QUEBEC INJUSTICE SYSTEM PROTECTS PARTNERS IN CRIME

         

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Years ago, I tried to draw attention to the robbery that took place at 4995 Prince of Wales in Montreal on October 7, 1996 with the help of a Montreal Police officer.

 

I picketed the office of Member of Parliament, Marlene Jennings and the office of the Member of the Quebec Legislature, Russell Copeman, and I picketed in front of the home of Debbie and Dawn McSweeney on the West Island of Montreal, and in front of the scene of the crime on Prince of Wales, where Dawn and her self-proclaimed "partners in crime" had taken over. 

 

The day I picketed Debbie And Dawn McSweeney's house on the West island, Debbie called the police and a highly agitated, almost hysterical cop called an ambulance and sent me all the way across Montreal from the West Island to the Royal Victoria Hospital downtown at taxpayers' expense merely to satisfy his need for power and control. He had failed to intimidate me, so he decided to show me what power he had over me. What if someone had a heart attack while this ambulance was being wasted ?

 

A friend wrote:

 

I think you could have been charged for picketing private property, on some nuisance charge, but Marlene Jennings office is fair game. 

 

I wanted to be charged and get the robbery case into a court of law. But that troubled policeman decided to derail my rights by treating me as a psychiatric case. It is the surest way to discredit a protester and to remove that person's right to a trial. Even to intimidate and silence the protester.

 

I was not on private property at any time, only on the sidewalk or the side of the curb. I did not make a sound. I did not impede traffic. I did not pester anyone. In fact a couple who happened by on bicycles came to talk with me and immediately pleaded with the cop to let me go. Even my signs were polite. It was apparent to any rational person that I was not threatening to anyone.

 

But the cop was raving about his brother dying of AIDS and he was not going to allow me to go to trial. Raving. Yes, I reported it even to the Commissioner of Police in a formal letter. I was told the policeman had done nothing wrong. Of course.

 

I just wore my signs and walked. I dared to carry a wooden cross. Dawn was furious about the fact that I had become a Christian, but it gave me a sense of power beyond my own power, and peace. I walked quietly and I prayed silently. And the hysterical cop subjected me to verbal abuse and a ride to the hospital.

 

I asked to be allowed to have a friend come to take my car off the street so I wouldn't get a ticket. The cop wouldn't even give me that simple, reasonable satisfaction. He said I was going away for thirty days and my car would be towed and I would have to pay something like $16.00 for each of the thirty days.

 

The jumpy policeman kept pacing in front of me, back and forth, chanting 

rhythmically that I was no God-damned Christian. He was a Christian. But I was no God-damned Christian.

 

I stayed calm the whole time - until he told me that I would be subjected to a full body search. Then my heart started pounding like a drum in  my chest and I felt faint. But I did not allow the policeman to see my fear. I got into the ambulance and just let them do what they were going to do.

 

God bless a trusty friend who has come to my rescue in every crisis for years. When I phoned her about midnight from the hospital, she came out from the West Island with her husband in the middle of the night and got my car keys and saved me from having my old car wrecked by some tow truck.

 

Sometime I will write about the bizarre psychiatrist who interviewed me at the Royal Vic that night. It was absolutely shocking to realize who can be a psychiatrist and judge you. In the morning, a sane doctor noticed me and wondered aloud why I was there. He knew in an instant that something was amiss and he sent me home immediately.

 

The battle for justice continues, relentlessly.