Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Law & Order


Watch out, Kelowna.

The Cop Killer is coming to town.

Craig Munro, who shot and killed a police officer and let him bleed to death in 1980, has been denied parole from his life sentence, but he has been given instead a number of unescorted absences.

He killed the cop while he was out of prison on mandatory supervision.

Of course.

We trust that the RCMP in Kelowna will be keeping a close eye or two on Munro during his upcoming visits.

Now hold onto all of that scenario while we consider the fuss and bother being raised over the Harper government's moves to publicize the names of violent young offenders.

What is so amusing and so predictable is the name calling from those who oppose such a move.

Apparently, any of us who feel that a little taking of responsibility for one's actions - whether one is 14 or 40 - make us a unique sub-set of human Canadian beings.

We are the dreaded "Law and Order Crowd."

Oh.

Let me get my noose.

I don't know about you, kids, but I see laws being broken with complete pathological indifference every day and I don't like it.

That qualifies me for membership in the Law & Order Crowd apparently.

Yesterday, as my son and I took a walk after breakfast, we saw a young man barrel through a city park on a very nice electric motor scooter.

The bike was silent and interesting and the fellow was wearing a helmet.

But he was driving on a pedestrian pathway in a city park.

What does he care?

On the way to breakfast, there was a brief traffic tie-up with horns blaring.

A man in a van was talking on his cell phone and he was so completely distracted that he basically had stopped in the middle of Broadway.

Now if a 16 year old lunatic pummels someone to death, it seems reasonable to me that he or she be tried in adult court and that we the public see his or her miserable little face and learn his or her fabulous name.

But I guess for the sociologists of the world that makes me - and most of you - Pale Riders.

So be it.

And by the way...

Could the Parole Board please send me an email and let me know when Craig the Cop Killer is going to be in Kelowna so I can book elsewhere?

P.R. in Place of Substance


Solicitor-General Kash Heed may welcome the distraction of avalanches and debates about regulating mountain speed junkies.

At least all of that roar distracts the public from his measly token gift to the growing problems of family violence.

The numbers are up and they are huge and they are growing each year.

To date, this is how police in BC study domestic violence.

They take a short on-line training course.

Nice.

Thorough.

Human.

Engaging.

Kash to the rescue.

Almost 3 years after the Peter Lee murders in Victoria, Heed has announced a $250,000 fund to develop somethingorother.

$250,000?

In provincial spending...that's lunch money.

But let us not be too harsh on Mr. Heed.

We all know that the Holder of all Purses in British Columbia is the Premier.

A man deeply dedicated to matters of social justice.

What He Loves to Do


Tiger Woods may or may not win the Masters next month.

He may or may not win scads of future tournaments and, in time, supplant Nicklaus as the greatest all-time winner of majors.

But there is this certainty.

It will now be impossible to ever look at him again the way we did a year ago.

We know too much.

Way too much.

Tiger's friend, Mark O'Meara said this:

"...maybe the better palce to be is out on the golf course, that is what he loves to do."

Was O'Meara going out of his way to be funny?

That is what Tiger loves to do?

You mean in addition to serial sex with Bimbette of the Week?

I am not blaming Tiger or judging him.

I am saying that because of my own vivid imagination, watching Tiger from now on may be its own peculiar distraction.