Cdn-Firearms Digest Monday, February 18 2008 Volume 11 : Number 226 In this issue: Man shot dead outside Brampton club- TheStar Paintings stolen in $163M heist reported found- AP/TheStar Whistleblower ex-cop arrested on contempt charge- TheStar Editorial: Slippery slope in court ruling- TheStar Column: Watching events unfold from inside a lockdown MOVIES Hog farm to be scoured for explosives- Winnipeg Free Press ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2008 16:25:19 -0600 From: News@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca Subject: Man shot dead outside Brampton club- TheStar Man shot dead outside Brampton club http://www.thestar.com/News/GTA/article/304591 Feb 18, 2008 12:36 PM Jeffrey Todd Staff Reporter A 26-year-old man from Malton is dead after he was shot at the rear entrance of a Brampton nightclub on Monday morning. The shooting happened around 2:20 a.m., near Kennedy Rd. N. and Queen St. E., as he leaving the Trilogy Nightclub. Police found the victim near the back of the club with several gunshot wounds to the upper chest. He was taken to hospital but died around 7:30 a.m. One witness, a 29-year-old accountant from Toronto, said he was dancing with his cousins when a fight broke out between six or seven people. The bouncers threw four of them out of the club, he added. The accountant said as he was leaving club, crowds gathered around the police tape. "To be quite honest we didn’t know if the person was dead or alive,” he said. “We just saw someone laying on the ground, and it looked like he’d been shot." Police are searching for a small white car and a green SUV that were seen speeding away from the nightclub right after the shooting. Police are asking anyone with information to come forward. Andre Alexander Harrisingh , 26, of Malton, is Peel region’s fourth homicide victim of the year. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2008 16:55:47 -0600 From: News@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca Subject: Paintings stolen in $163M heist reported found- AP/TheStar Paintings stolen in $163M heist reported found http://www.thestar.com/News/World/article/304628 Feb 18, 2008 05:07 PM THE ASSOCIATED PRESS ZURICH, Switzerland–Swiss media reported today that paintings stolen in one of Europe's largest art thefts have been discovered in a parking lot in front of a Zurich mental hospital. The area around the Psychiatric University Clinic was closed off Monday evening and Zurich police spokeswoman Judith Hoedl said that a suspicious vehicle had been found. She declined to say whether it was connected with the Feb. 10 robbery from a Zurich museum. The stolen works by Cezanne, Degas, van Gogh and Monet from the private E.G. Buehrle Collection are worth about $163 million. Local TV station TeleZuri quoted a witness as saying that the car contained three paintings bearing the name of the museum. Among the pictures was Claude Monet's Poppy field at Vetheuil, the witness said. Local radio station Radio 24 also reported that the building supervisor at the hospital found the paintings in an unlocked car. The clinic is only a few hundred metres from the museum. The area was cordoned off by police and a switchboard operator confirmed that the police were there, but added that she was not allowed to say what was happening. Police took the suspicious car – a white midsize sedan – away after dark on a tow truck. The other pictures stolen were Edgar Degas' Ludovic Lepic and his Daughter, Vincent van Gogh's Blooming Chestnut Branches and Paul Cezanne's Boy in the Red Waistcoat. Hoedl said police refused to give out any more information before Tuesday so that they could examine everything carefully. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2008 16:50:59 -0600 From: News@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca Subject: Whistleblower ex-cop arrested on contempt charge- TheStar Whistleblower ex-cop arrested on contempt charge http://www.thestar.com/News/Ontario/article/304606 Website Video Content VIDEO: Ex-officer arrested on contempt charge Feb 18, 2008 02:38 PM Dirk Meissner THE CANADIAN PRESS DUNCAN, B.C.–A former Ontario police officer who uncovered allegations of a pedophile ring in eastern Ontario was arrested peacefully at his Duncan, B.C., home on a contempt of court charge Sunday as his wife and three teenage daughters stood by crying and more than 100 people vowed to continue support his attempts to speak for the silent victims of sexual abuse. It's not often police officers arrest one of their own, but that's what happened when Perry Dunlop was placed in the back of an RCMP cruiser and taken to a holding cell at the North Cowichan RCMP detachment. RCMP officers gave Dunlop the option of flying back to Ontario on his own to face sentencing on Wednesday in Toronto for the contempt charge, but the former Cornwall police officer refused, forcing the Mounties to arrest him. Dunlop was found guilty of contempt last month for refusing to testify at the Ontario public inquiry looking into how authorities dealt with the allegations of a pedophile ring in the Cornwall area. The more than 100 people who gathered outside the Dunlop home in Duncan, located about 60 kilometres south* of Victoria, chanted "We love you Perry," and "We support you Perry," as he was placed in a police cruiser. Many carried placards, one said "Pedophiles Go Free, Whistleblowers Like Perry Go To Jail." Many power poles in the Duncan area had signs that said, "B.C. Loves Perry." Others said they were shaken witnessing Dunlop's arrest. "They came out here without a warrant to arrest him and we witnessed that he was told and asked to get into the cruiser without a warrant being shown to him," said Duncan resident Evelyn Beaveridge. "It means they could come into anyone's home, yours, mine and ask you to step into the police car without a warrant for your arrest. This isn't right." Until now, Dunlop has refused to testify at the public inquiry, saying he's lost faith in a justice system that may put him in jail. His eldest daughter Marlee, 18, said it was emotional watching her father, who has always fought for justice, being arrested. "There were so many people here today giving us support," she said. "This is just the beginning, you haven't seen nothing yet. He was arrested today for doing the right thing. He's in the back of the cruiser as we speak." His wife Helen waited outside the North Cowichan RCMP detachment in Duncan, where her husband was in custody. "I just want him to be safe," she said "They gave him a blanket. He's not talking". She said she wasn't able to speak with her husband at the station because the custody area does not have a space for visitors. RCMP told her they would inform her when Dunlop was to be escorted to Ontario in a situation she called "absurd". RCMP officials at the North Cowichan detachment did not answer calls to comment on Dunlop's arrest. Dunlop spoke to supporters prior to his arrest. He said he was waiting for the police to arrest him. "I'm not running," said Dunlop as his supporters cheered. "I stood up years ago to do the right thing. I believe every Canadian I talk to tells me they support me." Dunlop – who has been credited with bringing to light dozens of allegations of historical sexual abuse in the Cornwall area – said earlier he had no intention of returning to the inquiry. Dunlop was a Cornwall police officer in 1993 when he came across documents showing one alleged sexual abuse victim had received a $32,000 payout from the Alexandria-Cornwall Roman Catholic Diocese. The fallout from that discovery would eventually lead to the Ontario Provincial Police launching its four-year Project Truth investigation into abuse allegations. Fifteen people were charged under Project Truth, but only one person ever served any jail time. - -- -- * Duncan BC is about 50 kilometres from both Victoria to the south and Nanaimo to the north. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duncan%2C_British_Columbia - -DRGJ ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2008 17:05:03 -0600 From: News@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca Subject: Editorial: Slippery slope in court ruling- TheStar Slippery slope in court ruling http://www.thestar.com/comment/article/304099 Feb 18, 2008 04:30 AM When does credible evidence of a serious crime become so tainted by police misconduct that it should be tossed out of court? That was the central question before the Ontario Court of Appeal in a controversial decision last week that pits society's interests in prosecuting crimes – in this case, trafficking of a large quantity of cocaine – against the constitutional right of individuals to be free from unreasonable searches and arbitrary detention. The case revolves around Bradley Harrison, who along with a friend was pulled over by OPP Constable Brian Bertoncello while driving near Kirkland Lake in 2004. At trial, Bertoncello said he decided to stop Harrison's SUV because it was missing a front licence plate, even though he quickly realized the vehicle was registered in Alberta, where front plates aren't required. He also said Harrison was not driving in excess of the speed limit. What was Bertoncello's reason for nonetheless stopping a driver who apparently was doing nothing wrong? He had turned his emergency lights on, and felt it would reflect badly on his "integrity" if he didn't follow through. Despite the fact he had no reason to stop Harrison in the first place, Bertoncello ran his name through a police database and discovered his driver's licence had been suspended. Bertoncello arrested Harrison and then told him he was going to search the SUV for his licence. But ignoring the most obvious place to look – jackets and clothes on the back seat where the licence was eventually found – Bertoncello went straight for two sealed banker's boxes he had noticed in the rear cargo compartment. Inside, he found 35 kilograms of cocaine, with an estimated street value of between $2.4 million and $4.6 million. At trial, the judge ruled Bertoncello had clearly breached Harrison's Charter rights. The judge found the reasons Bertoncello gave in court for stopping the SUV "contrived," his explanation for the search "somewhat incredible," and his conduct "brazen and flagrant." Although the trial judge found the violations to the Charter of Rights to be "extremely serious," he nevertheless admitted the cocaine as evidence on the ground that the constitutional breaches "pale in comparison" to the alleged crime. Harrison was convicted of trafficking. In a 2-to-1 decision this week, the Court of Appeal upheld the lower court's decision to admit the cocaine into evidence. In the majority judgment, Associate Chief Justice Dennis O'Connor and Justice James MacPherson found that the Charter breaches committed by the officer, while serious, were not "egregious." They also argued that "a reasonable member of the community could very well find that excluding from evidence such a large quantity of drugs as a result of the police action in this case would bring the administration of justice into greater disrepute than admitting the seized narcotics." Society has a strong interest in keeping cocaine off the streets. But it also has a strong interest in ensuring police do not abuse their considerable powers, no matter how desirable the outcome. In upholding the trial judge's decision to admit evidence obtained through deliberate police misconduct, O'Connor and MacPherson have sent a troubling message that courts can overlook flagrant Charter breaches by police officers if an offence is serious enough and the evidence reliable. The logical extension of this ruling that the police will henceforth feel less inhibited about compromising the Charter rights of suspects. A strong dissenting opinion from Justice Eleanore Cronk is more convincing to us. Cronk argued that her two judicial colleagues unduly minimized the seriousness of Bertoncello's misconduct. She also concluded that "where the evidence was obtained as a result of serious and deliberate police misconduct ... respect for the values enshrined in the Charter must take precedence and the court must dissociate itself from such misconduct." Under the circumstances, Cronk concluded, admitting the tainted evidence would bring greater disrepute to the justice system than excluding it. "To hold otherwise, on the facts and in the circumstances of this case, would invite the disregard of Charter rights by the police, with an unspoken `assurance of impunity,'" she wrote. No one likes to see criminals walk free. And there may be cases where evidence should be admitted, despite inadvertent or minor violations of a suspect's Charter rights by police. But where police have flagrantly violated the Charter in the gathering of evidence, the ends should not be allowed to justify the means. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2008 17:19:53 -0600 From: News@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca Subject: Column: Watching events unfold from inside a lockdown SHERIDAN COLLEGE Watching events unfold from inside a lockdown http://www.thestar.com/comment/article/303750 Feb 15, 2008 04:30 AM Andrew Mitrovica It was the tremble in her voice that suggested we were in trouble. It was Friday afternoon and I was a step away from bounding out of a large office at Sheridan College carrying a bag brimming with handouts and lecture notes headed to my last journalism class of the week when the drama began. "Attention. Attention," a voice reverberated through the sprawling campus in Oakville. "This is a lockdown. This is not a drill. Go to the nearest room and remain there until further instruction." The anonymous official was deliberate and firm but she betrayed a hint of nervousness fuelled, I suppose, by adrenaline. It was the kind of nervousness that instantly signalled this was not a routine drill students and professors endure from time to time but a real, unmistakable threat. I stopped and turned to two colleagues standing nearby and muttered: "This sounds serious." It was. The nature of the threat we faced revealed itself in many ways over the next two hours. Halls usually filled with boisterous students and faculty quickly went silent. Then, I watched the first of many police cruisers with their amber emergency lights twirling, barrelling toward the college from several directions. Students milling outside the building I was holed up in were being ordered to a perimeter police set up hundreds of metres away. As the scene unfolded, unsettling thoughts and images of the inconceivable massacres at Columbine High, Dawson College and École Polytechnique flitted through my mind. My mood darkened even more when tracking dogs and the police tactical squad – with their black, high-powered weapons drawn – purposely moved throughout the college, when everyone sealed inside was likely seized by an impulse to get out. I worried about how many of my young students were frozen by worry and fear on the other side of the campus – waiting for me to arrive – in a room at the end of a long hallway with only one way in and out. I felt guilty for not having arrived in class soon enough to help shepherd them through the crisis. As a father of two young girls, I worried about how the scores of children at the college's daycare centre and their caregivers were managing at a moment when their happy play was interrupted. I strained to listen for any sign that those unspoken fears were being realized. I called some media contacts to learn more, but the ominous reports of camouflage-wearing suspects and weapons were confusing and uncorroborated. I called my wife to reassure her and myself. If the day turned violent I had planned to retreat with my two colleagues to a small anteroom inside the large office where we anxiously waited, trying to relieve the escalating tension, unsuccessfully, with gallows humour. Other students and faculty, I learned later, had made their own impromptu plans to avoid disaster. Some shielded themselves under desks. Others barricaded doors with chairs, desks or anything else at hand. Classroom lights were turned off. Students and professors sought and received reassurance and comfort in each other and by making furtive phone calls to loved ones outside. All the while, the anonymous voice kept repeating her now familiar and chilling refrain: "This is not a drill." When the college president finally sounded the all-clear, I met some of my students as we emerged from our hiding places relieved and safe, but perhaps not entirely sound. I stopped briefly to speak to two students. One acknowledged me with a half-hearted smile. She was not in a mood to commiserate and was clearly anxious just to get home. The other student was silent, her face drained of the vibrant colour and energy of youth. Her shocked expression seemed to me to capture the essence of what many of us at Sheridan College experienced that Friday – a feeling that others, particularly in some media accounts of the day's traumatic events, regrettably sought to minimize. College administrators, security staff and local police forces rightly responded with swift and decisive action after a professor and several students reported seeing a man carrying what they believed to be a long-barrelled gun. Thankfully, it was a false alarm. The gun turned out to be a microphone stand. The deeply painful emotional and psychological residue of that trying day will, I suspect, linger for some time. But the encouraging and heartening aspect of working at Sheridan College is that it is indeed a community. And this past Monday, students, faculty and staff walked into the school together. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2008 17:58:32 -0700 From: "Bob Lickacz" Subject: MOVIES I watched a movie today on the boob tube. It had a classic good guys / bad guys gun fight. The first thing that struck me was that all of the guns used, seemed to have unlimited capacity magazines. For all that shooting, there were no scenes where any of the combatants reloaded their guns. Another thing I noted was that the bullets fired, had wildly varying energy levels. For example the bad guys could shoot through an engine block with a shotgun slug, but could not penetrate a measly sheet of tin, with the same gun. Another funny thing I noted was that all of the exiting bullets created concave exit channels. All of the wounds suffered produced drastically little damage. There was no evidence of guts hanging out of abdominal wounds (with shotgun slug rounds). Center fire rifle rounds did not cause any skull quadrants to disappear. There didn't seem to be any recoil with any of the guns fired. In the middle of the movie, hundreds of rounds were fired without a single hit to any of the combatants. Sure there were several instances of bullets hitting objects beside or under the good / bad guys, but no direct hits for all that ammo fired. At the end of the movie, accuracy of the good guys improved markedly. I found it particularly odd that the good guy (Mel Gibson) could create a happy face in a paper target, with a handgun,at 25 yards, but couldn't hit a man at 10 to 15 yards away (at least in the beginning part of the movie). Now you might be wondering what the purpose of this posting is. Well the point I am trying to make is that the movies seem to be terribly, hopelessly inaccurate with respect to the portrayal of firearms. I think this inaccuracy extends itself to the thinking that young kids have as they think of using firearms. The television makes a huge impact on people, in my opinion. This is, I think, one of the reasons why we seem to have so much mindless gun violence. Once you pull that trigger, the bullet is gone and you can't call it back. If movies were more accurate in the portrayal of firearms, perhaps one or two of these young hoodlums would think before they demand respect by pointing a firearm at someone. I still have some photos that Dr. Mike had once posted. I think that pictures like these should be part of all gun safety courses. "I'll be back" Bob Lickacz ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2008 19:03:03 -0600 From: News@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca Subject: Hog farm to be scoured for explosives- Winnipeg Free Press Hog farm to be scoured for explosives http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/story/4127691p-4721280c.html Teen hurt in blast at former air force base Mon Feb 18 2008 By Steve Rennie OTTAWA -- A hog farm on a former air force base in southern Manitoba could be laden with Second World War-era explosives, and the federal government wants to hire someone to scour the area for any remnants. The government issued a request for proposals last week for survey and clearance work at the former Canadian Forces Base Rivers, roughly 50 kilometres northwest of Brandon, after a freak explosion disfigured a 16-year-old boy. Matthew Dickenson was mowing corn stalks last spring near an abandoned runway when he ran over a "pyrotechnic item" that caught fire, says a Defence Department report. "While trying to extinguish the fire, the individual saw a softball size item, which subsequently detonated in his face." Dickenson, now 17, was airlifted to a Winnipeg hospital, where doctors induced a week-long coma to help him through the pain. He spent weeks in hospital, getting treated for lacerated tendons in his left forearm and extensive burns to his face and neck. His face still bears scars from the explosion, and doctors say there's not much else they can do to repair the damage. "I'm kind of mad this happened, but I can't really do anything about it now," Dickenson said. He has since returned to work on the farm, but admits he's still a "little leery" of what lies beneath the field. The accident prompted a sweeping search for so-called unexploded explosive ordnance, or UXOs -- military jargon for weapons that have yet to detonate. The report says investigators later found what they believe are remnants of six M23 white phosphorus igniters, used to detonate smoke bombs and the napalm fillers for fire bombs. An aerial view shows the abandoned landing strip forms a triangular shape. The rest of the former base has become farmland, which is in the municipality of Daly. The base opened in 1942 as a training centre for pilots and has gone through several incarnations, from a helicopter school to an industrial training centre for the province's aboriginal peoples. The federal government sold the land to a hog farm operation in 1988. In a brief telephone conversation while grinding pig feed, farm owner Larry Friesen said he's not worried about finding explosives on the land. "No -- I've been farming it for 20 years," he said. Lorne Green, the municipality's chief administrative officer, said concern rippled through the bedroom community of 860 after Dickenson's accident. But he said the Defence Department did a "real good job" of assuaging fears. "Basically, they're saying this is a very, very rare occurrence. Explosive things weren't kept on the base," he said. The Defence Department report says there's a low risk of encountering another UXO on the former base. "We haven't found any records or identified any physical indications that would lead us to believe that former CFB Rivers has been used as a firing and-or bombing range," it says. But archival records indicate "explosives and munitions" were stored at the base before being sent to other locations, the report adds. "In some cases, they (explosives) could have been disposed on site." The Defence Department hired a contractor in 2005 to identify locations across Canada that potentially contain explosives. The contractor identified 731 sites, although Fran MacBride, the Defence Department's UXO program manager, has said there could be more. Last month, the department began sifting through archival records from Indian and Northern Affairs and National Defence, conducting airborne geophysical surveys and interviewing local residents to determine which sites actually contain explosives. The estimated value of the contract to survey and clear the former CFB Rivers is $100,000. Neither MacBride nor other Defence Department officials responded to calls for comment. - -- The Canadian Press © 2008 Winnipeg Free Press. 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