Firefighters vs Cops: Striking fire officers soak PM office in Brussels

Seems that the firefighters kind of won this round, the police likely weren't used to dealing with such a well equipped bunch of demonstrators.

Punishment-by-process

So your house is being firebombed early in the morning by about 3 people in balaclava's, what would you do?


Ian Thompson was in that situation and used a legal handgun to fire warning shots that succeeded in driving the attackers away. He also called 911, apparently the cops waited 10 minutes down the road till he advised dispatch that the guns were put away. Although he was a tad busy putting out the fires with a garden hose. 
The Crown decided to charge with "Careless use of a firearm" However when the video taken by Mr Thompson home security system went on Youtube, the outcry from the public was loud and clear. Those charges were dropped, soon to be replaced with "Unsafe storage charges". Now in the midst of this trial the Judge has halted the proceeding while the Judge a, crown and defending lawyer sort out the Firearm Storage laws and precedents. So 3 experienced legal experts in the safe confines of a courtroom cannot understand a law, which a average firearm owner under attack , in the early morning is supposed to understand completely and act accordingly? 
I understand the need for the police to investigate the incident to determine the sequence of events. but it's clear the Crown through the courts wish to punish Mr Thompson for the act of defending his home, just in case any more of the peasants realize that those rights have never actually been taken away. My gut feeling is that the Crown will eventually drop the charges to avoid a precedent setting case that will further the right of self-defense. Please if you have not done so, read the links and then donate to his case. it's clear that the Crown hopes he runs out of money before the Crown loses the case. It's our job to make sure that does not happen. 


Thomson needs your help. Contibutions to his legal defense fund can be made via "Ed Burlew In Trust" at his office in Thornhill. 16 John St, Thornhill, ON, L3T1X8.

You can make a contribution on credit card by calling the office at (905) 882-2422.

Charges recommended against Kelowna Mountie

In case you have not been following the news about a Mountie kicking a individual in the face during a takedown, you can read the background here. The RCMP certainly are handling the PR side of this incident better than the Vancouver Airport Tasering affair. To their credit they immediately called in the Abbotsford police force to investigate. Those officers are recommending charges of assault against the police officer and based what I have seen on the video, rightly so. The person was complying with the officers instructions, just not as fast as they would like.
You can bet that at the very least this officers career in BC is done, even if he gets off the charge. He may also be facing a civil suit for damages. You can also bet that this video will be shown to new recruits as a prime example of how NOT to conduct an arrest under these circumstances.
It is interesting to note the officers response to the reporter about the call they had. Seems the information they got was not anywhere close to the truth. The fact that he had just removed a shotgun which was trigger locked should have been a clue that something was not right about the story (Most bad guys don’t trigger lock their guns)
I have to wonder though just how different the RCMP would have acted if they hadn’t been aware of this video, would it have turned into another attempted coverup until the video surfaced?

Over 375 people attended a protest rally outside of the detachment headquarters. I noted that many of them were middle age normal citizens and not your regular protest types. Video and news story of protest here.

Warning there is some blood shown in the video

This should prove to be interesting……

I'm hoping if the case against the Police and the Chief Firearms Officer is strong, that the Baders do not settle out of court. No doubt if the police think they are going to lose, they will scramble to offer a sweet deal with a non-disclosure clause. I admire anyone that wants to run a firearm business, because any misstep can have you and your family treated like a Mob hitman.

Gordon and Jane Bader were not in their South Surrey home when some Surrey RCMP officers and members of the Delta Police arrived with a search warrant and broke down the door.

The 68-year-old retired former Vancouver police officer and his 63-year-old wife were out having breakfast.

However, their son, 34-year-old Sylvan, a security guard, was home sleeping.

He was awakened and arrested at gunpoint.

It was about 8:30 a.m. on May 16, 2008.

When the parents returned around 9:30 a.m. they were arrested, too.

Around 11 a.m. the Baders' 25-year-old son Jared, a college student, arrived at the home and was arrested.

About the same time, the Baders' other son Travis, 32, a Ladner resident, was being arrested at the offices of Silvercore Advanced Training Systems, the weapons training facility operated by the Bader family since 1988 at 7198 Vantage Way in Delta.

Travis took over as president and CEO of Silvercore from his father, the founder of the company, in 1996.

After their arrests, all five Baders were taken to the Surrey RCMP main detachment, where they were kept in separate holding cells for three days.
The next month, the Baders were charged with multiple charges of possessing restricted firearms and ammunition, making or using explosives and other weapons-related offences.

The case never went to trial.

The charges were stayed by the Crown prosecutor's office.
Details of the raid and arrests are outlined in court documents filed in the Vancouver B.C. Supreme Court registry on behalf of the Baders by lawyer Cameron Ward.

The Baders are suing two of the Surrey Mounties and one Delta police officer involved in the raid, the provincial Solicitor General's office and the municipality of Delta, saying their rights were violated.

Unspecified compensation is being sought for alleged wrongful arrest, false imprisonment, trespass, assault and battery, negligence and malicious prosecution as well as loss of income, humiliation and distress.

Their lawsuit also names a Surrey firearms officer employed by the Canadian Firearms centre gun registry and licencing authority, saying he supplied false information to the police.
In response, lawyers for the firearms centre officer, the Delta Police, RCMP, solicitor-general and the municipality have applied to have the lawsuit dismissed, arguing the various officers involved were acting in good faith and their actions were legal and without malice.

No date for a court hearing has been set.

The rest here

Canadian police car chase

It's that time of the year again.......

Judge and Jury

Picture courtesy of Vancouver Sun


Hmm seems the old adage “Be careful of what you wish for, because you may get it” still has meaning today. The Police Union here in BC has declared that the new tough laws on drinking and driving are causing their members to spend to much time dealing with people that have had only 1 or 2 drinks and not dealing with chronic offenders. Seems the police are not enjoying being the judge and jury and taking the flak for their decisions.
This is what happens when you have laws driven by special interests groups using emotions as a guiding force.
For a law to be effective and focused, you need facts, hardcore facts with unbiased research to back them up. This takes time and politicians hate taking time to get all of the facts. Harder yet with a sobbing mothers telling you that you are a heartless beast for not enacting this law right away. But to have good law it must be well thought out, with a clear and achievable objective, able to withstand the hard cold light of logic and reviewed without emotion. Another aspect is the law of diminishing returns. At some point the cost of enforcement and suppression of civil rights outweighs the gain to society brought by the law. The reality here is no amount of law is going to completely stop people from driving drunk and people getting killed. We can reduce it, but never stop it. Humans just have to many variables for such absolutes.
The politicians have themselves, the police and ourselves in a pickle. Any attempt to reduce the law will cause a backlash with the special interest groups, while the media will enjoy splashing sensational headlines on front pages, which are great for selling papers but not great for solving our issues. As a firearm owners we have been warning about these types of laws and law making, now that it is beginning to effect the rest of the population all we can say is “We told you so”.

Police being paid to access the registry?

Is the Government paying for police to access the gun registry? Apparently an unidentified police officer has claimed that his department receives money every time they access the system. Hmmm very interesting, might have to ask pointed questions to some people and organizations. This is still a unconfirmed rumour at this point, you can see below a quote from a letter sent to a M.P. for clarification.



The second item which I would request clarification on is information I have received regarding the usage of the firearms registry. While I have no factual data regarding this, the source has been 100% reliable in the past.

I was told, that the ‘hits’ on the registry not only provide police with information but further are a source of revenue for these agencies.

It was explained to me, that the Liberal government of the day, created a fund which would financially reward policing agencies for accessing the database. As they were having serious difficulty getting cities and provinces to ‘buy into’ the registry, they would transfer funding to these agencies. My source believed the ‘hit funding’ was about $27.00 per call.

If in fact this is correct, it would go a long way to explaining the obsessive dedication that the Canadian Association of Chief’s of Police have for the database. It would also provide me with an explanation why the president of the association claims that the registry only costs 4 million per year (See posts below). I suspect that that is the funding the City of Toronto receives for utilizing the registry.

If the above is factual, the case could be made that the federal government is in fact paying the police to access the database. If this scenario was correct, it’s value as a crime fighting tool would seem to be less important than as a ‘off the books’ funding source.

Officer's survey finds 92% of police want gun registry scrapped

A police officer used an online survey open only to police officers to gauge their feelings on the gun registry. 92% of the officers polled (the type that go into the field and take the risks) rejected the gun registry as a waste of time. Read the rest below;

Constable Randy Kuntz, a 22-year veteran with Edmonton Police Services (EPS), says the survey he conducted last year should be embraced by M.P.s when they vote on Bill C-391 that advocates dispatching the registry. Kuntz, an Exemplary Service Medal recipient, hopes to expose the grave mistake that the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police (CACP) is making by supporting the registry.

"The CACP is not some mindless group of misguided men and women who strive to oppress," says Kuntz. "There are many things they do very well as a unit. They simply have this one matter very wrong. The idea that the firearms registry is necessary and useful is wrong. They claim that they speak for all police officers on this matter. I think I have shown that they don't."

Kuntz used a popular police magazine to query officers across Canada if they supported the registry as a useful working tool. While he is first to admit the survey is not scientific, he believes it closely reflects the current climate among his fellow officers.

He expected a couple of hundred replies, but of the 2,631 officers who responded from every province and territory, 2,410 said the registry is useless as a crime fighting tool and many believe it poses a danger to police.

"The firearms database shows registered firearms and their owners," explains Kuntz. "No telling where those firearms are actually located, it just shows the law abiding citizen who owns legal firearms. There is nothing that says the firearms have to be in the possession of the person to whom they are registered. I can loan a firearm to anyone who possesses a valid license for that type of firearm.

"A person can have a valid possession/acquisition license, but not have any registered firearms in his name," he adds. "So, no firearms are on the database associated to his address. But, he can borrow a firearm and have it in his possession. What good is the registry, then? In the above example, the police officer checks the person and sees he has no firearms registered to him – so does the policeman think there are no firearms? Probably. It's a huge mistake on the police officer's part, relying on a database for your safety. It's ridiculous."

Kuntz conducted the survey on his own because he was very concerned that officers could be killed if they relied on the registry data. He also believes the CACP is misrepresenting the facts by continually claiming that a massive majority of police officers support the registry. There is often a gulf between management and employee interests in any organization and police work is no different.

"The CACP tells the public that it is a necessary tool for law enforcement," says Kuntz. "It is not. It just gives the perception of that. It was pretty overwhelming that those who responded (to the survey) were against the registry. Most of the respondents were constables and sergeants/detectives – guys and gals with their boots on the pavement, so to speak. They're the cops that the public meets and deals with on a daily basis. I respect Chief Rick Hanson of Calgary Police Services. He took a stand against the CACP's position on the registry. It takes a lot of guts to face others of equal rank and say, ‘you are wrong.'"

While Kuntz suspects the CACP isn't deliberately trying to deceive the public, he hopes his survey results will send the chiefs and M.P.s an important message. M.P.s are voting on September 22 on an opposition-led motion that is poised to kill Bill C-391 even before it gets to the 3rd reading stage. Many pundits predict that the vote could be very close.

"I believe that the CACP believes they are looking out for us," he explains. "That's the scary part. The registry was touted as a public safety program. The problem is, the registry does nothing to improve anyone's safety and it has cost the Canadian public two billion dollars, plus millions per year to maintain. If such a wasteful program was proposed in the private sector, it would have never got off the ground in the first place."

During debates on Bill C-391, some police services members told the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security that police were being warned by superiors against speaking publicly against the registry. Meanwhile, Kuntz's fellow officers have cautioned him that his stance is likely to have a career-limiting effect. During his 22 years as a police officer, he has worked in the Intelligence Analysis Unit, Cold Case Homicide, Integrated Intelligence Unit with EPS and RCMP, Criminal Investigation Section, Driver Training, and he has been acting Detective/Sergeant.

"I have had an excellent career thus far in the rank of Constable," he says. "I made it clear to our Human Resources recently that I would not be participating in any future promotion processes. Some things are more important than my personal ambitions. This is one of them. It is something that affects all Canadians as it is our money funding this wasteful program."

He also provides some sage advice for new recruits: "If you rely on a computer database for your safety, you are an idiot. Learn to investigate using your observation and communication skills. We were pretty successful in doing that for 100 years prior to the registry."
via CSSA

Drop-in-crime stats mask darker factors

I think this article does a good job covering the subject. Many police forces stopped bothering with “minor crimes” and only responded to the major ones. In fact the Vancouver police took so much flak for not responding to break in’s where the bad guys had already left, they were forced to change their policies.
I also agree that population age effects crime rates, let’s face it older criminals just won’t be as active as younger ones. However the younger criminals today can be far more violent than the ones from the 60’s, not to mention more tech savy.
I also agree with longer sentences, a criminal in jail is not committing crimes on the outside and frankly people are tired of hearing that a criminal did something bad while on Double-double parole. In regards to rehabilitation of criminals, the success rates are not inspiring. I suggest that we spend our limited resources on the young people who are starting to go bad and stop them from going down the wrong road. We won’t be able to save all of them, but put them in a work/training camp and run them off their feet so they are to tired to get into trouble.