21572 replies to this topic

[pontcanna]

Family of Metchosin man allegedly killed by prison escapees sues corrections officials

Police found the body of Martin Keith Payne in his Metchosin home on July 12, 2019, after he was reported missing from work. The 60-year-old had been fatally assaulted.
 

 

James Lee Busch, left, and Zachary Armitage.

The family of a Metchosin man who was allegedly killed by two prison escapees has filed a lawsuit against corrections officials seeking damages.

Police found the body of Martin Keith Payne in his home on July 12, 2019, after the mail courier was reported missing from work.

The 60-year-old father had been fatally assaulted in the house on Brookview Drive, according to the lawsuit filed in B.C. Supreme Court by his two daughters.

Two inmates had earlier escaped from the nearby William Head Institution, a minimum-security federal prison, says the suit.

Several months earlier, the inmates had been transferred from Mission Institution, a medium-security prison in the Fraser Valley.

“The reclassification of the inmates to a low security level and their subsequent transfer to William Head were the result of operational decisions made by CSC and its employees that were negligent, reckless and contrary to CSC policy,” says the suit.

The suit says that on July 7, 2019, five days before Payne’s body was found in his home, the inmates escaped William Head by walking around a perimeter fence at the shoreline during low tide, passing an unmanned guard tower before walking into the surrounding community.

“We feel that irreversible mistakes and breaches of policy were made by (CSC), without which, our father would still be here with us today.”

“They escaped with ease and committed a heinous crime. There appears to be gaping cracks in the system that allowed this to happen.”

James Lee Busch and Zachary Armitage have been charged with first-degree murder in connection with Payne’s death and are expected to go trial in the fall.

 

More: https://www.timescol...ficials-5692949

 

[pontcanna]

‘A real shame’: Thieves steal $7K worth of equipment from Nanaimo Fringe Festival

Aug. 12, 2022

 

Nanaimo Fringe Festival organizers were in for an unwanted surprise Friday morning after discovering thousands of dollars in technical equipment was stolen less than a day before their first scheduled performance.

Artist managing producer Bryony Dixon says $7,000 worth of rented equipment, including speakers, lights and a mixer, was looted from a storage container parked next to the festival’s outdoor Gallery Row stage either Thursday night or early Friday morning.

“We locked it up around 6 p.m. (Thursday) and we got there at 10 a.m. (Friday), and the lock had been drilled and taken off and our technical equipment was removed,” Dixon told CHEK News.

Although the art festival has been around since 2011, Dixon explains this year was the first that organizers decided to use a container to store equipment.

“…We thought this was a great solution [to] driving the equipment off-site every day,” she said. “It’s just a real shame.”

It’s prompting the GoFundMe Save the Nanaimo Fringe Outdoor Venue to launch to raise $7,000 to help festival organizers recover from the unexpected monetary loss.

 

More: https://www.cheknews...stival-1075071/

 

[pontcanna]

- I find the Justice for Makayla sign on the property a tad ironic...

 

Body found in Nanaimo home damaged by fire deemed suspicious

 

Aug. 12, 2022

Nanaimo RCMP’s serious crime unit is investigating after a man’s body was found in a home destroyed by fire — a death that has been deemed suspicious.

 

The fire broke out at a south-end home on Athletic Street at around 5 p.m. Thursday.

Firefighters responded to reports of black smoke seen billowing from windows at the home, according to RCMP.

When crews entered the home, they found the body of an adult male.

“It’s considered a suspicious death given the nature of the fire and the location of the body. The investigation has been turned over to the serious crime unit,” said Cst. Gary O’Brien with Nanaimo RCMP.

“The guy across the street was saying there were about four or five people that just left suddenly before the cops showed up,” said Geoff Garman, a neighbour.

Police say though the City of Nanaimo has not declared it a nuisance property yet they’ve visited the home dozens of times over the past year. Neighbours say it’s a drug house.

“Yeah. Cars are going back and forth continually. 24/7,” said Garman.

“I hope that house is gone. I hope the occupants don’t come back. We need to have a bit safer neighbourhood. there are kids here that play. They need to grow up in a safe neighbourhood,” said Collens.

CHEK News has reached out to the homes owners who live on Gabriola Island but has yet to get a response.

More: https://www.cheknews...-rcmp-1074828/ 

 

[Love the rock]

 

Family of Metchosin man allegedly killed by prison escapees sues corrections officials

Police found the body of Martin Keith Payne in his Metchosin home on July 12, 2019, after he was reported missing from work. The 60-year-old had been fatally assaulted.
 

 

Screenshot 2022-08-12 17.51.19.png

James Lee Busch, left, and Zachary Armitage.

The family of a Metchosin man who was allegedly killed by two prison escapees has filed a lawsuit against corrections officials seeking damages.

Police found the body of Martin Keith Payne in his home on July 12, 2019, after the mail courier was reported missing from work.

The 60-year-old father had been fatally assaulted in the house on Brookview Drive, according to the lawsuit filed in B.C. Supreme Court by his two daughters.

Two inmates had earlier escaped from the nearby William Head Institution, a minimum-security federal prison, says the suit.

Several months earlier, the inmates had been transferred from Mission Institution, a medium-security prison in the Fraser Valley.

“The reclassification of the inmates to a low security level and their subsequent transfer to William Head were the result of operational decisions made by CSC and its employees that were negligent, reckless and contrary to CSC policy,” says the suit.

The suit says that on July 7, 2019, five days before Payne’s body was found in his home, the inmates escaped William Head by walking around a perimeter fence at the shoreline during low tide, passing an unmanned guard tower before walking into the surrounding community.

“We feel that irreversible mistakes and breaches of policy were made by (CSC), without which, our father would still be here with us today.”

“They escaped with ease and committed a heinous crime. There appears to be gaping cracks in the system that allowed this to happen.”

James Lee Busch and Zachary Armitage have been charged with first-degree murder in connection with Payne’s death and are expected to go trial in the fall.

 

More: https://www.timescol...ficials-5692949

 

I was trying to figure out how many others have escaped William Head before. It seems too simple not to have been tried before now . If it’s that easy to just walk around a fence why would someone with impulse control bother sticking around regardless if they are on the last leg of a federal sentence.

I can’t imagine the pain this family has suffered because of avoidable mistakes every step of the way .

[Spy Black]

Hard to find answers as to why the very conspicuous guard towers are completely empty today, but were formerly occupied 24/7/365 by armed guards.

William Head has been a minimum security facility since the late '50's, when it was turned from a federal quarantine station into a minimum security prison.

I can recall very few escapes in decades past ... but they certainly did make the news when they occurred.

 

Although many prisoners occupying William Head are scheduled for release within a few years, there are a healthy percentage of apparently "low threat" lifers there as well ... making the "minimum" moniker somewhat odd, and obviously depending quite heavily on the prisoner simply choosing to remain in the facility ... as the main fence line ends well before the water at low tide.

 

Corrections Canada doesn't "share" information with the general public or the press to the extent that one can make sense out of their decisions, but if you dig deep enough, you will find that there were a dozen or so "reclassifications" after the murder of Mr. Payne, such that those dozen or so prisoners were moved to the mainland into a medium security facility, judged after the fact (Mr Paynes murder) to be too dangerous to be held at William Head.

[pontcanna]

Hard to find answers as to why the very conspicuous guard towers are completely empty today, but were formerly occupied 24/7/365 by armed guards.

William Head has been a minimum security facility since the late '50's, when it was turned from a federal quarantine station into a minimum security prison.

I can recall very few escapes in decades past ... but they certainly did make the news when they occurred.

 

William Head was classified as a "medium" for years, albeit as a "3" on a scale of 1-6 (7 if you include the Special Handling Units). It had a small segregation section until another escape (from the supposedly secure unit) took place years ago that resulted in a lot of changes and reclassification to minimum status.

[Spy Black]

Looking at various online histories for the facility, they all describe it as being opened as a minimum security facility upon conversion from the quarantine station in 1959?

Perhaps the rating system you note ("3" out of "6") relegates the history books to reference it as "minimum security" rather than "medium security"?

 

Regardless, thanks for confirming my own recollection of William Head as a medium security facility, I definitely recall driving out there many times as a teen, and seeing multiple armed guards in the towers.

[Victoria Watcher]

Another article described these two as being overflow from Mission.

https://beta.ctvnews.../1_4999059.html

“We knew it was going to happen,” said the officer. “Busch had constant issues. We reported them on a number of occasions and they were ignored. It was building to something.”

According to the officer, Busch was having issues with his housemates and even sucker-punched one of them. Both of them were violent offenders before coming to William Head.

_______________

“Correctional service is a business more than it is really about keeping the public safe,” he said.

Overrides are sent to the William Head facility from medium-security prisons. The officer claims about 10 per cent of inmates are there on overrides. Both Armitage and Busch were sent as overrides from Mission Institution.

“It’s not a one-off,” the officer said. “We’ve had a number of overrides where we have concerns over the years.”

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 13 August 2022 - 08:13 AM.

[Victoria Watcher]

Override: the referral of an offender to a correctional program for which the offender does not fully meet the correctional program selection criteria. In other words, there is a difference between the offender’s level of risk and what is targeted by the correctional program. An override may be to a higher or lower intensity program than the program for which the offender meets the selection criteria.

https://www.csc-scc....l-eng.shtml#s5k

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 13 August 2022 - 08:15 AM.

[Love the rock]

Thank you for all the information. When the escape happened I tried to find out the history of William Head escapes without much luck .

[Victoria Watcher]

I do not know if the timing has been worked out.  Escape time/murder time.  But a good start would be a local alert system immediately after an escape has been detected.

[Spy Black]

Residents of Metchosin, as well as the Beecher Bay First Nation have, for decades, complained about lack of appropriate and/or timely communications from the prison, a communication with a formal obligation on Corrections Canada that describes mandatory timelines and requisite shared information that would be needed by near-by residents.

 

The Beecher Bay First Nation has already formally requested that William Head be closed down, and the land returned to them.

And the Beecher Bay folks already have a solid grip on the Mary Hill training area/battery area, in that nothing can happen there without their approval (and Mary Hill is literally right across the road from William Head) ... and there remains a very good chance that the entire Mary Hill complex could one day be returned to add to the existing Beecher Bay reserve.

 

That said, both William Head and Rocky Point are a stones throw away from each other, and both (in their own departments) are very likely seen as very valuable pieces of Federal Gov't infrastructure, what with Rocky Point as Canada's major west coast weapons storage facility, and William Head always full to capacity.

The Feds hold on south facing lands in the CRD stretch from Esquimalt to Beecher Bay, and are culturally and historically Federal Gov't institutional lands ... to the point where I seriously doubt any lands will be sold, exchanged, or "given back" any time soon (with the possible exception of the Mary Hill facility).

Edited by Spy Black, 13 August 2022 - 09:21 AM.

[Mike K.]

VicPD officers are investigating a sudden death in Victoria this morning.

Shortly after 5 a.m., Patrol officers were called to a parking lot in the 800-block of Fisgard Street for a report of a deceased man. Officers attended, along with BC Emergency Health Services paramedics, and the man was confirmed to be deceased on scene.

Detectives with VicPD’s Investigative Services Division and officers from VicPD’s Forensic Identification Services are continuing the investigation.

The BC Coroners Service is also continuing an independent investigation to determine all of the facts surrounding the death.

This incident remains under investigation. If you have information about this incident, please call our Report Desk and (250) 995-7654, extension 1. To report what you know anonymously, please call Greater Victoria Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477

[Nparker]

...Shortly after 5 a.m., Patrol officers were called to a parking lot in the 800-block of Fisgard Street...

I wonder if this is the parking lot behind the currently closed Romeo's restaurant (which is gated and locked these days) or across the street adjacent to Serious Coffee/Yellow Cab

[Mike K.]

Might be the one further east, too.

[Nparker]

Might be the one further east, too.

True. The "Heroin Hilton" (aka Victoria Apts) is right there.

[Nparker]

Might be the one further east, too.

True. The "Heroin Hilton" (aka Victoria Apts) is right there.

[Victoria Watcher]

Looks like it was up near Quadra.

https://www.timescol...ing-lot-5694018

[Nparker]

I suppose I think of this as more of a driveway than a parking lot.

[pontcanna]

Crime index paints skewed picture of small town life

• Times Colonist
• 14 Aug 2022

Every year when Statistics Canada releases its Crime Severity Index there are two things people can bank on – larger cities using it to claim it highlights the need for more resources and a new approach to policing, while many small towns around the country will roll their eyes and dismiss the index as a poor indication of the level of crime in their communities.

 

Turns out, both reactions may have equal merit.

 

Rob Gillezeau, assistant professor of economics at the University of Victoria who has studied the economics of policing, said high numbers, especially in smaller communities, may paint a misleading picture.

 

That’s because the index, which measures the volume and severity of police-reported crime in any given year, is designed to try to provide a more meaningful interpretation of broad statistics by weighing the severity of crimes reported.

 

The idea behind giving more weight to more serious crimes is to stop people drawing the wrong conclusions about crime rates based on high numbers of minor crimes like petty theft.

 

“Part of this is just going to be genuine variation in crime and the type of crime across municipalities,” said Gillezeau. “When we get into smaller cities, it takes fewer incidents to meaningfully shift the value of the CSI.

 

That may be why the top five highest index ratings in B.C. for 2021 were for small communities, where a single homicide or one major incident can have a dramatic effect.

 

Fort St. James tops the list at 293, followed by Hope at 291, Quesnel at 246, Prince George at 223 and Agassiz at 215. By comparison Victoria was 148, Greater Victoria was 71.5 and Vancouver was 90. The provincial average was 93.

 

The highest index ratings on Vancouver Island were for Port Hardy at 211, Duncan at 192 and Port Alberni at 176.

 

Port Alberni Mayor Sharie Minions said that rating is not necessarily an accurate reflection of how safe the community is.

 

Duncan Mayor Michelle Staples shares that frustration.

 

It’s the same problem that faces Victoria. The city has a rating of 148 because it is the entertainment centre and playground for the entire region. Greater Victoria as a whole has a much lower rating of 70.

 

RCMP spokesman Alex Berube said the index needs to be properly analyzed as it may not reflect what is happening in a region after you’ve factored in the size of the population, and the number of incidents.

 

More: https://digitaltimes...281612424183576