(This
column was published in the North
Shore News on
Oct. 21, 1998)
Futility marks fight against crime
By Leo Knight
LAST
week a court in Toronto heard the first of the details in the
case against the two accused killers of Detective Constable
William Hancox, the Metro Toronto police officer slain in
August.
Hancox
was working a plainclothes surveillance operation on active
burglars. He stopped for a pop at a convenience store when he
ran into a situation he was unprepared for. He paid with his
life.
What
happened on that night remains unclear. What did become clear in
the Toronto courtroom is another blatant example of a justice
system gone mad.
One
of the two females accused of the crime, Mary Barbra Taylor, 30,
has -- are you ready for it -- 71 criminal convictions in her
adult life.
No
that's not a misprint. This amounts to roughly one conviction
every two months since she turned 18.
Needless
to say this doesn't include all those times she was arrested and
not charged, or charges were dropped, stayed or otherwise plea
bargained into judicial oblivion. No, these are just the
convictions.
No
shrinking violet our Ms. Taylor either. The convictions run the
gamut from theft to extortion to armed robbery and virtually all
stops in between. But she also had a long history of thumbing
her nose at the courts.
Twenty-one
times she was convicted for breaching her probation or failing
to appear in court.
Her
most recent conviction in 1996, number 71 for those keeping
score, was for armed robbery. Her punishment for the offence was
an 18-month conditional sentence.
Apparently
armed robbery fits into the "non-violent" category our
political masters keep saying is what the conditional sentences
were designed for.
The
victim in the armed robbery, by the way, was an 80-year-old
woman.
Taylor
was told by the sentencing judge, Peter Hryn of the Ontario
Provincial Court, that she had to get addiction treatment in
lieu of going to jail. Lest anyone be unclear on the facts
before the supposedly learned judge, every part of Taylor's
record was before him in the sentencing process.
Hryn
decreed she should attend a treatment facility called Homestead.
Funnily enough she never arrived there. She stopped off to get
some money for a fix apparently. In the process she beat a
70-year-old man with his cane while he was standing in a queue
to buy a newspaper.
She
then disappeared into the sewer of Toronto's drug culture.
When
Taylor was finally brought back before Judge Hryn, her lawyer
pleaded for another chance. She really is just a little
misunderstood apparently. Hryn bought it and gave her the sum
total of six months in jail and more probation to go with the
perpetual probation tenderly guiding her life since she first
came in front of the courts.
Evidently
71 chances weren't quite enough.
When
Detective Constable Hancox began the last shift of his life,
Taylor and her lesbian lover, Elaine Rose Cece, were together in
a rundown area of Dundas Street in Toronto, an area where crack
cocaine is as easy to get as a pack of smokes.
The
streets and alleys in the area offer a veritable smorgasbord of
illicit drugs. Its denizens fix, steal, rob, then fix again in a
vicious circle of depravity and crime.
If
some of this sounds familiar, it should. Last week's headlines
were dominated by a sweep done on the downtown eastside and in
New Westminster by police arresting crack dealers.
Over 70 arrest warrants were issued for the dealers, mostly Honduran refugee claimants. The warrants, by the way, had to be executed in the daytime lest the police incur any overtime cleaning up the streets.
We
can't ignore what is going on in our streets. For years we have
been spoon-fed the bovine scatology from our political betters
who say jail is not the answer. Everything is designed to give
these people another chance. And another. And another. And
another.
We
in Canada, and Vancouver in particular, have an international
reputation as being a soft touch for criminals. And why not? We
are.
Most
of the Honduran crack dealers picked up by the police last week
were recruited and sent here to deal by organized crime
elements.
They
know this is a cheap, easy and effective way to market their
incipient death.
We
welcome these people here, give them welfare and all sorts of
benefits paid for by the hard working legitimate citizens of
Canada.
When
they fall afoul of the law, we don't toss them out for spitting
in our faces. We give them legal aid to take another kick at our
collective genitals.
Some
of those arrested last week had already been through the system
in Portland, Oregon.
After
they were arrested there, they served their sentences and were
promptly kicked from the country.
The
U.S., a signatory to the same UN agreements as Canada to deal
with the worlds refugees, doesn't recognize Honduras as a state
in such difficulty their citizenry need to flee to safety.
Never
mind Honduras, in Canada, we even accept refugee claimants from
those same United States.
Most
of those arrested last week were on the streets again before the
ink was dry on the police reports.
Drug
trafficking carries a maximum penalty of 14 years in jail. I'll
be surprised if any of those arrested see much more than a small
fine for their trouble. The cycle continues unabated despite the
futile fight by the police.
For
Detective Constable Hancox the fight is over. For Mary Barbra
Taylor, if convicted, the 72nd conviction will be her last.
For
the Hancox family, there are only tears. For the rest of us, we
shake our heads at the futility of it all.
I wonder how Judge Hryn is feeling.
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