Thursday, December 23, 2004

Charge uncooperative victims with their own crime

Police in my city have pretty well given up on anti-gang legislation to prosecute members of Edmonton's growing gang problem. They say the burden of proof required to get a conviction is so onerous that it's easier to prosecute these criminals using older laws.

Bloody law must have been written by the John Howard society

And don't tell those parasites over at the Civil Liberties Union, but we'd be so much better off if Uncooperative victims of crime who refuse to assist their police investigations, should be charged with whatever crime had been perpetrated upon them. Upon reflection, that should include those feces-processing lawyers at the Civil Liberties Unions who keep on intercepting and obstructing justice on behalf of criminals and deviants seemingly every time I open a newspaper.
But I digress.

A Edmonton Sun newspaper story Tuesday, tells of a stabbing victim who refuses to co-operate with Police. A 23 year old unnamed stabbing victim was found downtown Sunday night- he'd been stabbed in the chest. Victim was uncooperative with the police. The story provides few other details.

Is the victim not cooperating because he's been subjected to intimidation, and fears reprisal from the perpetrators of the crime? Or is he noncooperative because he's a criminal himself? A Mountie friend of mine says that it's often obvious which, but difficult to prove.

Dammit, the police are spread thin enough. Not counting my traffic tickets ( mea culpa ) my last three encounters with law enforcement illustrate this:

- 10 years ago my car was stolen from the only lit driveway on my street. I called the city police daily for four days, hoping my car had been found. On the fourth day, the clerk told me, in an exasperated tone of voice, "Sir, when we find it, we WILL call you." So I relented, rented a car, and waited patiently. After 3o days, my insurance company's car rental provision expired, and I gave up the rental. I called the Police. Guess what? They found the car in a nearby town on the FIFTH day! My city's police service instructed the local police to set it aside for evidence collection and then promptly forgot about the case. Guess who had to pay 30 days worth of special storage fees? That summer we moved out of the city into one of the suburbs.

-5 years ago there were a rash of break and enters in our new town. My car was broken into twice. My wife's car window smashed, My garage once. A coat, cell phone, my daytimer, a car stereo (non-functional- heh heh) were stolen. The juvenile thieves used my cell phone to call their own house and the homes of some of their friends. When the garage was broken into, I followed the asshole's distinctive foot prints in fresh-fallen snow to within a block of the home of one of cell-phone thieves. A couple days later I saw the culprit and his very distinctive footprints in the snow outside the local convenience store. Lucky for the kid, ALL the local police detachment had time to do was assign a case-file number. Whoopie fu**ing doo. I've known the kid with the footprints since he was oh, seven? His mother goes to my church.

-2 summers ago my wife and I called the police when we saw vandals damaging municipal property in the alley across from our home. It was just after midnight. The police took half an hour to show up. The little shits had been gone for 10 minutes.

Back to our uncooperative stabbing victim. Call me a fascist pig ( I won't agree ) but I'm suggesting that if, after the dust settles, the victim was stabbed because he was an accessory in a criminal event, the state should charge him with the crime. That's right, don't want to cooperate? You want to be part of the problem? Face the music yourself then.

This would give law-enforcement the discretion on whether or not to allocate (waste) resources protecting burglars, drug addicts, and gang members from themselves. Free the police to investigate crimes perpetrated on willing, cooperative law-abiding citizens.

What would be the repercussions? Obviously our society's soft-headed liberal elements would shit themselves sideways in protest. Sure, it would make life as a member of the criminal element more dangerous as crimes against criminals would be less likely to be investigated. They'd probably tend to become more brutal crimes too. Awww, too bad. Boo hoo.

Oh, and they caught the guy who did the stabbing, -no thanks to their ungrateful victim.

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