Thanks to Steve Pitt For this Latest Tribute to the Canadian Injustice Non-System

They paid the price for stepping up
Two men lost faith in justice system after beatings by rowdies
Matthew Little, The Province

Published: Sunday, July 15, 2007

Eugene Evers and Pawan Singla have more than their 16 stitches in common.
They're also both family men who stepped forward to ask troublemakers in their neighbourhood to be quiet, were attacked for their trouble -- and left with so little respect for the justice system that they say they'll never stick their necks out again.
Evers says his experience was so horrific that he now suggests jokingly that people don blinders and earmuffs when things go bad around them. "Observe and report. That's really all you can do," he says.
But that's not what Pawan Singla did in Chilliwack in late June. After enduring months of what he describes as profanity and fighting at a flophouse next door, he asked visitors to the house not to swear in front of his kids -- and was viciously beaten in response.
Evers's own attack, a year ago next month, was less bloody, but left him with permanent brain damage. He is only now returning to work after nearly a year of recovery.
On his street, he says, youths would keep neighbours up at night with their drag racing. The parking lot across the street was also a hangout for rowdy youth: a place to fight, do drugs and have sex, he says.
In August 2006, Evers decided to do something about it. With a cordless phone in hand and a 911 operator on the line, he stepped outside. This is how the conversation was recorded:
911: "Vancouver police emergency."
Evers: "I have these two young people in cars and they are threatening me . . ."
911: "Where are you, sir?"
Evers: "They are racing around my neighbourhood. Partial plate is three, seven . . ."
The recording then catches an unidentified voice in the background cursing, and a scream from Evers's wife. He'd been struck in the head with a golf club and lay bleeding on the ground.
The man on trial for that assault has a lengthy criminal record that includes convictions for multiple assaults and a break-and-enter -- and a long list of acquittals or stays of charges where no guilty verdict could be achieved.
Sitting in his mother's home for an interview, Evers looks to be doing well, but his measured words are an indication of the lasting effects of his brain injury. "Words still come slower," he explains.
He says he's not counting on the courts for justice -- which he says he has faith will come in the long run from God.
The system, he says, "is not about justice. It's about the law, and the law is tilted so radically in favour of the criminals. What else can innocent people do?
"They call it the justice system, but where is the justice?"
Similar cases in which citizens intervened have ended in tragedy.
Squamish lawyer Bob McIntosh was kicked to death in 1997 when he checked in on a noisy New Year's Eve house party. It took five years for his attacker to be sentenced.
In 2004, Richmond gas station employee Kevin Venn was beaten beyond recognition after he intervened to help a woman being assaulted by her then-boyfriend. His attacker got just 18 months.
Evers figures it's time to build a couple of big jails and start putting criminals away instead of leaving them out on the street.
Singla agrees.
He lives next door to a home police describe as a flophouse. Neighbours say it's a drug house and have assembled a petition asking city council to deal with it.
In late June, Singla says, he stepped outside to ask some of the flophouse visitors not to swear when his children were outside. Soon afterwards, he was dragged across the street and beaten till he couldn't stand. His undershirt was drenched in blood after rocks were thrown at his head.
He says there were witnesses to his attack and that he provided police with pictures of his assailants, but officers told him there wasn't much to go on, he says.
"I guess the Canadian criminal system is meant more for criminals than to protect the general public," says Singla, who thinks police seemed more sympathetic to his assailants than to his plight.
"They [police] were talking more about fairness for the attackers . . . Not a single time was he talking about fairness to me," he says.
Chilliwack RCMP say they are doing what they can, trying to build a case that will stick.
Singla still sees his attackers next door regularly. He says his whole family lives in fear and life will never be the same. His son and niece worry about going outside where "bad guys" will hurt them, he says.
"Everything is changed," he told The Province. "It's crazy. It's sick."
Everything is different for Evers as well, he says. Throughout an interview, he speaks slowly, often mixing up his sentences a bit or pausing to look for words.
He says he paid a high price for trying to bring some peace to the neighbourhood -- and advises others against stepping forward.
His advice to those running the justice system are direct: "Time to treat criminals like criminals."
Vancouver police Const. Howard Chow has some advice of his own.
"You have to use your common sense when you approach any situation," he says, adding it may be appropriate at times to approach people you're having trouble with, but not if they may be mentally ill, violent or using drugs or alcohol.
"Those are times when you should call the police," Chow says.