If You Drink and Drive, You Should Forget About Driving Ever Again!

February 20th, 2010 Thomasso

Last night while I was heading home from work, I was passed on the road by a rather rude driver who was just in too much of a rush that everyone on the road was in his way, so he tail-gated, honked his horn and swerved contently to get around you. Finally he passed me going towards Fort Langley on Glover Road, just pasted the 232nd Street turn-off to highway #1. I kept to my lane, gave him some extra room so he could at least have some space to make his manoeuvre before he had a head on collision with the on coming traffic, and then he was gone.

After I got home, I decided to do a little shopping. I hopped back in the truck and headed off to Walnut-Grove, where “low and behold” there was that same rude driver again, stopped by the police getting a breathalyser test. The officer has his stash of beer cans on top of his car, and I could see the look on the driver’s face as he was lead to the police car when I drove by.

I am somewhat perplexed that after all the TV commercials and anti-driving ads, that people still think it is wise to drive while having a few drinks? I mean honestly, you are endangering all the people around you when you are driving intoxicated. You are not in full control of your faculties–even though “you” think so. And with the beefed up laws that we have now, with costly fines and a possible criminal record, not to mention the loss of your driver’s license, you would wonder that people would think twice about getting behind the wheel of a vehicle and driving off after having a few belts.

I hope that the system has done its job and has taken one more inconsiderate driver off the road. If anyone wants to argue with me on this one, then I will start with by saying this is a safety issue from all aspects. Unsafe drivers need-not-drive.

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A Mini Crime Wave, or is it Just the Background Noise of a Growing Society: Fort Langley on Video.

February 7th, 2010 Thomasso

Last year the local market had them installed, the Bank had them since I could remember, and I even have one: closed circuit video are everywhere, and more are to come. The local market, also know at the IGA, had them installed just last year after experiencing a record breaking year of theft. It was so bad there that the owner was almost looking at taking drastic measures to curve the financial loss it was incurring on his business. Once the video system was installed, they were able to use the images to show police who was steeling when they fled the store. For me, I had my vehicle broken into three years ago and I had to do something about it. My landlord was unable to offer any solutions, and they certainly did not want to install my camera, but after checking with law enforcement and legal experts, I was able to go ahead with the installation without my landlord’s approval. The camera has stayed ever since, even with many threats of legal sanctions, and a visit boys from the Township By-law office by them, my trusty little camera keeps a vigil eye on my vehicle. Oddly enough my vehicle has not being touched ever since?

Those same people who do not like me having a camera facing my vehicle, just had their “cash to change” vending machine broken into this last week in their laundromat. Guess what, they are now in the process of install the camera in their laundromat facing the vending machine! The thieves attempted to smash into the machine using some crude tools, and they gained access into the build by a flimsy window. Although they did not get any of the money inside the machine, they made a mess of the place.

But there are other lessons to be learned from the IGA and Laundromat experience. These buildings are prone to darkness and hidden sections when closed after business hours, ideal for thieves to lurk around. Environmental elements can be employed to lower the likelihood of thieves looking for “hiding” places like lighting and bars on the windows. A theory that says that thieves only like easy targets means that you must make it as difficult as possible for the theft to be not worth while and uninviting. Where I live, lighting is a big problem, that is, there is not enough of it. In fact, when thieves travel, our section of town seems to be where they prefer to move through becuase of the darkness. On several occasions now I have being awaken by police banging on my door asking me if I heard anyone running through my back yard. “Not since I fell asleep four hours ago,” I tell them.

I wonder if there is a correlation between the economic downturn and the growing population in our little village? Probably not.

I know that if you don’t nail it down, light it up, put a camera on it, alarm it, you are going to loose it. Thieves will “scope it out” and when they find something easy to take, they will waste no time to do it. Opportunity is something that thieves will take on in a moments notice. Timing is everything becuase it may not be there the next day.

So smile–you are on TV. I see cameras going up everywhere in Fort Langley.  But I should caution you if you are deciding to put up a camera in your neighbourhood for yourself. Check the law, rules and local by-laws. You have to post signage that you have a video surveillance system in operation, and you can’t capture audio while your camera is on. And obviously, you can’t aim it at your next door neighbour’s house, or through other people’s windows, only on your property.

Hey, video is changing the way our society looks at itself, and it seems to be crime driven. I can see all of us soon living in a gated community with cameras everywhere, check-points and ID checks leaving to and from our towns. Heck, all it would take is one good terrorist attack in the area to put all of us on high alert and straight in to paranoia. We may see cameras as intrusive now, but after an attack, we may all want one. Too bad though, I really like Fort Langley, and the small town atmosphere it has. I guess that is all changing as the population grows.

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The Sue-ability Scale

February 5th, 2010 Thomasso

Lawyers, you may not want to read this, this might be a tough pill to swallow? These are my personal thoughts based on my personal experiences with Civil Court.

Justice is a weird thing. I have studied it to death and it still leaves me scratching my head wondering, asking why-and the answers become as vague as following a white car in the middle of a snowstorm. I have found that justice in Canada is only for those who are rich, or are very clever. That in most cases if you are being sued in civil court, it is better not to participate than it is to waste your time with the process of jurisprudences; and flip side to this, if you are rich, you are an easy target than compared to someone who is poor and homeless. Seriously, of the five people in my life that I have brought to the halls of justice, only one took the pledge and participated. The other four knew the system well enough not to bother, and I found it (almost) impossible to seek my claim, costs, damages and compensation. In fact, the one time that I was the respondent, it was easer to go on with my life than it was to play the game. To this day, the company that I had an agreement with is still out the initial $72.00, but they are also out on their costs too, so it pays not to bother with Canadian Justice if you have nothing to loose. Was it worth my time to show up—I’m still evaluating that?

I now know that there is a scale that the professionals follow when they go out on suing expeditions. They automatically drop anyone who has no money; who is renting; earning a low wage; has no bank account; has little or no identification, i.e., drivers license or birth certificate; uses aliases and moves around a lot. However, for the poor there is this thing called Small Claims Court, or the Pauper’s Court as it is called in my circles, but you still need to pay to use it though. When I studied Medieval legal systems of European cultures, Small Claims Court to me has a reminiscent quality of early continental European courts where the jurist is free to adjust, amend, vary and control all aspects of the hearing and decisions—although you can appeal in today’s court. One day I was helping a friend fight for his money from a debtor, and once it was our turn, the sitting judge read the Statement of Claim, then threw up his arm up with the documents in hand and said, “You expect to me rule on this? I think you should go back and talk to this person and make the effort on collecting your money before you go into my court.” Perhaps it was because we were not wearing $900.00 suites at the time? I’m still in awe to this day about that?

If you do have something to loose like a house, wages, assets, or your respondent has too, then going to court is the way to go. I have also seen the dual effects of court at play many times as the monetary and psychological costs play their toll and all parties. The trouble is, court is not a guaranteed bet. Just when you thought you had the full force of the law on your side, you are hit with a sucker-punch and your case falls like a house of cards. In one case of mine, I filed for a garnishment of wages and the respondent’s employer decided not to cooperate. The business told me that he does not work in their department any more. I found myself having to take extraordinary measures to track down who this person really worked for before I could I proceed with the action. This involved two days of driving by this guy’s work every ten minutes searching for what door he came out of. Then once I saw him walking out to go home, I went into the building and had to do some quick lurking. I asked one of the managers that I was looking for my “friend.” When I confirmed that that was the respondent’s employer, I then went to the manager’s office to serve the garnishment order. I received two out of the five payment to fulfil the debt, but then they stopped as the guy quit his job and moved elsewhere. I just recovered only my court costs in that case. Was it worth it? At least I got to play the psych-game with him.

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I Applaud the BC Court of Appeal’s decision on Insite

January 16th, 2010 Thomasso

One of the greatest contradictions of Canada’s “sheepish” war on drugs as been the connection between the cost of health to our healthcare system and the battle to regulate what the State thinks is good or bad for its citizens. The criminalization of drugs is a recent phenomenon that is just over a hundred years old, and was born out of attacking specific marginal and ethnic groups. Canada has a very deep cultural love affair with illegal narcotics, and none could be more so than with marijuana. But for whatever stance you choose in your ideology, albeit the left or right, the drug culture in Canada isn’t going to go away any time soon, and we have to deal with that.

Insite was born out of long term thinking and the concept of rehabilitation; in other words, having a safe place to be that offers hope is a better approach than by pushing it underground and letting the long term effects eat away at our society. The logic behind Insite is simple: safety and hope. The people who use the facility are addicted to drugs, and are at the bottom of the social ladder. Further criminalization is not going to “fix” them, but rather push them deeper into marginalization.

The nay-sayers seems to start off with the line, “If you prohibit drugs and the use of it, then that will fix the problem… .”

I argue that the nay-sayer, has not found the root cause of the problem, but has only made it even worse than the act of using the drugs in the first place. The nay-sayer needs to ask why that person has chosen to take the drugs in the first place. However, it is easer to criminalize something than to fix it—well, that seems to be Canada’s current model. But to become homeless and drug dependant means that that person has issues that go beyond the act of taking drugs. Then you reach a point where you have no where to go, you become vulnerable, and as a result you become more visible. From Hitler to Harper, the right-wing thinking is to invoke prohibition against specific marginal groups that do not appeal to middle and upper class standards, and to simply criminalize something that does not adhere to those standards seems to be the answer.

What insite does is to give these people the chance to use clean needles to inject themselves with in hopes of stopping the practice of sharing needles. The AIDS epidemic, and many other diseases too, has a direct correlation with this group of people with the sharing of needles, so it would make sense to offer clean needles than to deal with growing numbers of AIDS victims. Safety too is an issue with Insite because if that user needs further treatment, or decides to move towards kicking their habit, then there are people right there on site to offer that help. When the user is in the facility there are staff on hand that can promptly offer help if that person is in distress. I think it is far better than having someone injecting drugs in some back alley in the middle of Vancouver.

I totally agree with the British Columbia Court of Appeal on their decision to keep the jurisdiction of Instie with British Columbia’s authority, and thus allowing the facility to stay open without Federal interference. The Federal government should stop wasting our tax money on fighting this. Remember that the majority of Canadians did not vote for Harper!

Posted in Criminology, Diatribe, General, Law, Law and Order, Social Justice | 2 Comments »

Doomsday Documentaries Are Really Stupid

January 7th, 2010 Thomasso

OK, you have seen them, on the Discovery Channel, stories of prophecies where some dude two or three hundred years ago writes a bunch of letters that says the Earth will end either in some fiery ball, or mankind nukes himself to death and all life ceases. They come in all forms, from biblical predictions, to a crazy guy who might have been severely nuts in today’s standards, all saying the same thing – the Earth will end.

Whether the predictions come to pass or not, it is the people that I run into who make me laugh when they tell me about them. When the air time on television increases the numbers of these doomsday documentaries, the more entrenched some of my regulars become. They become so transfixed that this is the honest truth because of the proliferation of these documentaries that arguing with them that they are just predictions becomes a moot point. From the Mayan Calendar that only tells time up until 2012, to the earth loosing its magnetic field in twenty years, these are just some of the weird things I hear people  saying that will spell doom for the Earth.

The problem is that even the documentaries get it wrong, or they just focus on the out come like fear-mongering, rather than asking the real questions of what the prognosticators are really saying, or not saying. And of course stuff gets lost in the translation. The point I am making here is that all of these predictions are so steeped in vagueness and ambiguity that they could literally translate into anything for anyone, especially if you have an agenda like profiting from doomsday documentary making?

Maybe the real question here is why are people so caught up in these prophets and their prophesies? Wishful thinking that they, the believers, will be only ones left on the planet and it will be up to them to sow the seeds of mankind thereafter. So much for the gene pool.

There is so much scientific observations that proves otherwise that it is so hard not to keep a straight face when hearing the doomsday conspiracies. The predictions are just so absurd to logic that it becomes really good comedy. The man who told me about the Earth loosing its magnetic field said that we will float away, our atmosphere will get sucked into space, and only those who choose to live in underground homes will survive. It is the “no atmosphere” part that throws a ringer into my buddy’s plans. But hey, he supposedly got if from a documentary so who am I to argue!

Posted in Diatribe, General, Humour, Law and Order | No Comments »

Encryption Goodness of Your Data

August 26th, 2009 Thomasso

[I wrote this in June of 2009.] I was amazed when I started my second term doing volunteer work at the crisis/help centre because we now need passwords to send and received emails and access personal e-files of clients. No, this is not your regular log on password, but each file that you create, you will be required to have it password protected so you can send it off to whomever you want. This is a very cool system indeed.

It seems that in the past problems with particular levels of government, administrators and the public, all could have access to these files without any sort of e-lock or physical guard that should have filtered out those who do or  do not have these privileges. It was so bad that in the last couple of years I heard stories that the RCMP could actually walk in and freely take these files without going through the courts seeking warrants. I even heard of one story which involved a well publicised case of a lawyer who was freely given a computer disk containing information of several clients on it because the person who gave it to him did not know about the proper protocols for dealing with private information.

Now, all information is encrypted, and double locked, i.e., needs a supervisor’s password also before it can leave the facility.  All transmissions within the network, behind our server, are encrypted now and the higher up the food-chain you go, the more files you can open with your password. The data storage needs to be logged on now, and logged off. All archived files are no longer stored on site, instead a paid security firm now holds onto that data.

The funny thing is, now that these measures have being implemented, the “nag factor” from all public inquiries have dropped off by 90 percent. As soon as you tell them that the data need supervisory permission and the form is several pages long for the application, no one wants to take the time to collect the information any more. However, you always needed proper authorisation to obtain these records in the past, but there was nothing literally stoping any one from getting these files besides walking into the office and taking them. In the past very few people took the time to go through all the hoops–it was bad as far as having minimal security goes. It was basically up to each worker to insure that their data was safe and well protected.

I still can not believe that it has taken this long for an organization to finally jump on the encryption bandwagon.  It is just silly to have so much private data without any protection on it. It is just stupid. I most certainly would want my private and personal information that is stored one someone’s hard-drive protected—right. Well, do not be surprise, most government organization and private firms are just starting to secure their data—I mean encrypt it.

Posted in General, Law and Order, Social Justice | No Comments »

Hate is Alive and Doing Well In My Own Backyard

July 12th, 2009 Thomasso

I don’t like talking about this, and I know most other people don’t either, but this is something that keeps popping up in a country that everyone here thinks is a utopia of the most tolerant place on earth. I see it, and most of my friends see it as well. We do it without even knowing we are doing it. And worse, we have buried it so deep that we can easily say, with a strait face, we would never do it.

I have read authors who have spent the better part of their lives tracing the root causes of racism, and they try to explain how it trickles in from within our society. They write about how laws and social norms are created to protect the dominant class from the “in pure” creeping into their ideals. How law enforcement seems to use surveillance of ethnic groups more closely with this concept call the “white gaze,” that authors such as Carol Tator and Frances Henry who write about this in their book called, “Racial Profiling in Canada: Challenging the Myth of a ‘Few Bad Apples.’”

Canada is by far no perfect place. All you need to do is look at our legal history to see how deep this ethnic divide is. See one of our current laws, the Indian Act for example, where an entire group, a race of peoples, is effected by status and class, and where they carry cards that identify them as aboriginal, and they have special communities that they can live in that we call reservations of which they cannot own the property individually. A reservation is no grand place to live, and statistically these places have a ten times higher rate of poverty than the rest of Canada.

Then you should look back further into our history of legislation where there were laws that targeted most ethnic groups through exclusion, limited mobility, and even gender. Even though most of our laws today reflect a more somewhat equal society, the deep seeds of racism are still germinating throughout society.

Am I surprised that hate crimes like the Phillips beating in Courtney, British Columbia are happening? No. Education is the key to correcting this wrong.

Posted in Criminology, Diatribe, General, Law and Order, Social Justice, Video | No Comments »

Smoking to Dresses: We are Twisted

June 24th, 2009 Thomasso

The Langley driver who was smoking a fag with his thirteen year old daughter inside the car got a fine yesterday, under the recently created law in British Columbia that prohibits smoking around minors while inside a vehicle. I have heard a lot of arguments on this “tough on crime” approach that people see as an infringement of their personal space and general rights. However, I think that the spirit of the law is primarily targeting the cost and health effects of the child, and that the vehicle is not the same as the home where various rights are under the Charter of Rights and freedoms.

The weakest argument I have heard is how the government can step inside our personal space and prohibit what it is we can do, or not do, inside our vehicles. The argument that we should have full unquestioned autonomy of our vehicles is a baseless one. The vehicle is not entirely our personal space, and we are required to adhere to standards that are required by law, such as a licence to operate it, which is a very good method of controlling its uses and operation.

Because of this requirement to obtain a licence, this means that in general, laws, rules and policies can be establish to ensure that everyone who is in control of the vehicle does so with the best interests of the public and their personal safety in mind. A licence controls the use of the vehicle, and those who cause harm, or violate the operational requirements of driving, will have their privileges taken away and be asked to pay fines or face suspensions and then need to re-qualify.

Stronger yet, laws are starting to recognize that our actions cause harms to innocent bystanders and therefore those bystanders should be protected from the harms that we inflict upon ourselves. Second-hand cigarette smoke is by far one of the most recognized forms of harms to the public, and over the last decade numerous laws have being enacted to eliminate it from the workplace and public areas. It would only make sense that this push would creep into the private sphere, so prohibiting smoking inside a motor vehicle with children present, while on the roads, seems like the next logical evolution of public health and safety.

For adults, we must ensure that our children must be given every opportunity of protection from these unnecessary harms that we may inflict do to our personal and long-term bad habits. Overall, the health benefits to our children for the future makes perfect sense, even if it means we as adults must give up our bad habits, or at the very least comply with the prohibition of driving while smoking with minors present. I would argue that our children must come first, over and beyond our foolish indulgences because it is them who will have to pay for us as we start to use the health care system to repair the damage we caused on ourselves. Personally, I am in full favour of this law and fully support it.

Fashion blogs or just a heavy dose of female narcissism?

While I was listening to SPARK, a program from CBC Radio One, of which they looked at one of the latest blog trends that allows the author to post what it is that they are wearing and then giving you the opportunity to comment on their daily garb ensembles. This is just weird that someone is asking people to comment on what it is they are wearing from day to day, or that they are even taking the time to photograph themselves and then posting them on-line so that you can give them your opinion. The two examples from Episode 83 of SPARK from June 24: Jessica Schroeder’s What I Wore, and What I Wore Today.

Of course, all of the blogs that are listed on the radio program are by women, and they are, in essence, just fashion blogs. However, there was one exception, the journalist Dan Misener whose web site, called What Dan Wore, who reported the story created his own daily personal fashion blog, and clearly it did not have the same impact. Talk about how stereotypical I am—but that was the lesson and point that he was making.

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How Difficult it is to Change Things without Changing them into Things you don’t Want

June 13th, 2009 Thomasso

Yesterday a co-worker had some thoughts on what he would like changed in terms of improvements to many of the social and political problems that he sees in Canada today.

The first area of change he wanted was a massive reform of the government, literally reducing the bureaucratic/administration portion of government down to a skeleton, and only allowing them a wage of one dollar per year as their paid salary from the tax payer. Politicians, the elected officials would also received the same pay structure of one dollar per annum. Also on the “to go” list would be offices such as the Privy Counsel, the Senate, most advisory offices; areas where only a handful of people are needed. Research and advisory offices would be hired on a need-be bases.

Next to get changed is a judiciary, where, not only would the structure and principles of law are revamped, but so to are the courts in terms of localities and functions they would serve. The rule of law would have some additional points added to it, and so to would the type of legal system to, in other words, what I think he is after is a change from the common law and a move towards the Civil Code style of law we see in France today. Courts essentially would mainly reside at a municipal level, and there would only be one court of appeal, or super court, the supreme court which would be located probably in Ottawa.

Taxation would take on a new changes, for example, anyone who wishes to donate money to their organization of choice would no longer receive a tax right-off, e.g., churches, NGOs, and taxes would remain localized, so only your tax money would stay in your community, and only a portion of it would go federally.

What is interesting is that most people feel that improvements are needed in government, however, to make changes and then try to formulate how those changes will affect the country as a whole, we then start to see how problematic it is. There is no way that we can please everyone who sees imperfections in our governmental system, but we all have special interests that we would like to see. We get into problems of conflict when what I would like to see as the ideal government in Canada varies extremely from yours.

But there is a deeper problem that I see now after talking to my co-worker which I never really gave that much thought about before, and that is one should really try and fully understand what the political processes are, and how the structure of our three main levels of government work before we can fully qualify serious changes to it. Then once we are armed with the knowledge of all these things, then we should hopefully see the dynamics and shifts of each idea proposed on a theoretical bases, in other words, seeing the causes and effects in an abstract view.

In  my understanding of Canadian politics and jurisprudence, among all of its processes and structure, I feel it needs to stay the way it is now. But take in mind that we are contently in a state of flux, and changes, although small and minute, are always talking place. Each time we elect an government, and new markets open and old ones close, change is inevitable on a whole. However, without going through these exercises of playing around with these ideas we would never learn and understand what it is that we have now to and hopefully appreciate the rights and freedoms we enjoy.

Posted in Criminal Law, General, Law, Law and Order, Social Justice, Social economics | No Comments »

A Short talk on Transnational Organized Crime

June 10th, 2009 Thomasso

For the last six weeks during my summer classes one particular class has stood out so far form the others for me. This class is a special topics course on Transnational Organized Crime that focuses on many of the different facets of organized crime groups and their activities on a global scale. Our topic of discussion for the next couple of weeks, including our last class, is on human trafficking.

We have several readings that cover a wide verity of points on human trafficking, including human smuggling and various types and forms of illegal immigration. It was not until I started into the readings that I soon realized just how vast this topic really is. The reading only give a glimpse of what is actually happening because of the underground nature of these illegal activities so only cases that are met with some form of police or governmental intervention are capture into statistical data that can be documented. The rest is based on field research data that is qualitatively gathered and documented through peer review articles.

In the last class we were given some printed readings to be taken home and studied, one of which is called, “Human Trafficking: The Facts,” Written for United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, through the “Blue Heart Campaign against Human Trafficking.” This article is written a story format where three stories are told about some individuals and a group of people, taken from three different countries where they are exploited in various ways. Although each story ends with the rescue of some of the victims, justice for the exploiters is somewhat ambiguous or extremely lacking. I urge you to take the time to read this document if you can because it says a lot about global conditions that do not get printed on the headlines of our daily media sources. In fact, this sort of crime seems to me to be rarely talked about in Canadian media unless it involves a dramatic investigation by police or some huge sting operation from multiple international police forces that touch our border.

Some of the types of human trafficking are: sex slaves, prostitution, forced labour, child trafficking, domestic trafficking, and so on.

To read the PDF version of the article, please go here: http://www.unodc.org/blueheart/en/campaign-tools.html, and click on the English version of the “Testimonials” for the stats and the three stories that I’ve  read.

Posted in Criminology, General, Law, Law and Order, Photographs, Social Justice | 1 Comment »