Tara at the MCC
17 Comments
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuJzEVY-Hdw
MCC - DAY 77 - LISA BANFIELD & FAMILIES' AND WOMENS' SHELTER SUBMISSIONS
7 Comments
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-62975410
"After more than two years and millions of dollars spent on this inquiry, I have more questions than answers," said Tara Long, sister of Aaron Tuck, who was killed alongside his wife Jolene Oliver and daughter Emily in the community of Portapique.
Ms Long praised the heroism of Constable Heidi Stevenson, who died while attempting to stop the gunman, but said she felt frustrated that the force held a procession for their fallen colleague in the days after the attack while "my family was still laying dead at their house".
She said the inquiry has made her lose faith in the RCMP.
She also accused the federal government of trying to politicise the tragedy to push gun control legislation - an accusation made earlier this year in notes by a local RCMP officer, which were released as part of the inquiry.
"The police don't always show up when you need them, especially in rural areas, so we must be able to protect ourselves," Ms Long said. "If Aaron had a gun that night, this tragedy would've stopped at his house."
Both RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have denied meddling in the investigation.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-62975410
Nova Scotia shooting: Families say inquiry raises more questions
Families of the victims in Canada's deadliest mass shooting say an inquiry into what happened has left them with "more questions than answers".
The joint provincial and federal inquiry is hearing from family members and their representatives as it wraps up months of public hearings this week.
Twenty-two people died in the April 2020 attack in Nova Scotia.
The inquiry was launched following fierce criticism of the police response to the mass shooting.
Investigators want to know what happened when Gabriel Wortman, a 51-year-old dental technician, went on a 13-hour shooting spree that spanned two days and 100km (62 miles) in rural Nova Scotia. He was eventually shot dead by police.
"After more than two years and millions of dollars spent on this inquiry, I have more questions than answers," said Tara Long, sister of Aaron Tuck, who was killed alongside his wife Jolene Oliver and daughter Emily in the community of Portapique.
Ms Long praised the heroism of Constable Heidi Stevenson, who died while attempting to stop the gunman, but said she felt frustrated that the force held a procession for their fallen colleague in the days after the attack while "my family was still laying dead at their house".
She said the inquiry has made her lose faith in the RCMP.
She also accused the federal government of trying to politicise the tragedy to push gun control legislation - an accusation made earlier this year in notes by a local RCMP officer, which were released as part of the inquiry.
"The police don't always show up when you need them, especially in rural areas, so we must be able to protect ourselves," Ms Long said. "If Aaron had a gun that night, this tragedy would've stopped at his house."
Both RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have denied meddling in the investigation.
When testifying before the inquiry in August, Ms Lucki apologised for her force's failure to meet the expectations of the public during the 2020 shooting.
"I don't think we were what you wanted us to be or what you needed us to be," she said.
The inquiry has heard from dozens of witnesses since February, including responding police officers and senior RCMP officials, the gunman's former spouse and various experts. It has published thousands of pages of documents related to its initial findings.
But families have long held questions about the overall integrity of inquiry after disagreeing with some of its procedures.
Lawyer Sandra McCulloch, who represents most of the victims' families, said her clients felt "devalued", and their faith in the process is "dwindling or lost".
The commission maintains its work is open and independent. The inquiry's final report is scheduled to be released in March 2023.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iem81pEAUvM
MCC Day 73 - Day Two of Closing Submissions
5 Comments
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-62975410
"After more than two years and millions of dollars spent on this inquiry, I have more questions than answers," said Tara Long, sister of Aaron Tuck, who was killed alongside his wife Jolene Oliver and daughter Emily in the community of Portapique.
Ms Long praised the heroism of Constable Heidi Stevenson, who died while attempting to stop the gunman, but said she felt frustrated that the force held a procession for their fallen colleague in the days after the attack while "my family was still laying dead at their house".
She said the inquiry has made her lose faith in the RCMP.
She also accused the federal government of trying to politicise the tragedy to push gun control legislation - an accusation made earlier this year in notes by a local RCMP officer, which were released as part of the inquiry.
"The police don't always show up when you need them, especially in rural areas, so we must be able to protect ourselves," Ms Long said. "If Aaron had a gun that night, this tragedy would've stopped at his house."
Both RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have denied meddling in the investigation.
https://twitter.com/DavidRaymondAm1/status/1572943684295086080
A live stream of the proceedings can be viewed here:
Lawyers lay out 'failings' in RCMP response to Nova Scotia mass shooting
Victim's husband says he holds out 'hope' final report will be valuable
The Mass Casualty Commission leading the inquiry into the tragic events of April 18 and 19, 2020, heard final submissions from family members of many victims during hearings in Truro, N.S., either through lawyers or speaking on their own behalf.
Sandra McCulloch of Patterson Law, which represents most of the victims' families, outlined "a great number of failings" including lack of proper training and equipment for RCMP to deal with a mobile, active shooter at night in a wooded area, and a range of communication problems between officers and the public.
The families have also complained about how the RCMP treated them after the massacre, and procedural issues with the commission itself.
"Now is not the time to shy away from assigning accountability, for the fear that it might have the appearance of blame," McCulloch told the commission.
People
hold signs during a rally in Victoria Park in Halifax on July 27, 2020,
calling for a public inquiry into the Portapique mass killing. (Patrick Callaghan/CBC)
"Our clients deserve a frank and honest assessment of what went wrong, prior to, during, and after the mass casualty."
Many victims' family members attended the hearing Tuesday, including Nick Beaton, whose pregnant wife Kristen Beaton was killed the morning of April 19 in the small community of Debert.
Speaking alongside McCulloch outside the inquiry, Beaton told reporters it was important to come in person "because this is our life."
Beaton and other victims' families have been vocal about their disappointment in not being able to directly question major witnesses including the gunman's partner Lisa Banfield or RCMP officers in key positions during the shooting.
He said the inquiry's trauma-informed mandate left him feeling that it protected all other witnesses, while the families of shooting victims have been left "battling through" the process themselves.
On Tuesday, Beaton said there was "a lot more" that could have been done by the commission, but he's waiting until their final report to decide whether anything valuable came from the inquiry families pushed so hard to get.
"There's hope. That's all we've had is hope. I mean, we fought hard to get it, we voiced our concerns along the way. Me and the other family members I know, that's all we have left is hope, because we tried every other avenue," Beaton said.
Tara
Long, sister of Aaron Tuck, who was killed with his partner Jolene
Oliver and their daughter, Emily Tuck, addresses the commission Tuesday.
(The Canadian Press/Andrew Vaughan)
Another family member who lost a loved one let the commissioners know exactly how she felt about the process.
Tara Long's brother Aaron Tuck was killed in Portapique the night of April 18, alongside his wife Jolene Oliver and their teenage daughter Emily Tuck. Long, who represented herself in her final submission to the commission Tuesday, said she's still struggling with what happened that day and afterwards.
She questioned why more Portapique homes weren't evacuated overnight if the RCMP believed the gunman was likely dead by self-inflicted wounds, and how the body of her brother was not found lying in his doorway by an RCMP officer who stopped nearby the morning of April 19. Long also noted the liaison officer for most victims' families texted Tuck on April 19 to see if he was alright, rather than go to his home.
"We have all patiently waited and listened to see when and how this process was going to provide us with answers and we are still waiting. Time has run out," Long said.
Twenty-two
people died on April 18 and 19, 2020. Top row from left: Gina Goulet,
Dawn Gulenchyn, Jolene Oliver, Frank Gulenchyn, Sean McLeod, Alanna
Jenkins. Second row: John Zahl, Lisa McCully, Joey Webber, Heidi
Stevenson, Heather O'Brien and Jamie Blair. Third row from top: Kristen
Beaton, Lillian Campbell, Joanne Thomas, Peter Bond, Tom Bagley and Greg
Blair. Bottom row: Emily Tuck, Joy Bond, Corrie Ellison and Aaron Tuck.
(CBC)
Lawyer McCulloch raised what she called "critical facts" that applied to various victims.
For instance, the first 911 call from victim Jamie Blair about her husband Greg being shot in the rural community of Portapique just after 10 p.m. on April 18 informed police that gunman Gabriel Wortman was driving a mock RCMP cruiser.
But, the inquiry has heard, RCMP quickly speculated the car was an older decommissioned model with no vinyl decals or lights.
There was an "inordinate amount of ball dropping" on gathering and handling intelligence, McCulloch said there seemed to be no structure in place to make sure vital pieces of information didn't fall through the cracks.
She said it's "incomprehensible" that critical incident commander Staff Sgt. Jeff West did not know there were two key witnesses, shooting survivors Andrew and Kate MacDonald, until the next morning.
Many investigative threads weren't followed, McCulloch said, including not following up with the children left hiding and watching the gunman move around the community, or asking other residents in the small community what they could share about the situation.
"Ironically, I'm talking about community members whom the RCMP could have simultaneously warned and potentially brought to safety," McCulloch said. "There was an opportunity of an exchange of valuable information that should have happened and didn't — to everyone's detriment."
She said the RCMP's lack of training is apparent through the decision to only allow one team of three officers into Portapique for hours on April 18, without night vision gear. That was rooted in a fear of being ambushed by the gunman or hit by crossfire with other police.
This, and the lack of tools like GPS to show where members were, has left clients wondering if the children of victims left to hide for hours could have been rescued earlier, or if others' deaths could have been prevented, she said.
Lisa
Banfield, the common-law wife of Gabriel Wortman, testified at the Mass
Casualty Commission inquiry on July 15, 2022. Some families wanted to
directly question her, but were not allowed to do so. (Andrew Vaughan/The Canadian Press)
Various communication issues included "disorganized" command structure with many RCMP responding members unsure who was in charge, McCulloch said. Others, like Sgt. Andy O'Brien, who had been drinking that evening, called in instructions from his own home. Another officer in Portapique did not properly share local knowledge of a back road out of the community.
It was an "egregious" failure to not send timely and accurate information to the public about what was happening, McCulloch said, and in fact misrepresenting the situation by only calling it a firearms complaint in one tweet that stayed up overnight into April 19.
McCulloch also raised concerns over how often RCMP air support was not available, how responding officers reverted to paper maps when they couldn't access detailed computerized ones of Portapique, not informing Truro police about the situation right away, and failing to use the emergency alert system.
The gunman's replica RCMP cruiser that was used in the N.S. mass shooting was created with a decommissioned 2017 Ford Taurus. (Mass Casualty Commission)
Many of the RCMP's mistakes throughout their response came due to "tunnel vision," McCulloch said, where police chose a "most likely" scenario based on what witnesses were telling them, or how officers believed explosions around them meant the gunman was still in Portapique long after he'd left.
McCulloch urged the commission not to view these gaps through the lens of RCMP members who have suggested they were the result of lack of funding and resources during an "unprecedented" event. Instead, they were "basic mistakes that contributed to the unprecedented nature" of the tragedy.
There were also "numerous missed opportunities" for RCMP to build their knowledge of the gunman before the shootings, McCulloch said, since Wortman was no stranger to police given his assault of a teenager years beforehand, and two reports of uttering threats and having illegal guns in 2010 and 2011.
McCulloch also said there was also the report from Portapique neighbour Brenda Forbes in 2013 who said she told the Mounties about the gunman's violence against Banfield. That was refuted by "questionable" evidence from the officer who took her complaint, she said.
Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) had also flagged the gunman for suspected smuggling in the past.
All this prior information taken together and properly investigated could have revealed the gunman to be a person of concern, McCulloch said. The RCMP did have the gunman on their radar, she said, but through a lack of access to various databases, the radar was "turned off again and again."
"Whether this is because he was a wealthy white man who cleverly presented as pro-police and who enjoyed the special attention of an RCMP constable, or whether the RCMP or other policing enforcement agencies just didn't take the time to note and actually investigate these red flags, the result is the same," McCulloch said.
"The perpetrator was subject to no real scrutiny at all, and was left free to devastate our communities as he saw fit."
McCulloch also said victims' families did not begrudge Const. Heidi Stevenson's family their two family liaison officers provided by the RCMP. But they were in "pain" to see the wide gap between how Stevenson's loved ones were supported because they were connected to a fallen RCMP officer, yet only one "overwhelmed" officer dealt with the remaining families for 21 victims.
Over the last seven months, the commission has heard from more than 230 witnesses including 60 who testified at the public hearing. That's on top of the more than 3,300 documents that have also been released.
Everyone who presented Tuesday made it clear that the sheer volume of documents and lack of relevant testimony was a concern.
Lawyer Tara Miller, who represents a relative of Kristen Beaton, said the commission should have heard more evidence about the shootings. She said there was a list of people lawyers wanted to testify during the inquiry, but they only appeared in pre-recorded commission interviews, if at all.
Lawyer
Tara Miller, who represents a relative Kristen Beaton, told the
commission there should have been more testimony about the shooting
rampage itself. (The Canadian Press/Andrew Vaughan)
"To allow for more ... firsthand evidence from witnesses just serves to make sure the evidentiary record for the commissioners is as robust and complete as possible," Miller told reporters outside the inquiry.
During her submission Tuesday, Miller said a commission recommendation should be that a provincial-federal committee be struck to ensure the findings of the inquiry are not lost to time or changes in governments and RCMP leadership. She said the committee should include victims' families, and a website where people can see what's been done.
Miller said the commissions' final recommendations will be the legacy of the mass shooting, and of those whose lives were lost.
"If there is no confidence or faith the recommendations will be … implemented, then the work done by all, and the deep losses suffered by the families, will all be for naught. That cannot be the legacy left," Miller told the commission.
Other lawyers made suggestions Tuesday about updating the "immediate action rapid deployment" (IARD) training to deal with night scenarios in wooded areas like Portapique. They said officers should also be better trained in how to secure crime scenes since some victims were not found for hours.
The commission will continue to hear final submissions from participants for the rest of the week.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
With files from Angela MacIvor
Cheers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmonton_Police_Service 1780 officers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottawa_Police_Service 1480 officers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peel_Regional_Police 2100 officers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winnipeg_Police_Service 1355 officers
https://www.statista.com/statistics/436207/number-of-royal-canadian-mounted-police-officers-in-canada/ 846 officers
that's cause the mandate is to pretend the RCMP is competent, this whole thing was a farce and needs a complete do-over with all witnesses on the stand, in person, open to questions.....including every single officer that was there that night, their notes, their actions, video, everything. Trying to make this about "look over there at Lucki" was all I needed to know about the goals of this nonsense, protect the reputation (even though it's already gone, just more out to lunch tonedeafness by that set) of the RCMP at all co sts.
the families still being treated as second to the officers.....when did the police become so clingy, needy and about themselves and not the public they are supposed to be protecting?
disban it all already and start new.
Leave you with these from the article (more headshaking): "She said the RCMP's lack of training is apparent through the decision to only allow one team of three officers into Portapique for hours on April 18, without night vision gear. That was rooted in a fear of being ambushed by the gunman or hit by crossfire with other police."
"There were also "numerous missed opportunities" for RCMP to build their knowledge of the gunman before the shootings, "
But Dave, if I can call you Dave, this is sleepy Nova Scotia (yawn) home of apple cider and wine. Nothing happens here except for bank robberies, murder and drugs dealers. We can put off the training and the upgrades for another day, right? Can't ruin the weekend?
You're right about the lack 'dedication' which cascades to supervision, follow through on investigations and passing information in a timely matter.
Forgot lack of implementing recommendations from previous incidents in a 15 year time frame.
Don't forget they caught those bank robbers in the Greenwood and Berwick area.
The same guy twice after his daring escape from Burnside :)
---------- Original message ----------
From: James Lockyer <jlockyer@lzzdefence.ca>
Date: Wed, 21 Sep 2022 22:59:21 +0000
Subject: Automatic reply: Is Lockyer sending the Ghost of the
Hurricane to Nova Scotia just as a real one is bearing down on us???
To: David Amos <david.raymond.amos333@gmail.
I will be out of the country until September 23. I will respond to
your email as soon as I return.
If your matter is urgent, please contact Kathy Doyle at
kdoyle@lzzdefence.ca or Katie Ray at katie@lzzdefence.ca.
---------- Original message ----------
From: Premier <PREMIER@novascotia.ca>
Date: Wed, 21 Sep 2022 23:01:08 +0000
Subject: Thank you for your email
To: David Amos <david.raymond.amos333@gmail.
Thank you for your email to Premier Houston. This is an automatic
confirmation your message has been received.
As we are currently experiencing higher than normal volumes of
correspondence, there may be delays in the response time for
correspondence identified as requiring a response.
If you are looking for the most up-to-date information from the
Government of Nova Scotia please visit:
http://novascotia.ca<https://
Thank you,
Premier’s Correspondence Team
---------- Original message ----------
From: Ministerial Correspondence Unit - Justice Canada <mcu@justice.gc.ca>
Date: Wed, 21 Sep 2022 23:01:07 +0000
Subject: Automatic Reply
To: David Amos <david.raymond.amos333@gmail.
Thank you for writing to the Honourable David Lametti, Minister of
Justice and Attorney General of Canada.
Due to the volume of correspondence addressed to the Minister, please
note that there may be a delay in processing your email. Rest assured
that your message will be carefully reviewed.
We do not respond to correspondence that contains offensive language.
-------------------
Merci d'avoir écrit à l'honorable David Lametti, ministre de la
Justice et procureur général du Canada.
En raison du volume de correspondance adressée au ministre, veuillez
prendre note qu'il pourrait y avoir un retard dans le traitement de
votre courriel. Nous tenons à vous assurer que votre message sera lu
avec soin.
Nous ne répondons pas à la correspondance contenant un langage offensant.
<blaine.higgs@gnb.ca>, "Louis.Leger" <Louis.Leger@gnb.ca>,
"mary.wilson" <mary.wilson@gnb.ca>, washington field
<washington.field@ic.fbi.gov>, "Brenda.Lucki"
<Brenda.Lucki@rcmp-grc.gc.ca>, "Bill.Hogan" <Bill.Hogan@gnb.ca>,
"Bill.Blair" <Bill.Blair@parl.gc.ca>, "barb.whitenect"
<barb.whitenect@gnb.ca>, "Moiz.Karimjee" <Moiz.Karimjee@ontario.ca>,
"Michelle.Boutin" <Michelle.Boutin@rcmp-grc.gc.
<andrew@frankmagazine.ca>, "Kevin.leahy" <Kevin.leahy@rcmp-grc.gc.ca>,
andrewjdouglas <andrewjdouglas@gmail.com>, "darren.campbell"
<darren.campbell@rcmp-grc.gc.
<Michael.Gorman@cbc.ca>, "michael.macdonald"
<michael.macdonald@
<Rhonda.Brown@globalnews.ca>, sheilagunnreid
<sheilagunnreid@gmail.com>, jesse <jesse@jessebrown.ca>, jesse
<jesse@viafoura.com>, publiced@thestar.ca, newsroom@therecord.com,
stevemckinley@thestar.ca, paulpalango <paulpalango@protonmail.com>,
NightTimePodcast <NightTimePodcast@gmail.com>, nsinvestigators
<nsinvestigators@gmail.com>
Cc: motomaniac333 <motomaniac333@gmail.com>, jessica@lzzdefence.ca
https://davidraymondamos3.
Thursday, 14 July 2022
Spouse of N.S. mass shooter shows how deadly rampage began in video
re-enactment
---------- Original message ----------
From: MICHAEL GORMAN <michael.gorman@cbc.ca>
Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2022 17:25:48 -0700
Subject: Out of office reply Re: Methinks folks should tune in and
listen to Paul Palango and his all knowing pumpkin before the show
goes "Poof" N'esy Pas?
To: david.raymond.amos333@gmail.
Thanks for your email. I'll be away until July 18, 2022. I'll reply to
your message when I'm back in the office. If you need to speak to a
reporter sooner, please contact cbcns@cbc.ca.
--
Michael Gorman
CBC Nova Scotia
902-420-4320 (desk)
@michaeltgorman
The Lockyer Factor By Paul Palango
July 20, 2022
FRANK MAGAZINE JULY 20, 2022
THE LOCKYER FACTOR
by Paul Palango
If you haven’t already noticed, something truly strange happened on
the road to finding the truth about what actually happened before,
during and after the Nova Scotia massacres of April 18 and 19, 2020.
Lisa Banfield and her $1,200-an-hour lawyer, James Lockyer, appear to
have been controlling the show from the very beginning. The Lockyer
factor as a not-so-hidden influencer on the news is important to
address.
On April 19, 2020, just hours after Lisa Banfield arrived at the door
of Leon Joudrey, she contacted lawyer Kevin von Bargen in Toronto to
seek advice and help. The lawyer, a friend of Wortman and Banfield,
put her onto James Lockyer.
From that moment forward, her every word has been treated as gospel.
By the RCMP, by the Mass Casualty Commission, and by the compliant
media. Even those who believe her to have been a victim of domestic
violence at the hands of Gabriel Wortman (and she clearly was), but
also believe she might know more than she’s letting on — and that what
she knows might be important to the inquiry’s purported fact-finding
mission — have been dismissed as cranks and conspiracists.
According to financial documents released by the inquiry after Lisa
Banfield’s dramatic “testimony” on July 15, Banfield reported earnings
of $15,288 one recent year.
That would cover a day, plus HST, of Lockyer’s valuable time.
He has been on the clock for 27 months or so, his fees covered by
taxpayers through the Mass Casualty Commission.
Banfield’s finances, such as they are, would have been a juicy subject
for any curious lawyer, but she wasn’t allowed to be cross examined.
Too traumatic, remember.
Questions abound.
Why did Banfield hire an esteemed criminal lawyer? Did no one let her
in on her status as a victim?
Lockyer seems like an exotic choice. He made his name from the early
‘90s onward representing men wrongly convicted of murder, such as
Stephen Truscott, David Milgaard, Robert Baltovich and Guy Paul Morin.
Morin was falsely accused of killing 9-year-old Christine Jessop in
Queensville, Ontario, near Toronto.
I was the city editor at the Globe and Mail then. I was intimately
involved in the story which was being covered by one of our reporters,
Kirk Makin. I even at one point had a meeting with Makin and Morin’s
mother, who protested his innocence. At the time I was wrongly unmoved
and skeptical of her story, but Makin persisted in digging into it and
worked closely with Lockyer. Morin was eventually exonerated. Kudos to
all. I hope I got smarter after that.
Lockyer, who lived a block away from me in Toronto, went on to become
a champion of the wrongly convicted and started the Innocence Project
to work on their behalf. Among his many clients was Rubin (Hurricane)
Carter, the former boxer who was wrongly convicted of three murders in
Paterson, NJ and was the inspiration for the 1976 Bob Dylan epic
Hurricane.
In recent years, Lockyer and his Innocence Project became involved in
the case of Nova Scotia’s Glenn Assoun, who was wrongly convicted in
1999 of murdering Brenda Way in Dartmouth four years earlier.
Lockyer worked along with lawyers Sean MacDonald and Phil Campbell to
have Assoun’s conviction overturned after he had spent 17 years in
prison. In the final years of that campaign an activist reporter named
Tim Bousquet took on the Assoun case and wrote about it extensively
for years, channeling and publicizing what the lawyers and their
investigators had uncovered. To his credit Bousquet uncovered some
things on his own.
Perhaps the biggest revelation in the Assoun case was that the RCMP
had destroyed evidence and had mislead the courts about Assoun.
Bousquet joined with the CBC in 2020 and produced a radio series, Dead
Wrong, about the case. As Canadians should know well by now, both the
federal and Nova Scotia governments ignored what the Mounties were
caught doing.
Fast forward to the Nova Scotia massacres and the news coverage of it.
As I wrote in my recent book, 22 Murders: Investigating the Massacres,
Cover-up and Obstacles to Justice In Nova Scotia, I had a brief fling
with Bousquet and his on-line newspaper, The Halifax Examiner, in
2020.
After publishing an opening salvo in Maclean’s magazine in May 2020, I
couldn’t find anyone else interested in my reporting, which challenged
the official narrative. Maclean’s writer Stephen Maher introduced me
to Bousquet. I knew nothing about either him or the Halifax Examiner.
Over the next several weeks, Bousquet published five of my pieces and
I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Examiner punched well
above its weight. Its stories were being picked up and read across the
country. Although I had never met the gruff and the usually
difficult-to-reach Bousquet, I thought we had a mutual interest in
keeping the story alive as the mainstream media was losing interest in
it and were moving on. At first blush, Bousquet seemed like a true,
objective journalist determined to find the truth. Hell, I was even
prepared to work for nothing, just to get the story out.
“I have to pay you, man,” he insisted in one phone call.
I felt badly taking money from him. I had no idea what his company’s
financial situation might be, and I didn’t want to break the bank. He
said he could pay me $300 or so per story and asked me to submit an
invoice, which I did.
Soon afterward, a cheque for $1500 arrived. I cashed it and then my
wife Sharonand I sent him $500 each in after tax money as a donation.
Like I said, I didn’t want to be a drag on the Examiner.
Once we made the donations, Bousquet all but ghosted me. He was always
too busy to take my calls or field my pitches. I couldn’t tell if I
was being cancelled or had been conned.
I began to replay events in my head and the one thing that leapt out
to me was Bousquet’s defensive and even dismissive reaction to two
threads I thought were important and newsworthy which I wanted to
write about.
One was the politically sensitive issue of writing objectively about
all the women in the story. There were female victims who had slept
with Wortman, which I though was contextually important in
understanding the larger story. Bousquet had made it clear that he
wasn’t eager for me to write about that. (Be trauma informed!-ed.)
There was also the fact that female police officers were at the
intersection of almost every major event that terrible weekend. The
commanding officer was Leona (Lee) Bergerman. Chief Superintendent
Janis Graywas in charge of the RCMP in Halifax County. Inspector
Dustine Rodierran the communications centre. It was a long list that
will continue to grow.
I believe in equal pay for work of equal value but that comes with
equal accountability for all. I am gender neutral when evaluating
performance.
But it didn’t take psychic powers to detect that gender politics was a
big issue with Bousquet – his target market, as it were.
I really wanted to write about Banfield. My preliminary research
strongly suggested to me her story was riddled with weakness and
inconsistency, but nobody in the mainstream media would tackle it.
Hell, for months her name wasn’t even published anywhere outside the
pages of Frank magazine.
Bousquet’s position was that Banfield was a victim of domestic
violence and that her story, via vague, second-hand and untested RCMP
statements, was to be believed. No questions asked.
“You’re going to need something really big to convince me otherwise,”
Bousquet said in one of our brief conversations.
Afterward, I did have one face-to-face meeting with him in Halifax. He
actually sat in the back seat of our car because Sharon was in the
front. We met up because I wanted to tell him about sensitive leads I
had which, if pursued, would show that the RCMP had the ability to
manipulate its records and destroy evidence in its PROs reporting
system.
Considering his involvement in the Assoun case, where that very issue
was at the heart of Assoun’s exoneration, I thought Bousquet would be
eager to pursue the story.
As I looked at him in the rearview mirror, I could sense his
discomfort and lack of interest. So could Sharon who was sitting
beside me.
“That was weird,” she said.
Bousquet got out of the car, walked away and disappeared me for good.
It was all so inexplicable. If this was the new journalism that I was
experiencing, there was something terribly wrong with it. I couldn’t
believe that a journalist like Bousquet who aspired to be a
truthteller felt compelled to distill every word or nuance through a
political filter first or even something more nefarious.
Later, while writing for Frank Magazine, I broke story after story
about the case. Incontrovertible documents showing that the RCMP was
destroying evidence in the Wortman case. The Pictou County Public
Safety channel recordings showing for the first time what the RCMP was
doing on the ground during the early morning hours of April 19. The
911 tapes. The Enfield Big Stop videos. That Lisa Banfield lied in
small claims court on two different occasions.
Bousquet either ignored or ridiculed most of those stories in the
Halifax Examiner or on his Twitter feed, as if I were making the
stories up.
For the most part throughout 2021, the Halifax Examiner didn’t even
bother covering the larger story. There was no discernible legwork or
energy being expended on it. And regarding the stories he did publish,
I began to see a pattern. Naïve readers might have thought that he was
digging for new stories when in fact the Examiner was merely mining
court documents and uncritically reporting what resided therein. It
was all stenography, straight from the mouths of the RCMP and the MCC.
Time and time again, “new” stories would be published which were
essentially no different from previous ones but all with the same
theme: as Ray Daviesof the Kinks put it in his masterpiece Sunny
Afternoon: “Tales of drunkenness and cruelty.”
The Monster and the Maiden stories, as I called them, reinforced in
readers' minds that Banfield was a helpless victim controlled by a
demonic Wortman, a narrative that, upon reflection, seemed to
perfectly suit Lockyer’s strategy.
For 27 months the RCMP and the Mass Casualty Commission played along,
sheltering Banfield as part of their “trauma-informed” mandate, even
though there was plenty to be skeptical about her story.
Banfield was beside Wortman for 19 years during which he committed
crime after crime. She was reportedly the last person to be with
Wortman and her incredible, hoary tale of escape should have been
enough to raise suspicions about her.
From the moment she knocked on Leon Joudrey’s door she has been
treated as a victim, which to this day astounds law enforcement
experts and others who have monitored the case. Many observers,
including but not limited to lawyers representing the families of the
victims, have serious questions about how Banfield spent the overnight
hours of April 18/19. Not helping matters is that she doesn’t appear
to have been subjected to any level of normal criminal investigation
or evidence gathering. Her clothing wasn’t tested. There were no
gunshot residue tests. She wasn’t subjected to a polygraph or any
other credible investigative procedure.
Enter James Lockyer of the Innocence Project.
The puppetification of Tim Bousquet
As we moved closer to July 15, the day that Banfield would be
“testifying” at the MCC, it is also important to consider what
Bousquet and his minions were doing at the Halifax Examiner.
In the weeks and days leading up to Banfield’s appearance, the
Examiner’s reporting and Bousquet’s Twitter commentary began to take
on an illogical, more contemptuous and even hostile approach to anyone
who refused to buy into the RCMP and Banfield’s official version of
events.
In a series of hilariously one-sided diatribes, Bousquet lashed out at
Banfield’s critics whom he wouldn’t name. Some (likely us) were
“bad-faith actors.” He decried the “witchification” of Banfield.
He tweeted: “And just to repeat for the 1000th time: I’ve read
transcripts of interviews with dozens of people. I’ve read three
years’ of emails between Banfield and GW. I’ve read her Notes app.
There is ZERO evidence that she had any prior knowledge (of) GW’s
intent to kill people…. The notion that she is ‘complicit’ is pulled
out of people’s diarrhetic asses and plain old-fashioned misogyny.”
Oh, misogyny, that old woke slimeball to be hurled at any male who
dare be critical of any female.
One can’t help but sense the deft hand of a clever and experienced
defence lawyer running up the back of Bousquet’s shirt. That makes
sense.
Look at what has transpired on Lockyer’s watch.
Since April 2020, the RCMP and the federal and provincial governments
have wrapped themselves in a single, vague and inappropriate platitude
– trauma informed.
The original selling point was that this approach would prevent the
surviving family members from being further traumatized by the ongoing
“investigation” into the massacres.
What actually happened is much more sinister.
Lisa Banfield was coddled and protected the entire time not only by
the authorities but also by Lockyer’s friends in the mass media. The
wily old fox had the opportunity to mainline his thoughts into the
Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, the CBC, CTV and Global News who
unquestioningly lapped it up.
At the MCC, Banfield wasn’t allowed to be cross examined because, as
Mr. Lockyer so eloquently explained, cross examination would just lead
to more conspiracy theories.
That’s rich.
The search for the truth will only confuse matters -- it’s better for
everyone that Banfield spin a much-rehearsed tale without challenge.
That’s clearly a $1,200-an-hour lawyer speaking.
The whole world has gone topsy-turvy. The Mass Casualty Commission,
the federal and provincial governments, the RCMP and Lisa Banfield are
now aligned on one side of the argument.
Meanwhile, the re-traumatized families find themselves agreeing with
this magazine and other skeptics and critics.
The final irony is that the Halifax Examiner bills itself as being
“independent” and “adversarial.” It seems to be neither these days.
In the end, Tim Bousquet’s approach to covering the Nova Scotia
Massacres is, to use his words: “Dead Wrong.”
paulpalango@protonmail.com
Paul Palango is author of the best selling book 22 Murders:
Investigating the massacres, cover-up and obstacles to justice in Nova
Scotia (Random House).
--
Andrew Douglas
Frank Magazine
phone: (902) 420-1668
fax: (902) 423-0281
cell: (902) 221-0386
andrew@frankmagazine.ca
www.frankmagazine.ca
https://davidraymondamos3.
Wednesday, 21 September 2022
Tara Long Round 2
Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter dies in Toronto
Former American boxer became global champion for the wrongfully convicted
TORONTO – Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, the former American boxer who became a global champion for the wrongfully convicted after spending almost 20 years in prison for a triple murder he didn’t commit, died at his home in Toronto on Sunday.
He was 76.
His long-time friend and co-accused, John Artis, said Carter died in his sleep after a lengthy battle with prostate cancer.
“It’s a big loss to those who are in institutions that have been wrongfully convicted,” Artis told The Canadian Press.
“He dedicated the remainder of his life, once we were released from prison, to fighting for the cause.”
Artis quit his job stateside and moved to Toronto to act as Carter’s caregiver after his friend was diagnosed with cancer nearly three years ago.
During the final few months, as Carter’s health took a turn for the worse, Artis said the man who was immortalized in a Bob Dylan song and a Hollywood film came to grips with the fact that he was dying.
“He tried to accomplish as much as he possibly could prior to his passing,” Artis said, noting Carter’s efforts earlier this year to bring about the release of a New York City man incarcerated since 1985 — the year Carter was freed.
“He didn’t express very much about his legacy. That’ll be established for itself through the results of his work. That’s primarily what he was concerned about — his work,” Artis said.
Born on May 6, 1937, into a family of seven children, Carter struggled with a hereditary speech impediment and was sent to a juvenile reform centre at 12 after an assault. He escaped and joined the Army in 1954, experiencing racial segregation and learning to box while in West Germany.
Carter then committed a series of muggings after returning home, spending four years in various state prisons.
He began his pro boxing career in 1961. He was fairly short for a middleweight, but his aggression and high punch volume made him effective.
Carter’s life changed forever one summer night in 1966, when two white men and a white woman were gunned down in a New Jersey Bar.
Police were searching for what witnesses described as two black men in a white car, and pulled over Carter and Artis a half-hour after the shootings.
Though there was no physical evidence linking them to the crime and eyewitnesses at the time of the slayings couldn’t identify them as the killers, Carter was convicted along with Artis. Their convictions were overturned in 1975, but both were found guilty a second time in a retrial a year later.
After 19 years behind bars, Carter was finally freed in 1985 when a federal judge overturned the second set of convictions, citing a racially biased prosecution. Artis was also exonerated after being earlier paroled in 1981.
Carter later moved to Toronto and became the founding executive director of the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted, which has secured the release of 18 people since 1993.
Win Wahrer, a director with the association, remembers Carter as the “voice and the face” of the group.
“I think it’s because of him that we got the credibility that we did get, largely due to him — he was already a celebrity, people knew who he was,” she said.
“He suffered along with those who were suffering.”
Though Carter left the organization in 2005, the phone never stopped ringing with requests for him, Wahrer said.
“He was an eloquent speaker, a passionate speaker. I remember the first time I ever heard him I knew I was in the presence of a man that could move mountains just by his presence and his words and his passion for what he believed in,” she said.
Carter went on to found another advocacy group, Innocence International.
“He wanted to bring people together. That was his real purpose in life — to get people to understand one another and to work together to make changes,” said Wahrer.
“It was so important for him to make a difference. And I think he did. I think he accomplished what he set out to do.”
Association lawyer James Lockyer, who has known Carter since they were involved in the wrongful conviction case of Guy Paul Morin, remembered how Carter called him just before sitting down with then-president Bill Clinton for a screening of his 1999 biopic “The Hurricane.”
The call was to ask for advice on how to bring the U.S. leader’s attention to the case of a Canadian woman facing execution in Vietnam.
“Even though this was sort of a pinnacle moment of Rubin’s life — to sit at the White House with the president and his wife on either side of him watching a film about him — he wasn’t really thinking about himself,” said Lockyer.
“He was thinking about this poor woman who was sitting on death row in Vietnam that we were trying to save from the firing squad.”
The film about Carter’s life starred Denzel Washington, who received an Academy Award nomination for playing the boxer turned prisoner.
On Sunday, when told of Carter’s death, Washington said in a statement: “God bless Rubin Carter and his tireless fight to ensure justice for all.”
Carter’s fight continued to the very end.
Never letting up even as his body was wracked with cancer, Carter penned an impassioned letter to a New York paper in February calling for the conviction of a man jailed in 1985 to be reviewed — and reflected on his own mortality in the process.
“If I find a heaven after this life, I’ll be quite surprised. In my own years on this planet, though, I lived in hell for the first 49 years, and have been in heaven for the past 28 years,” he wrote.
“To live in a world where truth matters and justice, however late, really happens, that world would be heaven enough for us all.”
— with files from the Associated Press.
——
Follow @willcampbll on Twitter
Atlantic Canada watching Fiona as it strengthens into Category 4 hurricane off Caribbean
Storm expected to affect the region Friday and Saturday, bringing heavy rains and strong winds
Hurricane Fiona continues to be a storm to watch in Atlantic Canada over the next few days.
On Wednesday morning, it was a Category 4 hurricane off the eastern Caribbean. The hurricane is set to travel northward and into Maritime waters late Friday and Saturday as it transitions from a Category 3 hurricane on Friday to a post-tropical storm as it approaches land.
According to CBC meteorologist Jay Scotland, the storm will begin "approaching the Maritimes south of Nova Scotia Friday night, and is currently expected to pass over eastern Nova Scotia and Cape Breton into early Saturday."
"As it merges with an approaching cold front from the west, the hurricane will become a powerful post-tropical storm which the Canadian Hurricane Centre calls a 'deep hybrid low pressure system,'" Scotland said.
"This does not mean the storm will be weaker, it just means that the structure of the storm changes — similar to an intense nor'easter, but one full of tropical moisture [heavy rain] and tropical storm to hurricane-strength wind."
A track near Cape Breton and into the Gulf of St. Lawrence looks most likely at this point, however the "cone of uncertainty" — the area where the storm could hit — remains quite large as we are still a few days out.
Fiona's potential track according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. (Jay Scotland/CBC)
While some uncertainty remains with the track and details, it's all but certain the storm will have an impact in the region.
Prolonged heavy rainfall and potential for flooding is likely along and left of the track.
Tropical storm force winds, or higher, are likely near the centre of the storm and to the right of the track
With files from Ryan Snoddon, Tina Simpkin and Jay Scotland
No comments:
Post a Comment