Enough is Enough!

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/159541/20110608/montreal-police-shooting.htm

This story exemplifies “trigger-happy” policemen, which our people are dealing with on a daily basis.  The police were called to the scene after receiving information that someone cutting open garbage bags and knocking trash cans over.  Why was this man cutting open garbage bags and knocking over trash cans?  According to the source from the local homeless shelter, this man collected cans and returned them in order to feed his family.  It is doubtful that these policemen will be held accountable for their actions.  Homeless people represent a voiceless, disenfranchised public who along with felons, are treated as an irrelevant constituency.  We already know that many homeless people are from vulnerable groups: oppressed minorities, war veterans, or mentally ill people.  In all cases, these are people who the government has maliciously neglected.  The manner in which the police killed this man is similar how they would treat a rabid animal.

This particular incident has only become newsworthy because a male nurse was also killed by a stray bullet during this incident.  If only a homeless man had been killed, it would not be causing as much fervor.  Today, there was a march in protest against police brutality that included several hundred people.  While it was primarily peaceful, there was a small group that separated and smashed some windows.  These misguided activists were not liberating property; only destroying it! We don’t endorse these kinds of ultra-leftist tactics.  These violent tactics alienate working class people and therefore lessen its ability to be a truly mass movement.

We salute the people of Montreal who marched to demand an end to police brutality!

‘Cruel’ racist jailed in sex assault

T.J. Turcotte had seen a man struggling with a young woman near 106th Street and 38th Avenue, forcing her toward Charles Anderson Park. He ran to get his brother at a friend's house, then they raced back to search for the attacker. The twins searched and interrupted a violent sexual assault that ended only when the rapist, Ian Drako Bruce, saw the twins approach. The rapist tried to run, but the brothers chased him, struggled with him, and finally pinned him to the ground until police arrived.

http://www.theprovince.com/news/Arson+attack+sophisticated+cops/2776511/story.html

Police are investigating whether neo-Nazis or white supremacists were behind an arson fire in the basement doorway of an Abbotsford anti-racist’s home.

Maitland Cassia, a spokesman for the Vancouver chapter of Anti-Racist Action, and a female friend escaped at 2:30 a.m. Monday from the rented Old Yale Road home after a neighbour heard a blast and alerted them.

Cassia helped organize a protest March 21 at New Westminster’s Braid SkyTrain station against a planned neo-Nazi rally.

Abbotsford police say they are aware that Cassia thinks he was targeted because of this. “We are chasing down all of the potential theories, motives and suspects at this point,” said Abbotsford Const. Ian MacDonald.

MacDonald said the APD’s major-crime unit has given the case “very high priority” because of the “sophistication” of the attack and because the fire “could have resulted in the loss of life.”

MacDonald said ” the fire had been set remotely through the use of a type of fuse that was several feet in length, to shelter [the arsonist] from the ignition point.”

The fire was quickly doused by the residents because the accelerant and detonating fuse didn’t reach its full potential, said MacDonald.

“I think [Cassia]’s feeling personally threatened because of his actions,” agreed Maryana Payette of anti-racism group No One is Illegal.

Fredy Villanueva with his parents, Lilian and Gilberto. Constable Jean-Loup Lapointe of the Montreal police shot and fatally wounded Villanueva in August 2008. He was 18.

Montreal blacks were four times more likely to be stopped by police

http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/Racial+profiling+alive+well+report+claims/2714476/story.html

Montreal’s annual St. Patrick’s parade isn’t only for the Irish. It’s become an inclusive celebration of diversity, political as well as ethnic. Try to imagine federalist politicians being received as courteously at the annual Fête nationale parade as sovereignists such as Gilles Duceppe are at the St. Patrick’s one.

But the St. Patrick’s parade has also become the pretext for a public drunk to celebrate the arrival of spring. This year, Montreal police said alcohol was a factor in the death of a 20-year-old parade spectator, Alex Hamelin, run over by a float after being seen drinking and then staggering beside the float.

Yet, while drinking and drunken behaviour were, as usual, common sights among the mostly white spectators at the parade, police also reported making only one arrest for a violation of the municipal bylaw against public drunkenness, while issuing several warnings.

Two police officers showed much more zeal on a summer evening two years ago in a park in Montréal-Nord, when they spotted a half-dozen young men, some of them Latinos, apparently violating another municipal bylaw, against playing dice.

Recognizing one of them as a member of a street gang, they demanded that he identify himself. Dany Villanueva, a Honduran immigrant, refused. And in the ensuing confrontation, Villanueva’s younger brother Fredy was shot by one of the officers and killed.

Whether racial or ethnic profiling by police was a factor in the death of Fredy Villanueva is a question that has been raised at the coroner’s inquest into the death.

And while the inquest continues, the Quebec human rights commission is conducting a consultation of its own on profiling, not only by police but also at school and in other public services.

Two weeks ago, it published a document on the subject (snipurl.com/v0464) containing testimony from several victims and witnesses of alleged profiling. The alleged victims of police harassment included black adults, professionals, women and children as well as young men.

And the anecdotal evidence of profiling of young minorities appears to be supported by a newly published statistical analysis (snipurl.com/v04gw, pp. 7-14).

The study, by CREMIS, a research centre affiliated with the Université de Montréal and the Université du Québec à Montréal, is based on court records and police reports.

It says that in 2006-07 on the island of Montreal, blacks between the ages of 12 and 18 were 21/2 times as likely to be arrested as whites in the same age group.

And the blacks were four times as likely to be stopped by police as the whites. In districts with small black populations, the ratio was seven to 11 times.

It’s not that blacks break the law more than whites, the study says. Rather, it’s that blacks are caught more often because they are under “over-surveillance” by police.

Blacks were far more likely than whites to be caught committing crimes while they were already being watched by police or private security. Whites were more likely to be caught only after police received a complaint or a tip or while they conducted a search after stopping someone for another reason.

Also, as in other cities in Europe and North America, police tended to be more present in areas where there are more minorities, and where there is more poverty.

In Montreal, police officers (nearly 80 per cent of whom live in predominantly white suburbs) were “worthy representatives” of a predominantly white society that discriminates against blacks in all areas. And police were responding to exaggerated public fears of crime committed by street gangs.

As a result, the study says, young blacks and their families, in turn, mistrusted the police – so much so that they might be less likely to call police if they themselves were victims of crimes.

Paul Boyd: Shot by Canadian police while on his hands and knees crawling.

Two years after the shooting death of Paul Boyd in the middle of Granville Street in Vancouver and the public finally has a decision about criminal charges against involved officers from the Criminal Justice Branch of B.C..

No charges, no trial, file closed.

This predictable outcome places the epic investigation of Mr. Boyd’s death from eight distinct bullet wounds directly in line with every police involved death ever in the history of British Columbia.

No criminal charges. Ever. Files closed.

Put out of your mind the following facts and you may have a chance of reaching the same conclusion as the CJB that the death of Mr. Boyd should not be put before a trial judge because there is no reasonable prospect of conviction for the involved officer. Note that these facts all come from the CJB summary of the incident provided to the media, not from the secret documents and reports that underlie the decision, many of which we may never see.

• Only one police officer, of the many who were on the scene during the incident, discharged a weapon against Mr. Boyd, and some of the involved officers apparently didn’t even deem Mr. Boyd to be a sufficient threat to require unholstering their guns;

• Police and civilian witnesses described the shooting officer as discharging at least four, but possibly five bullets into Mr. Boyd after Mr. Boyd was completely disarmed of his “bicycle chain” and after a fellow officer had yelled at involved officers to “hold their fire;”

• Police and civilian witnesses agree that the eighth and final bullet that hit Mr. Boyd hit him in the head while he was on hands and knees in the middle of the road;

• The shooting officer, whose version of events was given more than considerable weight by the CJB, gave a statement in which that officer said there were only four bullets fired (actual number: nine) and in which the officer said he or she believed Mr. Boyd was wearing body armour (he wasn’t) and standing almost fully upright when he or she shot Mr. Boyd in the head (not true).

Turn your mind away from all of these distracting facts and surely you’ll find yourself in the same position of the Criminal Justice Branch in finding that there was insufficient evidence to justify taking this police officer to trial. By ignoring these facts, you’ll see the obvious, that there is no reasonable prospect of conviction.

Don’t feel badly if you disagree with the CJB on first glance, as their conclusion took them two years of study and the advice of many experts to reach. A member of the public, overreacting to the notion of an unarmed man being gunned down on his hands and knees in the middle of the road at Granville and Broadway does not have the training or the education to be able to see through these confusing facts to the truth that such force is reasonable and not criminal.

To achieve the zen of the CJB about such facts, one must, as a CJB spokesman advised the media, “not focus narrowly on any particular portion of the evidence.”

Good advice, that.

http://www.vancouverobserver.com/politics/commentary/2009/11/10/shooting-crawling-dying-unarmed-man-head-equals-legal

Malcolm-Che salutes Jay Phillips!!!

B.C. hate crime attack posted on YouTube

``Once they figured out they had met someone who was not afraid they didn't know what to do. They were like little hyenas trying to dart in and out to engage the lion, but they wouldn't engage me one on one.''

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2009/07/06/bc-courtenay-hate-crime-arrest.html

One man has been arrested and more arrests are expected, RCMP say, following a vicious assault in Courtenay, B.C., that police believe was racially motivated.

Jay Phillips was attacked Friday in the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant by three young men. A video of the incident posted on YouTube shows Phillips, 38, fighting back as he’s surrounded by the trio. It’s not known who shot the video or posted it on the website.

Phillips, who is black, said the attack was unprovoked.

He said a truckload of men drove by and started shouting racial epithets. “We’re going to kill you, we’re going to lynch you — really vile stuff.”

Phillips said the three men, who appear to be in their early 20s, circled back and confronted him.

The men “got out of the truck, surrounded me, still calling me names, threatening me, threatening my family, saying this is our white town and you’re not allowed here — stuff like that.

“Then they all came at me and surrounded me.”

In a news release issued Monday, police said they are reviewing video evidence and questioning witnesses, but preliminary investigation indicates there may have been a racial element in the incident.

Phillips, who said he’s the target of racism on almost a daily basis, said he felt compelled to report this incident to police.

“There’s a lot of young kids of different races in this town and they may not have been as fortunate as me and I’d like to take care of these kids,” he said.

“I think everyone should be allowed to walk down the street with their head held up and proud of who they are. Everybody.”

“We say this is instigating cruel, unusual, degrading and inhumane treatment.”  Damn right it is!!!

Inmates go to court over toilet rights

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/inmates-go-to-court-over-toilet-rights/article1167759/