activists" might sue hotel chains to remove Bibles as a form of hate literature.
 
As part of a "getting tough on crime" agenda, Justice Minister Rob Nicholson wants to impose a minimum term of six months in prison on anyone who grows more than six marijuana plants, and to lengthen terms of imprisonment in a wide range of other contexts (even though rates of serious violent crime are much lower today than they were 30 years ago).
 
More simply put, the federal government wants to put more people in jail. The approach that they advocate has no empirical support -- no examples from other jurisdictions to establish that crime rates will be affected in any beneficial manner. And yet the opposition, until very recently, has avoided criticism of this legislative package, explaining that they fear being tarred as "soft on crime." The unfortunate reality is that many in opposition, like the Conservatives, are allowing fear to drive their agenda. Worse than that, they appear to believe that Canadians can't be convinced of the unproductive and costly heart of the Conservative agenda. Worst of all, our culture and our country are being shortchanged by a barrage of name-calling and finger-pointing. Read more »

Civil disobedience no excuse for breaking laws, judge rules

Submitted by Jacob Hunter on Thu, 06/03/2010 - 2:01am
in
By Ian Mulgrew, Vancouver Sun
 
Civil disobedience took it on the chin in a B.C. Court of Appeal judgment Wednesday that said such behaviour undermines the rule of law.
 
In a unanimous ruling that took aim at those advocating an end to the current criminal marijuana prohibition, the court said disagreeing with the law does not permit you to break it.
 
Nevertheless, the three-justice panel gave a break to the owners and an employee of the now-defunct-but-once-renowned Holy Smoke Culture Shop in Nelson, reducing the length of their sentences for trafficking pot and sparing them jail time.
 
At sentencing hearings in Oct. 2008 and Jan. 2009, Paul Stephen De Felice, and Alan Steward Middlemiss were given one year in jail while Kelsey Windrawn Stratas received eight months. Read more »

Editorial: Policing approach to drug trade has failed

Submitted by Jacob Hunter on Wed, 04/28/2010 - 6:31pm
in
By. The Province
 
A new study is providing fresh ammunition for those, including this newspaper, who have argued that policy-makers should be giving more serious consideration to ending the war on drugs.
 
The findings released Tuesday by the Vancouver-based International Centre for Science in Drug Policy flowed from a review of dozens of academic papers over several decades that examined the impact of increased policing on the drug trade. The conclusions? Our current approach is a failure. Read more »

The Muzzling of a Cop

Submitted by Jacob Hunter on Thu, 03/04/2010 - 11:29am
in

By. Norm Stamper

David Bratzer is a young, soft-spoken police officer with the Victoria (British Columbia) Police Department. He comes from a law enforcement family; two of his brothers are VicPD officers. Thoughtful, well spoken, Bratzer loves being a cop and serving his community. But now he's been ordered not to air his views on the most compelling of all public safety issues.

Bratzer was deeply affected by the serial killings of prostitutes in and around Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. The infamous pig farmer Robert "Willie" Pickton was convicted in 2007 of the murders of six women, though he's confessed to a total of 49 killings (he'd hoped to make it an even 50 but he "got sloppy" and got caught). Following the progress of the trial, Bratzer drew a connection between the murder victims and their circumstances: Pickton's victims were drug addicts, most of them working the streets in order to finance their habit. Bratzer concluded that Canada's drug laws had contributed to, and in a very real sense, caused the deaths of these women.

Read more »

Prostitutes peddle co-operative brothels to protect sex workers

Submitted by Nicole Seguin on Thu, 02/25/2010 - 2:23pm
in
by Trevor Scott Howell, Fast Forward Weekly
 
At 42, Susan Davis has worked in the sex trade for more than half of her life. She’s been raped more than 15 times since she began selling her body 24 years ago — once allegedly at knifepoint by convicted serial killer Robert Pickton. As well, a fellow prostitute she knew was mutilated and murdered by a john.
 
Read more »

4,000 march for missing women

Submitted by Nicole Seguin on Mon, 02/15/2010 - 10:26am
in
'The PM needs to step forward and initiate an inquiry'
 
By Sam Cooper, The Province
 
An annual demonstration for women murdered and missing in the Downtown Eastside grew by thousands as international media eyed marchers on Sunday afternoon.
 
Marchers, including relatives of missing women, pounded drums and chanted as they looped from the intersection of Main and Hastings streets through Gastown. They stopped in front of locations where women were last seen or found murdered, and laid roses and prayed.
 
Kim Washburn, a First Nations member, said he has attended all 19 annual marches, and this year's estimated turnout of about 4,000 dwarfed last year's turnout of around 1,000.
Read more »

Vancouver's real world,' outside Olympic bubble

Submitted by Nicole Seguin on Fri, 02/12/2010 - 1:36pm
in
By LINDA ROBERTSON - McClatchy Newspapers
 
VANCOUVER, British Columbia - Kelly Flanagan has not attended any parties for fur-frocked Olympic VIPs. Nor does she have tickets for figure skating, snowboarding or hockey-although she would love to see a curling match. She never has been skiing at Whistler, a snow resort.
 
But she does have Olympic pins, which she wears proudly on her old brown sweatshirt: "Homes Not Games." "Broken Promises." "Meals Instead of Medals."
 
Read more »

Downtown Eastside women to greet visitors

Submitted by Nicole Seguin on Tue, 02/09/2010 - 10:37am
in
By Ethan Baron, The Province
 
 
Blue-jacketed volunteers will be reaching out to visitors in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, but these women will wear no Olympic rings on their coats. Unlike the hordes of Vancouver Olympic Committee volunteers flooding the city, these community ambassadors are not operating with official sanction.
 
But when it comes to the realities of the Downtown Eastside, they have far more information and assistance to offer than VANOC meet-and-greeters.
 
A Sunshine Coast women's group has trained 13 women from the Downtown Eastside to work during the Games as "radical hostesses" who will roam the streets and staff a welcome centre for visitors and locals.
 
The project by Linwood House Ministries — which already operates a drop-in women's centre in the Downtown Eastside — was created as much for the hostesses themselves as for Olympics visitors.
Read more »

License to steal

Submitted by Kirk Tousaw on Sun, 11/29/2009 - 4:06am
in
CN BC: Seize and Protect
 
The Civil Forfeiture Act became law in April 2006 and the office opened in July 2006. So far, the office has received 325 referrals from police departments all over the province. One hundred have successfully gone through the civil court process. The net proceeds of the 100 cases, which includes money, cars, jewelries and houses, totaled $7.94 million. The crimes were tied to marijuana growing operations, drug dealing, money laundering and investment scams. Six files from the VPD have concluded, totalling $624,000 in forfeitures.
 
The cases involved cash and cars, including a 1999 Mercedes Benz that sold for about $20,000. The property is sold at auction and the forfeiture office hires a realtor to handle the sale of a house. The seized cash helps fund the operation of the forfeiture office and is used to pay victims of crime, for example, who were bilked in an investment scam. The remainder of the cash is kept in an account and directed at crime prevention programs and community organizations which do work such as graffiti removal. Read more »
Syndicate content