Fatal crash

LAST week’s hit and
run tragedy in Surrey
surely must cause the
attorney general to re-
think his approach to
supposed non-violent
offences and the whole
issue of poiice chases.

Auto theft has become a
major crime problem in British
Columbia.

With over a 100% increase
over the past four or five years,
it has reached epidemic pro-
portions.

Instead of addressing the
problem with aggressive
enforcement action and back-
ing that up with a zero toler-
ance policy in courthouses
across the province, the AG
has declared it a non-violent
offence and insisted on alter-
native methods of sentencing
for the perpetrators, which
does not include jail -—- or any
sort of meaningful conse-
quence fur that matter.

Last week I told you about
how the AG is handcuffing the
police with new legislation
effectively preventing the cops
from being able to do many
aspects of their job.

The tragedy in Surrey

mailbox

ne

Leo
Knight

crime and
punishment

merely underlines how wrong
Dosanjh is (again) in aiming at
the police instead of the reat
problem.

Every day in Surrey and
Vancouver alone, almost £0
vehicles are stolen on average.
Every day. Toss in North
Vancouver, Richmond,
Burnaby, Coquitlam and, well,
you get the idea,

By and large it’s the same
people stealing, the cars over
and over and over again.

Oh sure, they sometimes
get caught only to get zipped
through the revolving doors
on the front of our courthous-
es.

The double fatal hit and
run in Surrey is a dircet result
of this broken system. Of the
three people suspected of
being responsible, two are
young offenders who cannot

High tax levels are
Sinking this couniry

Dear Editor:

Tewas truly intrigued by
Ken Timewell’s (Oct. 17) let-
ter on taxation in this country
and the logic behind it.

Winston Churchill stated
thar socialism was equality all

t — equality in poverty.
That's the kind of equality our
socialist friends in Ottawa and

. Victoria are driving us to.
~ > That's why: Canada’s and

B.C.’s economic policies have .

placed Canada at the. bottom
of the G7 group, sith the dis-
tinct: possibility of being dis-
placed by countries like Brazil
and, interestingly, Nigeria.

2 Canadians should also

note that. the recent throne.

specch .will_ do» nothing ta.

. Stanich this fiow of tax:blood.--

Upcoming tax. relic? Forget
it. . ¥¢’s all. window dressing
from: true dyed-in-the-wool
‘, socialist. Tax. on, oh Canada!
"(And spend! )
-> E would
Timewell that money flows
where it can receive the best
return.
‘When money. flows into a
. country or province (i.c.

David Neel
TH SH

remind. Mr. -

investment), jobs are generat-
ed, more people carn and
spend moncy and the general
standard of living rises. Thar
creates a better lite for ail.
More business people {cel
comfortable taking _ risks
because they sce a better
chance of a return and work-
ing people receive employ-
ment.

Does this make any sense
to anybody? Obviously not to
Mr. Timewell.

Lastly, 1 am so impressed
with Mr. Timewell’s penchant
and desire to be taxed that I
have decided to redirect my
Revenue Canads taxation
demands to him, so that he
can. happily pay the 60-plus
per cent of my moncy.-that the
government thinks it is. enti-
ted to. .

I urge all your readers to
do the same. I’m. sure Mr.
Timewell will gladly comply
in the spirit of equality that he
so passionately espouses.
Thanks Ken!

John Hamilton
North Vancouver
NHaimil!776@acl.com

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a symptom of s

be named because of another
ridiculous law.

They were arrested by
Surrey RCMP the day after
the fatal crash attempting to
steal vet another ear.

The third suspect, 19-year-
old Jeremy Matthew Coles,
finally surrendered to the
authoritics on Monday after
being sought by the police fol-
lowing the accident.

With a lengthy list of so-
ealled non-violent offences to
his credit, Coles now stands
accused of having the blood of
two innocent people on his
hands. One of whom was a
six-year-old boy, 2 mere child
on his way to school with his
dad.

In 1994 when auto thett
numbers began to rise, the
government took aim at the
police in restricting how they
conduct themselves when
chasing suspects.

Somehow, they reasoned
that if the police didn’t chase
the thieves, innocent fives
would not be lost in the occa-
sional coilisions that resulted
when the irresponsible car
thieves began doing crazier
and crazier things in the effort
to escape,

Now the punks do things

like taunt he police while dri-
ving stolen cars trying to incite
a chase.

And what happens?

Nothing.

The cops know there’s no
point in trying to stop the bad
guys. The chase will be called
off.as soon as they call it in by
a supervisor cognizant of the
rules stacked against the
police.

One Vancouver police
sergeant told me last week,
“It's real simple. If any of my
guys start chasing a car, as
soon as [ hear it on the radio,
1 shut it down. I don’t need
the prief.”

Now it’s really important
to note that the police were
not chasing the vehicle when it
hit chat motorcycle head-on in
Surrey, Ne amount of hand-
wringing and obstructing the
police by Dosanjh will change
thar.

Neither, I might add, were
the police chasing another
stolen vehicle earlier this
month when it ran a red light
at Cassia and Hastings and
creamed a horse trainer on his
way to Exhibition Park in the
carly hours of the morning.

One dead and one seriously
injured in that crash. The car

Wednesday, October 27, 1999 — North Shore News — 7

thief limped away and to date
has not been apprehended.

Where's the outery in these
incidents?

Had the police been chas-
ing these stolen vehicles, the
media would be setting their
collective hair on tire.

Three people dead in just a
couple of weeks and nobody
seems to have noticed this is
the direct result of the peticies
of the B.C. government.

Realistically, if one looks at
the numbers over the past 20
or so years, there are probabiy
as many, if not more, of these
types of incidents in which dri-
vers of stolen cars caused a
crash and fatally injured some-
one as when the crash occurs
while the police are trying to
apprehend the car thiet.

So where does our seli-pro-
fessed defender of public satety
tocus his attention? Not on the
thieves who are causing the
problem, but on the police
who are paid to protect the
public.

Does anvone understand
this lunacy?

If Dosanjh really wanted to
do something about all of this,
he would buck up the millions
of dollars needed to get a
notice chopper in the air over

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Annoyed by idiotic art

Dear Editor:

I have to commend Ms.
Hlana Mercer once again, this
time for her common sense
(Oct. 15) Fair Comment col-
umn about the idiocy at The
Brooklyn Museum of Art.

What's even more note-

What would happen if
some avant-garde artiste dis-
played, say, a = menorah
painstakingly modelled in
camel dung? I shudder at the
very thought... .

I am more and more
annoyed by the uccusations of

wortay than her devastating anti-semitism directed at any-

critique of the garbage pre-
sented as art is the closing

uote from Camille Paglia
about the double standard in
regard to Jewish and African-
American symbols.

body who dares criticize any-
thing Jewish or Israeli ‘(or
African-American, for that
matter), Ie. seems that
Orwell’s famous
applies here in full force: some

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North Vancouver
rapier@direct.ca”

*

ick justice system

the city.

This allows the police to
conduct chases in a more pas-
sive manner while still moni-
toring the target vehicle in
order to use methods such as
spike belts to stop the idiots
before someone is killed.

He would also tocus his
attention on ensuring there are
real, not imagined, conse-
quences for the perpetual car
thieves. And please, I don’t
want to hear the argument
that the judiciary is indepen-
dent and, yadda vadda vadda,
they are sentencing within the
range prescribed by the
Criminal Code.

The reality is our system is
so broken that judges have no
confidence that any sentence
they impose will be carried
out. Which is the specific and
direct responsibility of the
attorney general’s ministry.

People are being killed and
the police are virtually power-
less to stop it.

The AG is t00 busy with
politics to do his job.

The media at large are
silent on the subject.
Something is very wrong with
this movic.

— lknight@direct.ca