Police squads bracing for personnel cuts after federal program expires
By The Canadian Press - Monday, February 18, 2013 - 0 Comments
MONTREAL – The windup of a federal program that was aimed at putting more…
MONTREAL – The windup of a federal program that was aimed at putting more cops on the street is threatening anti-gang squads, aboriginal police and could stretch existing police resources across the country, law enforcement officials say.
The Police Officer Recruitment Fund was set up in 2008 with the aim of adding 2,500 more police officers in Canada.
The federal government budgeted $400 million for the fund as part of its tough-on-crime agenda.
Provinces were given the responsibility of deciding how to spend the money and the two most populous ones got the biggest share, with $156 million going to Ontario and $92.3 million to Quebec.
In Quebec, several regional organized-crime squads were set up as well as Project Eclipse, a Montreal city police unit originally targeting street gangs which has since had its mandate widened to focus on organized crime. The force’s cyber-crime squad has also been beefed up.
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The real federalism problem with crime legislation
By Brendan van Niejenhuis - Tuesday, November 15, 2011 at 2:18 PM - 7 Comments
Provincial governments helped create the problems Ottawa’s tough-on-crime approach will exacerbate
Pawel Dwulit/Canadian Press
In November 1983, Elijah Askov and three others were charged in connection with a plot to extort money from a man who ran a business supplying exotic dancers to Ontario strip clubs. Their case was plagued by delays from the start; nearly three years after the men’s arrest, and two years after their preliminary hearing, Askov and his co-defendants had not yet had their day in court. The Supreme Court of Canada was eventually asked to interpret the Charter guarantee to “be tried within a reasonable time.” And in its then-controversial Askov decision, the Court put a stop to the proceedings, giving birth to the modern and frequently employed practice of throwing out criminal charges based on unreasonable delay.
That Askov didn’t mean an end to unreasonable delays makes it hard for the provinces to mount a credible case against the federal government as it proposes sweeping changes to the Criminal Code. The Conservatives’ controversial omnibus crime bill has sparked a flurry of attacks for its substance, including its introduction of American-style mandatory-minimum sentencing. Quebec, Ontario and now Newfoundland have also introduced a new ground of opposition—the impact the federal government’s “tough new measures” will have on provincial balance sheets. It’s not clear, though, why voters should believe Ottawa is doing anything worse than adding to a problem the provinces had a hand in creating. Continue…
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Too many cops?
By Ken MacQueen and Patricia Treble - Thursday, August 25, 2011 at 10:10 AM - 108 Comments
The crime rate is down but police forces are growing. We’re poorer as a result, but not necessarily any safer.
Ian Lindsay / Vancouver Sun
This spring, Tamara Cartwright dropped off an envelope at her local post office outside Lethbridge, Alta. A friend had sent her a jar of hemp-based ointment, so she replied with a thank you card, wrote her name and return address on the envelope and, in a decision certain to haunt her for years to come, enclosed four grams of her homegrown marijuana, enough for perhaps four cigarettes. On an April morning some days later she returned to the post office to pick up another package. Moments later, police pulled her over, handcuffed her, put her in a cruiser and hauled her off to the police station.
It made quite a spectacle, says the 41-year-old mother of four, who suffers from colitis and is one of more than 10,000 medical marijuana patients registered with Health Canada. “It was embarrassing,” she says. “I was still in my pyjamas.” She emerged four hours later with a trafficking charge for giving away those four grams.
Her charge is part of a recent marked increase in arrests for cannabis offences. Cannabis arrests jumped 13 per cent in 2010 to 75,126. Of those, almost 57,000 were for simple possession, a 14 per cent jump from the year before. (The statistics reflect cases where the arrest was the most serious charge a person faced, not the thousands more where a pot charge was tacked onto a string of more serious crimes.) The cannabis arrest rate is an anomaly at a time when the overall crime rate in 2010 fell to its lowest level since the mid-1970s.
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A tough-on-crime bill that goes too far
By the editors - Thursday, August 25, 2011 at 9:50 AM - 8 Comments
With Canada’s crime rate at its lowest since the 1970s, why is the government spending more money on throwing people in jail?
The Canadian Press/Jacques Boissinot
How tough is tough enough when it comes to crime?
A Maclean’s investigation this week by Ken MacQueen and Patricia Treble (“Too many cops?”) offers a surprising look at the unintended consequences of Canada’s recent tough-on-crime agenda.
The overall crime rate in Canada is at its lowest level since the early 1970s, and serious crime is similarly falling. This is good news, of course. And it may in large part be due to the fact that police staffing levels are at a 30-year high nationwide.
And yet MacQueen and Treble uncover plenty of statistical and anecdotal evidence to suggest it may be possible to have too many cops on the street. Beside the obvious budgetary issues, local constabularies around the country are spending a disproportionate amount of their time on increasingly minor offences in an apparent effort to keep busy. Drug possession and traffic violations appear to be the only significant growth areas in the national criminal portfolio.
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System overload
By macleans.ca - Thursday, July 7, 2011 at 11:35 AM - 12 Comments
The B.C. premier promised that rioters will be brought to justice. But that won’t happen.
Darryl Dyck/CP; Global News
In the wake of Vancouver’s riots, B.C.’s populist premier Christy Clark was quick to read the public pulse. “We will hold you responsible,” she said the morning after the mayhem. “You will not be able to hide behind your hoodie or your bandana.” A special team of experienced prosecutors, she said, would work with police to ensure swift, severe punishments for rioters—jail time, she made clear, sounding more like an Old West sheriff. The public roared its approval. The riots touched a raw nerve in Vancouver, where 19 of every 20 residents want the troublemakers prosecuted to the full extent of the law, according to a new poll by Angus Reid.
The reality of prosecuting the mess, however, will soon sink in. The premier is “out of touch with how our courts are operating,” Vancouver criminal defense lawyer Jason Tarnów tells Maclean’s. There is “no way” riot cases will get preferential treatment just because politicians are asking for it; that would be unconstitutional. Rioters will be processed by a justice system hobbled by judge, sheriff and prosecutorial shortages and a legal-aid system that no longer meets even basic needs, according to a recent report. “Justice will not be swift,” adds criminologist Robert Gordon, of Simon Fraser University. “This will be a long, drawn-out process.”
A week before the riot in fact, five Vancouver trials were ordered shut down after judges deemed courtrooms unsafe to proceed due to a shortage of sheriffs. More than 2,000 criminal cases, meanwhile, are at risk of being quashed over delays. In the past year, a range of cases, from drunk driving to drug dealing have been tossed because it took up to two years to get to trial. “It takes 12 to 18 months to get a single-day trial in Vancouver right now,” says criminal lawyer Michael Shapray. “What will happen if police suddenly lay 300 criminal charges? How are you going to find the judges, sheriffs and prosecutors for this?” In an eye-opening report released last fall, the provincial court warned that 17 new judges must be hired just to bring B.C. back to 2005 levels and slow the backlog. Instead, B.C.’s spring budget approved cuts totalling $14.5 million to the judiciary, court services and prosecution services. (In the wake of the riots, funding for sheriffs was quietly restored.)
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Why the Vancouver rioters won’t be punished
By Randy Kim - Tuesday, July 5, 2011 at 8:35 AM - 0 Comments
The B.C. premier promised that rioters will be brought to justice. But that won’t happen.
Darryl Dyck/CP; Global News
In the wake of Vancouver’s riots, B.C.’s populist Premier Christy Clark was quick to read the public pulse. “We will hold you responsible,” she said the morning after the mayhem. “You will not be able to hide behind your hoodie or your bandana.” A special team of experienced prosecutors, she said, would work with police to ensure swift, severe punishments for rioters—jail time, she made clear, sounding more like an Old West sheriff. The public roared its approval. The riots touched a raw nerve in Vancouver, where 19 of every 20 residents want the troublemakers prosecuted to the full extent of the law, according to a new poll by Angus Reid.
The reality of prosecuting the mess, however, will soon sink in. The premier is “out of touch with how our courts are operating,” Vancouver criminal defense lawyer Jason Tarnów tells Maclean’s. There is “no way” riot cases will get preferential treatment just because politicians are asking for it; that would be unconstitutional. Rioters will be processed by a justice system hobbled by judge, sheriff and prosecutorial shortages and a legal-aid system that no longer meets even basic needs, according to a recent report. “Justice will not be swift,” adds criminologist Robert Gordon, of Simon Fraser University. “This will be a long, drawn-out process.”
A week before the riot in fact, five Vancouver trials were ordered shut down after judges deemed courtrooms unsafe to proceed due to a shortage of sheriffs. More than 2,000 criminal cases, meanwhile, are at risk of being quashed over delays. In the past year, a range of cases, from drunk driving to drug dealing have been tossed because it took up to two years to get to trial. “It takes 12 to 18 months to get a single-day trial in Vancouver right now,” says criminal lawyer Michael Shapray. “What will happen if police suddenly lay 300 criminal charges? How are you going to find the judges, sheriffs and prosecutors for this?” In an eye-opening report released last fall, the provincial court warned that 17 new judges must be hired just to bring B.C. back to 2005 levels and slow the backlog. Instead, B.C.’s spring budget approved cuts totalling $14.5 million to the judiciary, court services and prosecution services. (In the wake of the riots, funding for sheriffs was quietly restored.)
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BQ amuse-bouche
By Colby Cosh - Friday, January 28, 2011 at 12:52 AM - 7 Comments
If you can read French or figure out Google Translate, you may enjoy the counterintuitive spectacle of the Bloc Québécois criticizing the Conservatives because their sissified lassitude on criminal sentencing guidelines has allowed a highly destructive criminal to go free.
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Law and Order: Criminally Shallow Intent
By Philippe Gohier - Tuesday, November 18, 2008 at 7:51 PM - 11 Comments
Mario Dumont can complain all he wants about having been publicly savaged by Chantal…
Mario Dumont can complain all he wants about having been publicly savaged by Chantal Hébert at the end of last year’s election campaign. He keeps proving she was right when she said he’s nowhere near having a coherent idea how to govern the province.Few would argue Dumont would have gotten as far as he did in the last election had Quebecers not collectively wet their panties worrying about immigration. Intellectual curiosity has never been the ADQ’s strongest asset, and the party’s newest blindfolded stab at relevance shows just how little Dumont and the gang have learned in their disastrous turn as official opposition. After getting everyone riled up about those gosh darn foreigners and their wacky religions in 2007, the ADQ now figures Quebecers should shift their focus to more pressing matters. If you thought, “it must be the economy, stupid,” you lose. The correct answer is pedophiles, drunks, and street gangs. (“What’s that you say? The chief plank in our economic platform makes no sense whatsoever? Quick, look over there! There’s a creepy-looking guy typing at a computer!”)
