After 168 days, the wait is over

The first 25 people charged in Vancouver Provincial Court with taking part in the June 15, 2011 Stanley Cup riot were announced Nov. 30, 2011. All are innocent until proven guilty. Here are their names and the additional charges.

Emmanuel Seren Alviar of Surrey, 20: two counts of mischief
Sean Charles Burkett of Surrey, 18: two counts of mischief
Oliver Cornelius Burke of Vancouver, 28: break and enter
Matthew William Cottrell of North Vancouver, 23: break and enter
Richard John William Dorosh of Surrey, 18: break and enter
Connor Blair Epp of Maple Ridge, 20: mischief
Kristian Toomas Johanson (aka Christian Johanson) of Vancouver, 20: three counts of mischief and two counts of break and enter
Kelly George Johnson of Surrey, 20: two counts of mischief.
Spencer Robert Kirkwood of Vancouver, 25: mischief
Timothy Tin-Chew Kwong of Burnaby, 30: arson
Sophie Carmelle Laboissonniere of Richmond, 20: break and enter
Anthony Joseph Karl Larsen of Surrey 18: break and enter
Matthew John Lennox of Vancouver, 24: break and enter
Nigel Boxuan Li of Vancouver, 19: mischief
Dylan Ray Lloyd Long of Surrey, 19: break and enter and mischief
Mobeen Mohammed of Surrey 33: break and enter
Alexander Keelty Peepre of Vancouver, 20: assault and mischief
Alexander Frederick Pennington of Burnaby, 21: break and enter
Alicia Price of Surrey, 22: mischief and arson
Robert Mitchell Snelgrove of Vancouver, 25: break and enter
Name withheld of Surrey, 17: break and enter
Jeffrey Ray Post of Maple Ridge 20: mischief
Jerry H. Wernicke of Vancouver, 28: mischief
Jensen Peter White of Seattle, 21: mischief
Lincoln Ray Kennedy Williams (aka Lincoln Kennedy) of Delta, 21: mischief and arson

According to a search on Court Services Online, none of the adults charged appears to have had any prior criminal record. Unless there are cases of mistaken identity or weak cases by Crown prosecutors, don't be surprised if there are plea bargains galore and conditional sentences: no criminal record in exchange for a year's probation and 100 hours community service or a like sentence. The courts are bursting at the seams, burdened by a lack of facilities, judges and sheriffs. For that reason, you could very well see trials (if any) happening in 2013.

Karanvir Singh Saran, 18, has the distinction of being the first person charged and processed, albeit in Surrey Provincial Court in a matter investigated by the RCMP. He got an absolute discharge Nov. 2 on a lesser charge of possessing stolen items. Joshua Lyle Evans of Calgary was wrongly accused by Vancouver Police Chief Jim Chu of possessing a weapon. The 27-year-old's charges were dropped when witnesses said Evans was disarming a knife-wielding man. Charges of aggravated assault were also stayed for Burnaby 20-year-old Edgar Ricardo Garcia.

If you need a hint of what's to come, consider the variety of conditional discharges and dropped charges from the Feb. 13, 2010 anti-Olympic march. Willow Riley was the last to appear in Vancouver Provincial Court. She received a conditional discharge from a sympathetic judge who noted she had no prior criminal record.

Now, about those public officials who have yet to admit fault for the ill-conceived and poorly planned Stanley Cup fan zone...

Occupy Vancouver notebook: He came but did not see

He arrived by car after 8 p.m. and walked across the bike lane he built.

He stood to the left of the soft-spoken police spokeswoman and waited for her to finish. The left is where he is most comfortable.

His back was to the Vancouver Art Gallery wall as he faced the cameras and microphones. His handlers were nearby. Deputy city manager Sadhu Johnston was in the shadows.

“A young woman has lost her life and it is a terrible tragedy, our thoughts and prayers go out to her family and her close friends,” said Mayor Gregor Robertson. “Obviously really, really tragic circumstances. This loss of life and the overdose a few days ago clearly demonstrate that the situation here at the encampment has deteriorated.

“I have directed the city manager to expedite the appropriate steps to end the encampment as safe as possible, with a safe resolution being absolutely critical.”

Will it be a court order delivered by police that ends the Occupy Vancouver protest camp which began Oct. 15? He did not say.

The Mayor was finally taking action and talking semi-tough because of 23-year-old Ashlie Gough’s death. She had been found in a tent, unresponsive, around 4:30 p.m. Police wouldn’t confirm that she died of an overdose. Gough (right) was from Victoria. (This is her Facebook page and here is her hi5 page..)



She was dead on arrival at hospital. Coincidentally, the punk band DOA played a 5 p.m. gig on the steps of the old courthouse amid a surreal scene as dusk turned to darkness on the crisp Saturday night.

An area of the plaza bordering on the Howe Street sidewalk was cordoned-off with yellow police tape. Several civic workers in fluorescent safety vests over their street clothes stood around, smoking cigarettes inside the tape, keeping guard. Some wore Occupy Vancouver buttons. Some wore Remembrance Day poppies. Some wore both. Police inside the area spoke with some of the distraught punk and hippy campers -- some call them squatters -- as they consoled each other.



One man toting an “End Tent City Now” sign walked along the Georgia Street sidewalk, oblivious to the situation unfolding. Protesting the economy is good, but squatting is not, said Greg Burke. He was followed by a camper with a makeshift sign of his own that said “LOL” with an arrow pointing to Burke's sign.



“I have no political aspirations, I don't belong to any political party,” said Greg Burke. “I’m a 23-year old disenfranchised youth who works two jobs to bust my ass to have the things I have and I don't think a bunch of people can come here and have everything handed to them."

Reporters gathered near a fire truck, waiting for someone from Occupy Vancouver or the Vancouver police or fire departments to talk about the tragedy. Suddenly a man was grabbed by police and forcibly removed from the plaza. Cameras rolled. Then the 9/11 Truthers appeared, blocked cameras and shouted “corporate media scum!”

The conspiracy theorists were blocking the media from reporting on a potential case of police brutality. Fancy that!

A group of well-dressed women in their 50s and 60s stopped by, on their way to a birthday party and posed for photographs with the police officers, who stood with their backs to the scene. One of the cops took the photo for the giddy ladies. They all smiled but the misery continued behind them.



The band played on. There was slam dancing and pot-smoking and beer drinking. Did they know one of their own had died?

Occupy Vancouver member Lauren Gill, an addiction services worker, was shocked that the show went on.
“It’s a real tragedy, is it the breaking point? No,” Gill said. “I’m sure we’re going to support each other through this.”

But it may be the breaking point for the Mayor, who tried to say all the right things for a Mayor whose future will be decided by voters in just two weeks.

“We want the protest to continue, the encampment is not okay anymore,” he said to the media. “We can have a vibrant robust protest here, but having people die on this site, having ongoing issues that really undermined the bigger picture is not okay.”

The Occupiers stood on the edge of the media scrum, wondering aloud why he hasn’t solved homelessness and why other drug overdoses elsewhere in the city don’t attract similar attention.

The Mayor, who instructed top officials to take steps to end the camp, did not take steps of his own towards the camp. He did not go there to offer his condolences to the friends of the dead woman or repeat his media lines.

Safety would not have been an issue. There were enough police to guard him. The Occupiers, who declared the plaza a “self-ruling autonomous zone” insist they’re peaceful. They even cheered him at city council on Nov. 1 when he thwarted mayoral opponent Suzanne Anton’s motion to shut down the site.

That was then, this is now. A woman is dead. There is an election campaign. The Mayor has an image to protect and a job he wants to keep for another three years. Opinion polls before Nov. 5 indicated he’s in a can’t lose race for re-election. Now he’s in a can’t win situation with a tent village that he originally enabled.

So he walked south and crossed the bike lane he built and departed in a car on Hornby Street at 8:20 p.m.

* * * * *

During the scrum, I asked the Mayor if he would walk down the sidewalk, turn the corner to the tent village and meet the residents. I also asked him if he had been there yet.

He didn’t answer the first part of my question, but said: “I've been on this site many times over the last couple of weeks... every day over the last several weeks.”

“I have not seen him once,” said Chris Shaw, a volunteer medic and well-known anti-Olympic activist and author. “The Mayor is playing politics with a tragic incident, if it happened two blocks away he would not have cared.”

“I've never seen him down here,” said Eric Hamilton-Smith. “I'm down here a lot, most of the time I'm usually in the tent getting some work done. I can't speak to the fact that he says he's been here. I don't want to call him a liar, but I've never seen him personally.”

I’m hoping the Office of the Mayor will disclose the days and times of the Mayor’s Occupy Vancouver visits. There is no reason to keep such visits secret. If I’m forced to file a Freedom of Information, it could be a long wait.

Anton visited the camp on Oct. 31. She returned there on Nov. 6 to pay condolences to Gough.

* * * * *

Hamilton-Smith had an interesting take on Gough's death.

“Today's incident was a clear reflection of that, the fact there are so many marginalized people in society where they have lost hope and hate themselves so much where they can't find any fulfillment in life so they turn to drugs,” he said.

“Look at the people who become discouraged, the unemployed. that labor market transition from unemployment to exiting the labor force.”

Said Shaw: “It had nothing to do with it being on this site, if it had been somewhere else the person would have died.
“(Robertson is) playing politics with a tragic indecent and trying to use it as an excuse to shut down the camp. that is an embarrassment to his campaign.

* * * * *

The man who overdosed Nov. 3 on heroin at Occupy Vancouver was treated and released from St. Paul’s Hospital only three hours after he was revived from cardiac arrest, according to volunteer medic Leah Pagels.

Volunteer medic Mathew Kagis was first on-scene Nov. 3 and performed CPR to save his life.

“Going into cardiac arrest, you should be under observation for 24 hours,” Pagels said. “That to me is ridiculous that somebody overdoses and is released back into the street because they’re stable. That’s basically sending him back to die.”

He returned to Occupy Vancouver and was taken to Vancouver General Hospital on Nov. 4 after medics became concerned with his condition.

Pagels said the man is an aboriginal from Arizona who lost a leg in a freight train incident. He waited five hours for treatment at VGH and was transferred to detox for a week. She said his name is Tyler, but declined to give his last name.

“I find him very pleasant, a guy that hasn’t been given the best opportunities in life,” she said.

* * * * *

Shaw is one of at least three candidates for office in the Nov. 19 civic election involved with the camp. He is running for the De-Growth party for city council. Housing activist Gill is a candidate for council, under the RICH banner (Rent Is Crazy High). Darrell “Saxmaniac” Zimmerman is running for the mayoralty. He is the infamous stuffed lobster-toting, saxophone player who disrupted the Board of Trade mayoral debate on Oct. 25.

They could be doorknocking, mainstreeting, fundraising and baby-kissing. They’re at Occupy Vancouver instead, trying do do what they think is the right thing for society.

* * * * *

The coroner investigating the death was Kate Corcoran, a former Vancouver TV reporter who won awards for her work at CKVU and CTV 9.

* * * * *

Volunteer medic Danika Surm was moved emotionally twice on Nov. 5. First by 10-year-old aboriginal Ta'kaiya Blaney's beautiful song (watch it here) and later by Robertson's media scrum.

"Gregor, I am not that political. I am also not supportive of violence. But honestly, Gregor, today I could have taken you down. I was that angry. And I was that ashamed of you. If only you could be as astute as Ta'kaiya...and she is only 10 Gregor. Shame. Shame on you. Shame on everyone that wishes Occupy away because of this event (this death). Find a better reason. Don't shut it down because you suddenly feel guilty about a death in your city. It's just another death, why start feeling guilty now?"

Riot review due Aug. 31, reviewers without contract

Back on July 15 -- the one-month anniversary of the 2011 Stanley Cup riot -- I told you on this blog that Premier Christy Clark did not have a briefing note about the Stanley Cup riot. She didn't order one, nor did her staff see fit to produce one proactively.

A briefing note is a standard, internal analysis of an issue relevant to government. They're dime a dozen. It's often the first step or last step in the journey of decision-making. If you don't believe me, read more about briefing notes on the B.C. government website.

In a Vancouver Courier story, I listed all the reasons why a briefing note should have been produced after the Stanley Cup riot. It wasn't just a problem for Mayor Gregor Robertson and the City of Vancouver. It was a problem for the British Columbia government, too.

Well, wonders never cease. On Aug. 25, I learned that there is another dearth of post-riot paperwork. This time, it has to do with the co-chairs of the Vancouver Riot Review, former Nova Scotia deputy minister Doug Keefe and VANOC chief executive John Furlong.

Their review of the events of June 15, ordered by Clark, is due Aug. 31. As of Aug. 24, they had no contract! It appears that they were simply handed a copy of the June 20 press release and told they'd be reimbursed for their time and costs later.

This is contrary to the way a sophisticated, business-like government normally works. Government normally "papers" everything, with agreements of all sorts. Signatures, witnesses, etc. Not so anymore?

Maybe this is simply the way the Christy Clark Show works.

Read more below.

PSS-2011-01129