KUDOS TO BONG/MARIJUANA PROTESTER

Anybody still doubt that the war on marijuana is all about greasing the wheels of our judicial system? In other words keeping police, judges and lawyers employed and well paid? Think about it. Remove all marijuana offences whether using, possessing, selling or growing from the criminal code and boy will that ever free up the courts, and all the staff involved on our taxpayers dime to pursue other "anti-social' activities.

Jeffrey Shaver of Cambridge has pointed out the absurdity of our judicial system from top to bottom. Why did the Waterloo Regional Police bother to charge him for marijuana possession when he had a legal medical marijuana card on his person when arrested? After he protested in front of the police station while smoking marijuana he was charged again and then the charges dropped. His marijuana has since been returned from his second arrest but not from his first. That is why he was outside the Kitchener courthouse yesterday morning again smoking marijuana apparently without incident. Come on courts, police and prosecuters give your heads a shake. The clear and obvious near future is total decriminalization of marijuana plus this guy has a medical license to possess and use it. he has totally made you look like a..holes. Drop the remaining charge and return his property to him which you stole in the first place. The law truly can be an ass. See the article in today's Waterloo Region Record.

STUPIDITY & CRUELTY OF OUR JUDICIAL SYSTEM

Yesterday's Waterloo Region Record carried an article titled "Solitary confinement violates charter right to life: lawyer". Both the B.C. Civil Liberties Association and the John Howard Society of canada are delivering closing arguments to the British Columbia Supreme Court in a lawsuit against the Attorney General of Canada over the use of indefinite segregation in prisons. Quoting statistics the lawyers are advising the court of the numbers of prisoners who have committed suicide while in segregation across Canada. This also includes here at the Kitchener Prison for Women where Ashley Smith at the age of nineteen killed herself by strangulation while guards watched her. Various international groups and other countries have long banned indefinite segregation and or put severe limits on the time that inmates can be put in solitary confinement.

WRPS OFFICER ARRESTED FOUR TIMES SINCE THIS PAST JANUARY

Well it's probably pretty obvious that something is way out of whack with either this particular officer or with the Waterloo Region Police service or with both. Four times in the last eight months. Hmm let me think. I was charged eleven times in a row by the idiots in blue although only arrested twice I believe. When the smoke cleared I had one petty Trespass conviction, ten of the charges dropped and the Crown advised the Waterloo Regional Police in writing that they would no longer prosecute me on any trespass charges that the Regional Police laid on me. Kind of gives you an idea of the pettiness and stupidity the upper echelons of the WRPS are capable of, doesn't it?

Speaking of ingenuous don't you love the decency of the WRPS in not identifying the officer charged for the fourth time "To avoid identifying the victim". He's already been identified three times. Gosh whomever could it be?

It looks as if breaching court orders and terms of release seems to be the big problem. These factors figure prominently in proposed reforms of our court system and especially our bail system. Sometimes it appears as if the bail terms are essentially devised to be onerous and in order to make it next to impossible for the accused to comply with them. Bingo he gets rearrested. Is that the kind of crap that is going on here?

Waterloo Regional Police and Police Board, it is way past time to get your shit together. You are making laughing stocks of yourselves and very successfully bringing the administration of justice into disrepute. Last Saturday's Record carries the story titled "Police officer arrested four times in eight months".

LYING SCHOOL BOARDS & MUNICIPALITIES TAKE NOTE

Lily livered, wimpy bureaucrats working at public institutions do not have the right to ban or prohibit other people simply because those white collared, wusses are "afraid". This has long been the local School Board's game in spades. It especially works if the parent they don't care for is male. "Ooh we have an angry, agitated male saying mean things to us." It is their typical kind of crap.

Today's Waterloo Region Record has an interesting article titled "Court says ban from town hall property is unconstitutional". An upset Town of Fort Erie had a local and fairly loud male protester who was outside the town hall with a megaphone. Police were called and he was arrested and then banned from town property. An idiot Superior Court Justice upheld the ban last February and so the protester appealed to the Ontario Court of appeal and won. That Justice made it clear that the evidence of town employees who claimed to be afraid of the man was flimsy at best. The Justice also stated that "Violence is not the mere absence of civility". So here's the lesson WRDSB and local municipalities : Even lying about a citizen being "agitated" or "angry" isn't adequate reason to issue them trespass notices. In a nutshell WRDSB - go fuc. yourselves.

CORRUPTION LET ME COUNT THY MANY SPLENDERED FACETS

I admit it's not easy. When an individual or group have been caught red handed in behaviour that screams either dishonesty or corruption, it's difficult to look at them in the same light ever again. Whether the issue was the manufactured crisis around the Chemtura Public Advisory Committee, the park in Breslau, the gravel pit in Winterbourne, Election Financing cheating and coverups, you name it; trying to observe the latest issue and Woolwich Council's reaction to it objectively and with an open mind requires a serious effort.

The latest problem has been around for a long time. It has been kept below the radar and out of sight for a very long time. Woolwich Township have literally decades if not fractions of centuries experience in so doing. Uniroyal Chemical came to Elmira, Ontario in 1942. They had federal government contracts in hand to manufacture explosive stabilizers. Our town Council whether Elmira alone or as Woolwich Township incorporating Breslau, St. Jacobs, Elmira, West Montrose, Conestogo, Maryhill etc. managed to keep the imminent and obvious destruction of our drinking water aquifers on the back burner for almost half a century. That's world class politics and coverup my friends. The environmental stink and groundwater destruction behind the Breslube plant in Breslau was also kept very low key. The shut down of nearby municipal wells was attributed to the world's toughest bacteria in the Grand River rather than to industrial solvents and oils from Breslube. At one time they had P.C.B. contaminated oils floating on the water table behind their property. Again hardly made a ripple publicly.

The latest issue is methane production from the Bolender Park Landfill in and around two businesses and several homes. Rather than provide inexpensive methane warning devices to these homes and businesses, Council would rather negotiate privately with one of the businesses in order to put a new methane collection system on his property. All this at the same time as they are publicly lying and saying that there are no concerns. It's possible that they are telling the truth if they personally have no concerns for those at risk.

To date neither Council nor Staff have advised why they feel that everything is just dandy. I've seen the methane concentrations in the Conestoga Rovers Reports and they are above the 20% LEL (Lower Explosion Limit). To me they are rolling the dice and hoping for the best. Of course when their number comes up and there is an explosion they can do exactly the same thing they did when the wells became poisoned, namely obfuscate, deflect and distract.

SCHOOL BOARDS ALWAYS KNOW BEST

According to them at least they always know best. According to them they are fountains of knowledge, common sense, logic and clear thinking. They would also like us to believe that their first priority are the students with decency, respect, decorum, morals and ethics thrown in for good measure. Unfortunately absolutely none of this is true.

Our school boards are grossly politicized bastions of partisan politics. They are all about power, authority, prestige, political ladder climbing and money. Their sense of self-entitlement from the bureaucrats, trustees, administrators, consultants, union leaders and some teachers is second to none. They use and abuse their power and influence to protect their empires and will crush any legitimate opposition that is not as strong and unprincipled as they are.

Today's Waterloo Region Record expands upon their most recent inherent lack of common sense and logic. The title is "Police looking into teen's drowning". Yes the police are involved with the absurdity and negligence involved in the drowning of a fifteen year old boy on a school trip last month. No foul play was not the cause. Criminal negligence or gross stupidity however have not been ruled out.

The Toronto District School Board have apologized to the dead teen's family. This School Board's dysfunction is nothing new whether political infighting or Trustees alleging financial/electioneering wrongdoing by their colleagues. The Board had passed rules demanding that all students on the school trip to Algonquin Park must be able to pass a swimming test prior to the trip. The drowned teen had failed the test. Now we find that a grand total of fifteen of the thirty-two students had failed the swimming test. They all went anyways and one of them is dead.

All hail the Toronto District School Board.

ONTARIO POLICE FORCES ARE OUT OF CONTROL

Do not misunderstand me. I am not referring to the fine men and women in uniform whose attitude day in and day out is to serve and protect. I am referring to the administration and control of Ontario police forces by their Chiefs and senior administration officers. They have totally lost control when criminal actions by bad apples within their services are treated differently than criminal actions by members of the public.

Lawyer Julian Falconer, representing the teen victim and his family, stated "This represented in my opinion, a deliberate and intentional effort on the part of police authorities to conceal a crime by one of their own.". It appears that the black teen was walking with two friends in their own neighbourhood last December when confronted by an off-duty police officer and his brother. The teen was attacked and allegedly beaten with a metal pipe. His injuries are severe including loss of an eye and multiple broken bones.

The Special Investigations Unit wasn't notified which is supposed to be mandatory when there are serious injuries and or allegations of sexual assault by a police officer. Durham Police investigated and didn't even interview witnesses to the assault.

Now our very own Waterloo Regional Police are involved as they have been asked to investigate the assault on the black teenager.

A coalition of community and advocacy groups has stated that "The end result is a lack of confidence in the very public institutions that were created to keep us safe.'. Ontario's Attorney General stated that change is necessary to improve public trust in law enforcement. A thorough house cleaning is long overdue at the top if they are unwilling to rid their forces of occasional bad apples. It is beyond hypocritical if well liked and or connected officers keep their jobs after committing criminal offences while other less popular officers are drummed out of police forces using internal Police Act charges. This kind of internal discrimination and favouritism harms both the police force and the public and can no longer be tolerated.

The article describing this situation was in the Waterloo Region Record last Thursday titled "Agency asked to probe two police forces after officer charged in teen's beating".

GENDER DISCRIMINATION & HARASSMENT CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT AGAINST WATERLOO REGIONAL POLICE

Whu should this remotely be a surprise to anyone? The City of Waterloo went through something similar in the mid 90s. Yours truly along with a couple of other employees went to the Ontario Human Rights Commission in regards to the City of Waterloo's harassment and discrimination against female public works employees. The Commission took forever however when they were finally ready to go I received a phone call from the CAO of the City of Waterloo. He wanted to settle including a written apology and some back wages. I accepted. The female employee had been settled with long before.

So here we have yet another male dominated and longterm historically male occupation only. However decades ago our governments decided that women were quite capable of doing lots of formerly male only occupations. Factory work for women didn't really start until the Second World War when there was a shortage of men for the factories. Doctors, fire women, construction workers and police officers became open to both genders. Just as there are lots of men who would make poor police officers or construction workers similarly there are many women who would do poorly however many others, if given even half a chance, can succeed in these occupations.

Of course it's all too much of a shock for the hurt feelings of many rank and file as well as of many senior police officers. They go through the motions and give lip service support only to their female colleagues. Basically they sneak around doing their best to undermine and harass them into quitting. It has worked in that many women throw uop their hands and say to hell with the pack of you. They are there to work and to have a career not be punching bags for the well entrenched old boys club.

And this is why we are where we are today. Waterloo Regional Police have been far too long spending way too much taxpayers time and money pursuing that which has gone the way of the dodo. Women are in the work force and our society is the better for it. The Waterloo region Record article about this is dated August 16, 2017 and the title of the article is "Hearing on police class-action suit in September".

SHOULD MORE POLITICIANS BE DOING QUALITY JAIL TIME?

The answer is absolutely yes. Despite the fact that there is still no law either federal or provincial stating that politicians are not forbidden to lie; there are still ample reasons to send them to jail. Let's see gross negligence is a very good reason. The Flint Michigan disaster whereby young children were drinking lead contaminated tap water comes to mind. Some of those children will have permanently lowered brain function due to the lead ingested while both local and state politicians looked for cheaper, less safe sources of water. Here in Elmira, Ontario the politicians who knew that Uniroyal's chemicals including NDMA were in the groundwater for years prior to its' "discovery" in 1989 should have spent considerable time behind bars. Similarly the upcoming methane crisis from the Bolender Landfill in Elmira hopefully to date has not caused death or injury although all the evidence is not yet in. There have been a number of fires and personal injuries including death under somewhat strange circumstances at a business located beside the former Landfill. Woolwich Township staff and politicians appear to have been negligent in their handling of reports received from their consultants over a thirty plus year time period. Even when their consultants have advised action it has never had any sense of urgency or timeliness involved.

ARE ALL THE SCHOOL BOARDS HOPELESS?

Today's Waterloo Region Record carrys the following story titled "School boards can learn from "crisis"". It seems that the start of school year last September was even more eventful than usual across Toronto. The Ombudsman, Paul Dube, released a report yesterday on the mess in Toronto last September. It seems as if thousands of students were stranded and some even went missing when bus drivers en masse dropped young children off at the wrong stops. This included junior kindergarten students as well as those with special needs. Many parents were left with missing children for several hours.

According to the Ombudsman there were warning signs well ahead of the start of school indicating that new bus operators combined with new or different bus drivers had no idea where their routes were. It was a mess. The Ombudsman has suggested that this crisis could have been averted and hopes that other boards besides Toronto's two baords have taken note and gotten their acts together.

It certainly puts in context for me the dysfunction and incompetence of school boards who just love to blame parents for any educational flaws rather than looking at themselves. Low graduation rates and declining math scores on provincial tests may simply be the tip of the iceberg. Politics and politicians seem intent on buggering up just about anything they can get their hands on including partisan trustees and promoting the flavour of the month edubabble from bureaucrats and their educational consultants. These are not smart people at the top of school boards. They are manipulators and deceivers with too much status, money and power and too little real accountability or transparency.

CROWN & POLICE BREAK THE LAW IN ALBERTA

In Drumheller, Alberta a local politician got into trouble over her strong and rude comments on Facebook about two of her colleagues on local Council. The police showed up, charged and arrested her and put her in jail. The charge was a criminal charge namely Defamatory Libel, punishable by up to two years in prison. Realizing that she was facing a criminal record and a prison sentence she agreed to conditions which were backed up by a provincial court order.

Now here's the kicker. Section 301 of the Criminal Code regarding Defamatory Libel had been repealed twenty years earlier in Alberta as being unconstitutional. It has also been repealed in Ontario, Saskatchewan, Newfoundland, Labrador and New Brunswick. Section 301 had never been taken to the Supreme Court of Canada for them to determine its' constitutionality which is why the many provinces and territory have done so.

All of this begs the question as to how the police and Crown in Alberta allegedly didn't know that the law was unconstitutional. The author of this story Derek James, offered this comment: "This means that the Crown will still occasionally bring charges under Section 301- although only ever to shield public officials like politicians and police from criticism, never average private citizens.". This story was in the Waterloo Region Record on June 9, 2017 titled "Defamation law used to silence political speech?".

DO POLICE BULLIES CONTINUE UNTIL THEY"RE STOPPED?

Police brutality. It's never really stopped. Maybe it's no longer Standard Operating Procedure as it once was in some areas but nevertheless it continues at the very least on an individual basis by individual officers. The August 1, 2017 Waterloo Region Record published a story titled "Man assaulted by officer gets charge dropped". Judge Joseph Bovard stated in court that an assault by Officer Gill constituted a very serious breach of the suspect's rights and as a result the evidence against the suspect was thrown out. The Judge also commented negatively on the behaviour and conduct of the officer and his colleagues in court. The charge was related to drinking and driving and the police officer's illegal behaviour towards the suspect resulted in no evidence being available to the Crown. My question is besides the suspect walking is there any consequences for the officer? If not, including assault charges, then is it any wonder that this behaviour continues by some police offciers?

STRONG MESSAGE ABOUT UNLAWFUL CONDUCT SENT TO WATERLOO REGIONAL POLICE

James Lockyer, the lawyer for the biker improperly and illegally convicted on weapons charges, has stated that The Ontario Court of Appeal has sent both Waterloo Regional Police and other forces across Canada a "strong message". The message is that the courts will not tolerate either unconstitutional or illegal conduct by police forces. Waterloo Regional Police played fast and loose in searching private property without a warrant and then misled a judge into giving them a warrant for a second search. After that they back a third time and while they found weapons and other illegal goods all three searches were thrown out as evidence based upon the first illegal search and the followup lack of candor in obtaining a belated search warrant. This article titled "Freed biker's lawyer blast police" was published in yesterday's Waterloo Region Record.

Mr. Lockyer made it clear that the Constitution protects ALL Canadians from improper searches and seizure. Waterloo Region Crown Attorney Mark Poland stated that they are reviewing the matter in order to determine their next steps. An Application for Leave to Appeal could be sent to the Supreme Court of Canada although only 10% of those leaves to Appeal are successful. This is at least the third major black eye for our local police force this summer. At what point in time will an independent inquiry or investigation be called to look into our local forces internal problems and administration at the top levels?

IMAGINE THAT: OUR SENIOR WATERLOO REGIONAL POLICE LIED & BROKE THE LAW

The Ontario Court of Appeal is not amused by the behaviour of a senior investigating officer and his team. The Court indicated that Waterloo regional Police engaged in "systemic" misconduct in regards to a case that sent a Kitchener man to jail for eleven years. The title of the article in today's Waterloo Region Record is "Regional police, Kitchener judge erred in case that sent a Hells Angel to jail, court rules".

All convictions against Frank Strauss were overturned and the Appeal Court has ordered a new trial. He had been convicted based upon evidence from a second search of his property with a search warrant. The very first search had been conducted with no legal grounds whatsoever and hence no search warrant.

One would think by now that our Regional Police would have learned not to take short cuts when dealing with our local biker gang. Way back in the 70s they pulled similar stunts and worse which ended up with officers being demoted and Sid Brown the Chief being fired, albeit somewhat prematurely. That legal case went on for years and it gave police, police board and politicians all a black eye for a very long time.