23393 replies to this topic

[m0nkyman]

Put me down for having been tagged by a Hep-C positive, HIV+ junkie's needle once, four break-ins, and the store has had an armed robbery....

Only one of them is dead now. Thank the lenient justice system for the death, as the guy should still be in jail, seeing as our robbery was his fourth violent offence, and he had managed to commit a fifth in Vancouver before he got arrested on the robbery charges. He got less than the minimum sentence, and was dead of an overdose less than a year after his release.

The justice system is failing the criminals in it's rehabilitative role as much as it is failing society.

[G-Man]

Good Point!

You know there is that island that used to house a leper colony just off of Oak Bay...

[Willa]

Four bizarre incidents are singled out because the victims dared to resist. So how many other ordinary incidents were there in which victims complied without argument?

And is it really so bizarre that law-abiding citizens are trying to wrest their community back from increasingly shameless criminal elements?

I'd say it's much more bizarre that the media has such a casual attitude toward it all.

I took the "bizarre" reference to mean how it doesn't seem worth it -- for at least three of the cases. If I worked at 7-Eleven or Subway, I wouldn't risk my safety to protect a till of money that means a drop in the bucket for a big company. I know that some places like that are franchised, etc., but they still are very successful.

I'm also not sure what you mean by casual attitude by the media. By writing the story, isn't the TC by nature not being casual about it? They obviously think it's an issue.

[aastra]

My point was, they're describing a spate of crimes as if it's business as usual -- Victoria is just inherently unsafe, everybody knows that -- whereas public outrage at the criminal acts (implied by the physical resistance) is described as bizarre.

I give them credit for the title ("Fighting Back"), however.

[G-Man]

Part of the blame and I say only part is the small town perception people still have of Victoria. How can this small town have so many crimes? However if you think of Victoria as the small city that it is, the stretch is not as far.

[VicHockeyFan]

Victoria men enrolled in 'john school'
Ten opt for sex-trade educational course after being arrested in prostitution sting
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Font: * * * * Rob Shaw and Jeff Bell, Times Colonist
Published: Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Ten Victoria men are being sent to "john school" in Vancouver for some higher learning about the perils of the sex trade after being caught by police in a prostitution sting.

Victoria police spent four evenings camped out in the Rock Bay area this month, monitoring the sex-trade activity and focusing on the johns who solicit prostitutes for paid sex.

They nabbed 11 men but decided to offer 10 of them the chance to attend sex trade educational courses at the John Howard Society in Vancouver instead of criminal punishment, said Insp. Les Sylven.

"It's all about education," said Sylven. "It's not a shame-the-john program."

The John Howard Society course is available to men without recent or related criminal convictions who agree to take full responsibility for their actions. There must also be no evidence they tried to physically harm the sex-trade worker. Each man will be responsible for the $500 course fee.

One of the men did not qualify for the course, and so will appear in court to face charges, said Sylven.

Targeting the johns is a new approach for police, said Sylven. Police can attack the supply of sex workers, but as long as the demand from johns exists, the enforcement will have little effect, he said.

The results were encouraging and police plan similar crackdowns, he said.

Jody Paterson, executive director of Victoria's Prostitutes Empowerment Education and Resource Society, had a mixed response to the action taken by the police.

"We're very pleased that the Victoria police have developed a relationship with the sex workers in Rock Bay so that they're looking out for their safety.

But john school, from PEERS' viewpoint, doesn't really benefit women in the sex trade, Paterson said.

"Unless you think that when you remove the customer the response of the women will be to just get out of prostitution right then and there, what will actually happen is they'll go someplace where they can find more customers. And the risk of that is that it drives it either into somebody else's neighbourhood or into a darker, less-visible location."

She said it is also questionable whether john school actually reduces the demand for prostitution.

"It just gives men a choice between being criminally charged or with going to school for re-education."

Ian Mitchell, of the John Howard Society's Lower Mainland branch, said the program started in September 1999 and has since had about 1,600 people take part. About 270 went through the one-day program last year.

Mitchell said the program has had participants from seven B.C. communities, including Campbell River, and has a close association with the University of B.C. department of psychology. This will be the first time clients have come directly from the Victoria police.

Mitchell said about one per cent of those taking the program have emerged as re-offenders, while some studies have shown that about two per cent of those who appear in court on prostitution-related charges are caught again.

"It's not a huge leap there, but basically what we're trying to do is get the awareness out there and change people's attitudes about prostitution. We're just -- one guy at a time -- trying to change attitudes."

[NMP]

I would be interested to see some follow-up statistics about effectiveness of such education and whether it changes the attitude in that "one guy". Somehow I seriously doubt that. That part on 1 % of re-offenders sounds awfully unconvincing

[Rorschach]

The John School seems like a money grab to me. What is the John going to do? "No, I'll take a criminal conviction and a year in jail, thank you." Except, nowadays it's too easy to call the crown's bluff -- because almost nobody gets jail time for anything, let alone a first offender for any offense.

I think the best strategy is to shut up, lawyer up, demand a jury trial and do not waive time -- and then wait for crown council to realize that the cost of a trial for such petty offenses isn't worth the time and effort. The case will be dismissed because "no public purpose" is served and you walk away with a clean record and maybe chlamydia.

[Holden West]

^Lawyer up?! Anyone choosing to cruise the human disasters that stumble along Rock Bay instead of simply calling up an escort in Monday Magazine is obviously hard up for money and can hardly afford a canny lawyer.

[aastra]

But escorts aren't prostitutes, right? If they were, there's no way the escort services would be allowed to advertise in Monday Magazine or the Yellow Pages, right?

Right?

[Holden West]

As long as it is not mentioned that sex is being traded for money, advertising is legal. For all we know, they're playing Scrabble in there.

[Caramia]

kinky Holden.

[gumgum]

[Rorschach]

^Lawyer up?! Anyone choosing to cruise the human disasters that stumble along Rock Bay... is obviously hard up for money and can hardly afford a canny lawyer.

You don't have to actually engage a lawyer do you? Can't you just make a demand for one so that you don't have to talk to the police? I'm not saying anyone should lie, I'm saying they should shut up and say nothing.

I doubt they are hard up for money if they are paying $100 or whatever the rate is. They are obviously stupid, not poor... IMHO And do I expect them to follow common sense suggestions read on the Internet?

[Rorschach]

Saw this news story today about seniors being safer from crime:

[url=http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2007/03/06/seniors-crime-victims.html?ref=rss:b9394]Seniors have low chance of being crime victim[/url:b9394]

[Mike K.]

I saw a guy get trucked in the face this afternoon (~1PM) at Yates and Langley streets. Trucked = hit with a skateboard.

It was very disturbing, actually, as the guy was walking down the sidewalk with what looked like a bag of groceries when two "street people" (they fit the typical description -- what can I say) jumped him and the fight was on. Numerous people called the fuzz but they never showed. Even after I fetched my car from the Yates parkade they still hadn't arrived and it was a good 10 minutes later.

It's not the incident that startled me but rather the lack of response by those who pledge to serve and protect.

[Holden West]

Motive??!

Totally random or was the guy mouthing off?

Slow response is a mystery--if assault in progress isn't enough what is? Unless there was something else going down at the same time.

Meanwhile, in Oak Bay, OBP tactical response team is out ensuring Mrs. MacGregor's sprinklers are turned off.

[Icebergalley]

Oh Well..

Maybe the thoughts in this Ne York Times article and photo's will help make Vibrant Victoria safer...

Architecture
Medieval Modern: Design Strikes a Defensive Posture

Here's the googled link.. lots of photo's..

Design Strikes a Defensive Posture - The Green Zone - Freedom ...Medieval Modern: Design Strikes a Defensive Posture. Roland Halbe. THE ART OF DEFENSE At the Caltrans District 7 Headquarters Replacement Building in Los ...
http://www.nytimes.c... ... tml?ref=us

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

March 4, 2007
Architecture
Medieval Modern: Design Strikes a Defensive Posture
By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF
Not so long ago, architects were obsessed with the notion that globalism, the Internet and sophisticated new building technologies were opening the way for a more fluid, transparent landscape in which walls would simply begin to melt away.

Things didn’t turn out that way. After 9/11, a craving for the solidity of walls reasserted itself. And the wars on terror, and fractious peaces, enforced it. The Green Zone in Baghdad, Jerusalem’s separation barrier, the concrete bollards that line corporate headquarters on Park Avenue — all are emblems of an unintended new mentality.

Four years after the American invasion of Iraq, this state of siege is beginning to look more and more like a permanent reality, exhibited in an architectural style we might refer to as 21st-century medievalism.

Like their 13th- to 15th-century counterparts, contemporary architects are being enlisted to create not only major civic landmarks but lines of civic defense, with aesthetically pleasing features like elegantly sculpted barriers around public plazas or decorative cladding for bulky protective concrete walls. This vision may seem closer in spirit to da Vinci’s drawings of angular fortifications or Michelangelo’s designs for organically shaped bastions than to a post-cold-war-era of high-tech surveillance.

The emblematic capital of this transformation is the Green Zone, the American encampment in Baghdad, where the 12-foot-high concrete slabs that surround Saddam Hussein’s former palaces have infused the city within a city with the ethos of the gated suburban enclaves of Southern California. It is a place with “the calm sterility of an American subdivision,” as described by Rajiv Chandrasekaran in his book, “Imperial Life in the Emerald City,” not a place that expresses American ideals of democracy and political transparency.

That mentality has become acceptable in relatively stable cities as well, including London, where a debate has now arisen over what do to with the concrete barricades that surround the United States Embassy in historic Grosvenor Square. Some suggest that they should be replaced by a permanent, more visually appealing barrier, as if better design could somehow negate the notion that we are surrendering to the inevitable. And in downtown Miami, federal marshals have suggested that the barricades originally included in the plans for a park designed by Maya Lin as part of a new courthouse complex might have to be reinforced, even as people begin to move into the building.

The most chilling example of the new medievalism is New York’s Freedom Tower, which was once touted as a symbol of enlightenment. Designed by David Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, it rests on a 20-story, windowless fortified concrete base decorated in prismatic glass panels in a grotesque attempt to disguise its underlying paranoia. And the brooding, obelisk-like form above is more of an expression of American hubris than of freedom.

But even the most thoughtful solutions, like the gracefully curved steel tubes that defend the plaza of Thom Mayne’s Caltrans District 7 headquarters building in Los Angeles or the faceted bronze bollards on Wall Street, suggest the fragile balance today’s architects are struggling to reach between assuring the freedom of movement that is vital to a functioning democracy and bolstering security.

To some, compromise may be preferable to surrounding our cities with barbed wire and sandbags. The notion that we can design our way out of these problems should give us pause, however. Our streets may be prettier, but the prettiness is camouflage for the budding reality of a society ruled by fear.



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[Mike K.]

Motive??!

Totally random or was the guy mouthing off?

Slow response is a mystery--if assault in progress isn't enough what is? Unless there was something else going down at the same time.

Meanwhile, in Oak Bay, OBP tactical response team is out ensuring Mrs. MacGregor's sprinklers are turned off.

I've seen the guy (the victim) around downtown a few times. I think he might be involved in the local music scene or something to that effect. As for motive I can't say for sure.

[Rorschach]

Was it a senior citizen that got trucked? My guess is that whoever reported it told the police that street people were fighting and it got de-prioritized. A puke vs puke, no humans involved call for service just does not get the attention it used to.