BC

The Muzzling of a Cop

Submitted by Jacob Hunter on Thu, 03/04/2010 - 10:29am

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.

Prostitutes peddle co-operative brothels to protect sex workers

Submitted by Nicole Seguin on Thu, 02/25/2010 - 1:23pm
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.
 

4,000 march for missing women

Submitted by Nicole Seguin on Mon, 02/15/2010 - 9:26am
'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.

Vancouver's real world,' outside Olympic bubble

Submitted by Nicole Seguin on Fri, 02/12/2010 - 12:36pm
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."
 

Downtown Eastside women to greet visitors

Submitted by Nicole Seguin on Tue, 02/09/2010 - 9:37am
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.

License to steal

Submitted by Kirk Tousaw on Sun, 11/29/2009 - 3:06am
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.

Kelowna licensed medical cannabis user detained

Submitted by Kirk Tousaw on Mon, 11/23/2009 - 2:53pm
http://thefreshscent.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/marijuana-arrest1.jpgDon Pio says he spent two hours in custody for possessing marijuana he depends on for his health.

Pio, 35, says he has a medical condition that requires him to smoke pot every 40 minutes or so. He had marijuana on his breath when he followed his wife into Kelowna Law Courts on Friday – an odour that landed him in handcuffs on the floor of a sheriff‘s van and later in a jail cell.

“It was harsh, man. The worst morning of my life. I have no (criminal) record,” he said on Sunday.

“They arrested me for smelling like pot.”

No medication controls his shaking and nausea better than cannabis, Pio said. Last December, Health Canada granted him a medicinal-marijuana card based on his doctor‘s prescription. The document, which features Pio‘s photo, name and address, permits him to use cannabis to suppress his symptoms.

City of Surrey wants access to private medical records

Submitted by Jacob Hunter on Mon, 09/14/2009 - 3:19pm

Surrey scrutinizes medical marijuana sites

Council asks where legal pot is grown to ensure homes properly modified

The City of Surrey wants to know which of its residents have licences to grow marijuana for medicinal purposes.

Surrey Coun. Marvin Hunt pitched a resolution last week to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities asking the federal government to inform cities when medicinal pot licences are approved.

This would allow municipalities to pinpoint where the pot is being grown and ensure homes are properly modified, he said.

“We will make sure they get the proper permits and inspections so the place won’t be a fire hazard for them or anyone else,” Hunt added.

The resolution was made on behalf of B.C. fire chiefs, who argue medical marijuana growers often alter wiring and make structural changes to their homes before starting their growing operations.

Vancouver's Drug czar slams Harper gov't as he exits to 'next adventure'

Submitted by Jacob Hunter on Thu, 09/10/2009 - 9:35am

Aims to shape wider policy

By Andy Ivens, The Province

The author of Vancouver's ground-breaking Four Pillars drug strategy criticized the federal government's "utterly failed" approach to drug use in his resignation notice this week.

Donald MacPherson said in an e-mail Tuesday to city staff: "[T]he approach to the drug problem that we have in Canada . . . [a] war-on-drugs approach has utterly failed over the past 40 years and must come to an end.

"The emperor truly has no clothes in this case," said his e-mail.

Legalize it, tax it, forget about it

Submitted by Jacob Hunter on Fri, 09/04/2009 - 10:16am

Brent Richter - Coast Reporter

Sechelt – The provincial budget has come down and the message is clear: brace for deficit spending. It’s not the spending I’m worried about so much as I am paying for it later.

Our neighbour three doors down, California, is an even worse financial spot than we are. So much so Gov. Arnold Schwar-zenegger’s office is issuing IOUs to state employees instead of pay cheques and has opened up a Twitter page to collect ideas from the public on how the government can raise money.

Desperate times.

The response was clear, though. “Legalize, regulate and tax marijuana,” was one of the most common responses.

Desperate measures.

But financial desperation shouldn’t be the only criteria to make governments re-evaluate their stances on pot.

The lose-lose situation we are now in when it comes to drug enforcement is only benefiting organized crime groups. They enjoy a monopoly they are willing to fight and kill for.

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