Clouseau versus Sherlock

Posted on by Pete Cross

Sherlock Holmes, Philip Marlowe, Hercule Poirot and Nancy Drew.

Part of our fictional world list of some of the best “investigators”. All, amazingly adept at solving crime and the puzzles created by dastardly human behaviour. They were also very quick– often taking less than two hours or a few hundred pages to get to the bottom of it all. Of course, they were largely unburdened of actually presenting scrutable evidence and were also able to evade the vagaries of court rooms. Sadly, reality is much different. Or is it?

Like those fictional characters our new world reality has let loose upon us a burgeoning group of “investigators”. Strutting their investigational chops via the internet and the ever broadening world of social media. We are being inundated by a variety of individuals, from every walk of life, from every strata of society, all proclaiming themselves to be conducting revealing “investigations”. A cacophony of personalities with a view, a particular bent, a hunch, or just full of righteous indignation, wanting and willing to expose all of society’s evils. Able to reach quick decisions and thus clearing the way for simple formulations and black and white conclusions. We, the demanding public, have created the 21st century ‘investigator”, but is it our very own Frankenstein?

Television, podcasts, blogs, and the like are all granting themselves diplomas in a range of investigative abilities. No one is a poor investigator (which actually would be refreshing) everyone is a top notch, state of the art, card carrying 007. Overnight, they become self-proclaimed experts in forensics, interviewing, psychology, sociology and anthropology. Often they are polygraphic savants.

Their tools are their laptops and video viewers, able to see in video and photos the clues that have apparently long evaded all others.

They make broad assumptions such as: police can not see what we see; that their single witness can be relied upon for the singular truth; that the blood on the wall must be the blood of the victim; that clearly he/she is lying.

In this country, the big media; CTV, Global and the CBC have all fallen into the trap of filler versus content. They zealously portray many of their programs as being “investigative” journalism. Then, annually they take turns giving awards to each other.

Netflix, Amazon, Apple are all pushing programs claiming new or re-opened cases. Old murders, new murders, all slotted in and vying for views and likes, spliced in amongst their UFO “investigations”.

According to Wikipedia, an investigator “searches for clues, to gather evidence. They interview people, verify information, conduct surveillance, find missing persons, and gather vital facts for cases.” A rather shallow hurdle, allowing for a broad range of people with access to a microphone or a laptop to search for clues and evidence. All are now becoming involved, from the clearly mentally unstable to the geek in the basement watching his neighbours with his Ring camera.

The general public are equally at fault, falling into the irrational abyss– that if it is posted it must be true. It is truly rare that someone examines the information being provided with any sense of a critical eye. We look at an insurance company investigating an auto accident equally to that of the police investigating that same accident? A private investigator working for defence counsel proclaims findings in front of a herd of photographers is seen and measured through the same lens as the actual court record itself.

The internet investigators, the ones who are in some cases interfering with the actual gathering of evidence are often in a category to themselves. Digital photo or video captures often represent the height of their evidence and in most cases no attempts are made for corroboration.

Podcasts abound where the evidence is gathered on a slant, the perspective honed by a clear pre-set belief, often allowing a singular allegation as sufficient to condemn a person in the court of public opinion. The most recent glaring example in the U.S. is the Kyle Rittenhouse case in Kenosha Wisconsin, where even the President of the United States Joe Biden was quickly convinced by the media “investigation” that he suggested that Rittenhouse was a white Supremacist on two occasions. The fact that the victims were in fact white eluded the media and internet investigators. Since it was at a protest over Black Lives Matter– that it must have been black individuals who were the victims.

The CBC is one of this country’s greatest advocates of this investigative sleight of hand. A recent example is what prompted this particular blog.

The template seemingly being followed by the CBC goes like this:

1) Have a viewpoint and then set out to prove it.

2) Make sure it is portrayed as ‘ground breaking” (even if it isn’t)

3) Find people who are willing to support both your proposition and your findings. (Disregard all others)

4) The headlines should reflect some sort of conclusion. (whether the body of work supports it or not)

And finally,

e) Make it look like a massive amount of work.

There are plenty of examples, but this most recent example is a classic.

Titled, “Warning Signs Present in 1 of 3 Homicides of Intimate Partners, CBC investigation finds”

There are three identified “investigative” journalists in the masthead: Tara Carman, Kimberly Ivany, and Eva Uguen-Csenge. Tara is the “senior investigator” and is a “data journalist” which should give you a bit of clue of the nature of the evidence that is about to be revealed. Kimberly is an associate producer for the 5th Estate (another clue) and Eva is an “investigative video journalist” with a like for “data-driven” stories.

So these three individuals spent 16 months, put in over 30 Freedom of Information requests, then scoured the media entries and looked for fifty different “data points” concerning domestic homicides. They looked at the period of time between 2015 and 2020. The headline of the eventual story in its many forms is to be titled “Deadly Relationships”.

They claim and there is no reason to doubt them, that they have “examined” 400 cases.

Their pre-theory seems to have been that there are commonalities to all domestic homicides; and that they can be measured as predictors of the future of the crime.

Their conclusion was that “these crimes are preventable.” Pretty dubious theory, but using their measuring stick one can maybe say all crime is “preventable”.

Remembering the pre-mentioned template and the need to hype the findings they say– “the data points a never-before-seen mosaic of relationships that turn deadly. ” Never before seen is clearly a stretch of the truth, but the idea that they could predict and thus prevent this horrendous problem is really playing outside the sandbox. This is a crime that has been around as long as humankind and studied in many courses of psychology and sociology, but this investigative series is somehow new and revealing?

So what earth shattering “evidence” did they find in their quest? Well, lets start off with the mind-bending statistic that 3/4 of the victims were women, and, that 78% of the accused were men. Who could have guessed that?

Here are some other examples of their purported belief altering discoveries.

  • 1 in 5 cases had been involved in recent or pending separations
  • that in 15% of the cases there were patterns of coercive and controlling behaviours
  • 36 out of the 400 had had protective court orders in place
  • the most common charge was 2nd degree murder, followed by manslaughter
  • the most common weapon, the knife, the 2nd the gun (you were probably guessing blow dart)
  • 1 in 4 victims of homicide were Indigenous, clearly making them “over represented”. They represent 6% of the population and 18% of the homicides. By the way more Indigenous men were killed as well, then caucasian. Again “over-represented”.

Of course there would be no story without a villain.

So they point to some nefarious police behaviour. They accuse the police of “hiding these things” under ” a cloak of secrecy”. This is because the police did not reveal all the names on some of these investigations when served with a Freedom of Information request, the police arguing the privacy act. Not good enough according to these intrepid investigators.

Then came the interviews of all the victims of domestic violence who praised the CBC investigators for uncovering such a large stash of un-before seen findings. It would be all so laughable if it wasn’t such a serious subject.

So what should constitute an investigation? What are “investigator” qualifications? Is there a characteristic that is unique to being allowed to pronounce one as an investigator or your findings constituting an investigation?

It comes down to experience, one’s qualifications, and the level of inquiry.

In policing, it is the ability to sit in a room with someone having just killed their child and remain above the mental sewage and still able to try and show empathy. Or to sit with the rape victim through a rape forensic kit –knowing that this is the easy first step in a long investigation and court process. It’s the ability to enter a blood encased crime scene and interpret the meaning of the splatter, the placement of a fibre or a shell casing.

In some investigations, forensics, data knowledge and the ability to follow a paper trail is an asset, but in the end, there still has to be some knowledge and measurement of human behaviour. An ability to interact with people, to read and predict their reactions and their level of truthfulness. Not to judge, not to assume, to always be wary of preconceived notions. One needs to pick up and learn the patterns of human frailty.

We simply can not continue to downplay experience and the passage of time spent embracing a particular field of knowledge.

Of course, it takes years for this level of understanding to be able to refer to yourself as an investigator. By saying you are an investigator on LinkedIn or in a podcast does not make it so. Taking a Masterclass by an investigator will not make it so, just as a Masterclass by a novelist will not make you Ernest Hemingway.

We are a too impatient a society. We demand instant answers to complex situations. We don’t like grey, just black and white. We need to understand that it takes time. It is hard work. If it is not there then the contents and findings should be disregarded.

This is not to say that the media and some news organizations are not doing investigative journalism. ProPublica, the New Yorker, PBS Frontline, and the Washington Post are examples of investigative journalism, definitely left leaning but they are still maintaining standards of fact checking and corroboration. The Globe, the National Post, and the Financial Times have sporadic moments of in depth coverage, but they too are getting pulled into the fires of hyperbole.

For you in the CBC, and your latest foray into in-depth reporting, I am just asking that you call your “investigation” what it was– a “review” of data. No doubt it was time consuming and maybe even worthy in someone’s eyes, but it was not an “investigation”.

I think one should have to earn the moniker of “investigator”.

Photo courtesy of Flickr Commons by Olarte.Ollie – Some Rights Reserved

March of the Fringe

Posted on by Pete Cross

The recent storming of the Capitol in Washington, besides being a dull reflection of all that ails that country, was another shining example of the Gordian knot which is 21st century police management. On full national display was the fact that operational policing decisions have now been supplanted by the politically minded managers who now populate the top of every police agency and the politicos who wish to control them. The historical record has now been forever warped by this unhealthy blend of political considerations and policing; where public image has become paramount. Another damaging blow to the credibility and sustainability of policing as it is now practised.

The woeful inadequacy in Washington came with a severe cost. The mayhem resulted in deaths and inadvertently gave a life boost to the sombre and dark tones of right wing political extremism. If one watched the live time feed of the progression of the riot (which is what it was— it was not a “coup” attempt as speculated by many of the media mavens and the hand wringing liberal left) a crowd of 8,000 persons attending a Trump rally were then spurred on and re-directed to march down Pennsylvania Avenue and on to Capitol Hill. Under the banner of some general notion that by doing so they would alter a House vote on the election. Some dressed as Vikings, others carried Confederate flags, members of the Alt right stirred in with red hatted MAGA supporters; a mass of people with mixed motivations and unclear reasonings. Some of this much maligned group included police officers and firefighters. 

This alleged army of the far right fuelled with political purpose, still felt it necessary to stop every fifty feet to preen for a selfie. Some of the group seemed content to sit on the steps, the more radicalized began to break windows and enter into the Capitol itself.

Dressed in their various garbs, this ill-defined fringe, carried into the House. The resistance to them was at times sporadic and often half-hearted. Officers can be seen standing around, apparently unaware of the hand to hand combat some of their other fellow officers had endured outside. It was bizarre even in riot standards.

The protestors seemed somewhat caught off guard by the level of advancement that they had achieved. With no clear understanding as to how to carry out their goal, some felt that sitting in the same chair as the House Leader Nancy Pelosi was somehow a victory of sorts. They posed for the in-house cameras. Some of the officers who were there to repel the invaders, also posed for selfies with the protestors and helped direct rioters as to where to go once inside. 

The protestors were gradually pushed out, grabbing at any souvenirs they could take, no doubt to show their future grand children.

This is not to downplay the violence. There was an outright battle on the fence lines, no doubt prompted by some of the hardcore right who came prepared for the fight with baseball bats, gas masks, explosives and the like. One protestor was shot, a police officer died of physical complications from the fight. It was nothing less than a bar brawl in broad daylight.

There were 1400 cops there. Were they out-numbered? Yes, but that is not unusual, police often face situations where they are outnumbered. There was no police strategy, they were out-numbered, but more importantly they were un-prepared. 

In a detailed article by the Washington Post the chronology of events and the decision making of the management group was outlined. Three of the key mentioned managers have since resigned, as they should, but the damage has clearly been done. 

The timeline speaks for itself :

Sunday January 3rd (three days before the march on the Capitol)

 — Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund (heads the 2,000 member Capitol Police whose sole job is protecting the Capitol and its two square miles) asks House and Senate Security officials for permission to request that the D.C. National Guard be placed on standby; in the event that quick assistance was needed. This request was based on the fact that police “intelligence” was now suggesting that the crowd for the pro-Trump rally was going to be bigger than originally anticipated. The request was denied. 

—- House Sgt at Arms Paul Irving said he wasn’t “comfortable with the optics”

—Senate Sgt at Arms Michael Stenger suggested that Sund should informally seek out his Guard “contacts”and ask them to “lean forward” and be on alert. (This “lean forward”clearly a new in vogue government phrase)

Monday January 4th 

—-Sund continues to worry and receives some more police intelligence. “We knew we would have large crowds, the potential for some violent altercations”. There were claims at this time that the alt-right instigators had discussed storming the building and targeting lawmakers. Sund explains in his defence, that “You might see rhetoric on social media. We had seen that many times before”…”people say a lot of things on line”

—Sund calls Irving and Stenger again

—Sund decides to “lean forward” and calls Maj.Gen William J Walker, head of the 1,000 member National Guard. Walker who said that he thought he could call 125 personnel fairly quickly. 

— Sund over the weekend had also conferred with D.C. Police Chief Robert J. Contee III who also agreed to lend a hand if trouble began. 

Wednesday January 6th

— 12:40 Protestors arrive at the White House for the Trump speech where the idiot incarnate tells them that there needs to be a “fight” against the law makers. The lawyer for the idiot, says that this is a “trial by combat”.

—-1300 Sund calls Chief Contee who sent 100 officers to the scene. 

—13:09  Sund calls Stenger and Irving requesting Emergency to be declared in his request for assistance. They say that they will “run it up the chain”

—-13:20 (approx) Aides to the top congressional leaders were called to Stengers office for an update and were infuriated to learn that the Sgt at Arms had not called the National Guard or any other reinforcements. They tell them that it was their responsibility to do this without seeking approval from leaders. 

—- During this time Sund said he called Irving twice more and Stenger once to check on their progress. Sund says he is losing patience and also calls Walker to tell him to get ready to bring the Guard. 

— 14:00 Protestors arrive at the Capitol buildings after marching down Pennsylvania Avenue 

—-14:10  Irving calls back to give approval to call the Guard. 

—-Plain Clothes officers begin barricading the door to the Speaker’s lobby

—-14:15 Protestors have broken through the perimeter fencing in a heated battle, and begin climbing the stairs to the outside of the building. The D.C. Police begin sending cars to assist. 

—14:26 Sund is now on a conference call with the Pentagon. 

The problem is that unlike elsewhere in the U.S. The D.C. National Guard does not report to a governor, but to the President. The Secretary of the Army was not on the call to actually give the approval.  

The call had been organized by the D.C. Homeland Security Director, Chris Rodriguez. On the call is the D.C. Police Chief, the Mayor and Walker. 

Sund makes an urgent request for the calling out of the National Guard. Several Pentagon people are on this call, including Army Staff Director Lt. General Walter Piatt. Piatt states during this call that “I don’t like the visual of the National Guard standing in front of the Capital”. Piatt’s boss is Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy and is the one who has to approve the deployment of the Guard. 

The call gets noisy with people over talking others before Contee intervenes and asks for clarification “Steve, are you requesting National Guard Assistance at the Capitol?” Sund says “I am making urgent, urgent, immediate request for National Guard Assistance. “

Piatt again jumps in to the conversation again and again pushes back on Sund saying he would prefer to have Guard soldiers take up posts “around Washington” relieving the D.C. Police so that they could respond to the Capitol instead of the guardsmen. 

Of course, Piatt points out that McCarthy the Secretary of the Army and the final approval needed was not on this call. 

Contee asked Piatt “Let me be clear, are you denying this?” No, Piatt said he just didn’t have the authority to approve it. 

—-1504 hrs According to the defence department McCarthy “verbally” authorizes the activation of the entire D.C guard. 

*It would take another two hours for most of the citizen soldiers to leave their jobs and homes and pick up their gear. 

—-15:45 hrs Stenger, unaware of the apparent order by McCarthy, tells Lund that he would ask his boss, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for help getting the National Guard authorized. No one knows how this ended up. 

By this time, Capitol Police, Secret Service, Park Police and the FBI were all on the scene helping to eject rioters, and sweep the building. 

One could safely assume that by 1700 hrs the rest of the National Guard would have been in place, in time to assist the janitorial staff with sweeping up. 

Bureaucratic creep, multiple levels and authorities, conference rooms and command centres. These are the characteristics of modern day police management, where political agendas have been welcomed into operational decision making. What it looks like, how it plays to the media has become the overriding question in police departments.

Don’t think that this can happen in Canada? Is there a need to remind anyone of the shooting of Nathan Cirillo on Parliament Hill, and the gunman, Michael Zehauf Bibeau, a 32 year old misfit and drug addict, no more organized than this Washington group, allowed to run into Parliament, passed several security staff and allowed to run free in the halls before being shot 32 times. Do I need to remind anyone how Ms. Chretien woke up to an intruder in her bedroom, an individual having got past that intrepid group of yawning and bored Mounties at 24 Sussex. Or how about the fellow who blew himself up with ten sticks of dynamite inside a Parliament Hill washroom in 1966 before he could make it to the House of Commons. 

It is obvious to most that Security,at the best of times, is a bit of a mugs game. This despite growing levels of dark suits and Oakley sunglasses. If one wants to storm Parliament Hill with 8000 angry demonstrators, do we think that we would be equipped to turn them away? It seems unlikely. 

Having been once part of the Olympics in Vancouver in 2010 we were surrounded and “supported” by tthe Gold, Silver and Bronze command centres who were in application tragically comic. Hundreds of officers passing paper between themselves and a myriad of high level officers. There is little doubt that if there had been a true security “incident” in this billion dollar security operation, it would still have fallen to a dozen officers on the front line, while hundreds would have remain closeted in various boardrooms. 

The fallout now in Washington has been tiresome in its predictability. Politicians and government officials now kicking themselves in the head with their knee-jerk reactions. Band wagon lawmakers now out from behind their desks, now calling the whole episode a “severe systemic failure” that must not happen again.

Three officers have been suspended and seventeen more are under investigation. The entire force of 2,000 officers who are there to defend the two square miles have a $500 million budget and are under full review. Out of the woodwork come the usual suspects of the woke culture filling the air with the allegations of the police force being a group of  old boys networks, a structure built of glass ceilings, and racial bias. It seems to be agreed that this was a well paid police force, often filled with patronage appointments and a police force obviously suffering from “mission creep”. 

The next security concern, the Biden inauguration will be ridiculous in the over kill. Already forming up in Washington is more soldiers than are in Afghanistan. Perfect 20/20 hindsight.  

Democrats have pounced on another chance to pontificate and stamp out the evil Trump and have now voted to impeach him for a second time over this incident. If the first impeachment didn’t work, get up and try, try, again. 

When the dust settles, the Incident Command classrooms throughout North America will have trainers analyze what went wrong in course after course; only to have it happen again once the memories start to fade. Nothing will change until we get away from the current and constant belief that more is good, that bigger is better.  The incident command system with all the self-important middle managers need to be removed and arm chair quarterbacks need to disappear along with their “desk top exercises”. The pyramid needs to be drastically flattened.

The bigger problem will still be that police management must become apolitical. Currently, that seems unlikely.

Photo by Marco Verch Courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons – Some Rights Reserved

The war in Strathcona…

Posted on by Pete Cross

In a recent foray into the Main and Hastings corridor, an area known to this blogger for over 30 years, it was truly shocking to see the level of human desperation which continues to consume that area. What have we to show for the last decades of effort? Seemingly nothing. A whole community is under siege and burning before our very eyes. The area known as Strathcona is gradually being swallowed whole by an industrial level of drugs and the suffocating undercurrent of violence. Mental anguish and conflict layered on top of excruciating poverty.

This despite 30 years of a victim centric infrastructure which has been created, developed and now maintained by myriad levels of social workers, housing advocates, drug counsellors, medical staff, firefighters, police, sanitation workers and all those academics that like to “study” the problem. The advocates of all stripes have been continually moving in and out of these garbage strewn streets and alleyways, pausing long enough to relay their latest theory on how to correct this miasma of despair. Playing in the background, on some sort of victimization verbal loop, is the ever constant narrative of the “oppressed”, the “downtrodden” and the “unable to fend for themselves”.

It is scary place. It is depressing, but it is equally disgusting that in a country as bountiful as Canada, that this monument to everything that ails this society, stands in proud defiance.

Where has it all gone so wrong? Millions and millions of dollars expended in this apparent never-ending war on a drug fuelled mental health epidemic. It is a magnet which draws from all over the country. A bizarrely twisted tourist attraction, for all the wrong reasons. A place where even the hardened from other cities are truly taken aback at such a level of lawlessness and depravity.

Drastic and innovative action is clearly long overdue. Not innovation designed by the leftist victim advocating culture wing of our society, but by some with a modicum of common sense and where individual responsibility becomes part of the solution.

But the very first step, desperately needed and absolutely essential, is an honest managerial and expenditure review. A macro look over decades of funds and governmental decisions. A far reaching and inclusive appraisal of what has been spent and the effectiveness of those expenditures and the managers who have been overseeing the policies and processes for years.

The Washington Post recently unveiled a sweeping story sourced by thousands of pages of information which looked at the true cost of the war in Afghanistan. One can not help but be taken by the many parallels to what seems to be a similar story about the the war zone at Hastings and Main.

What the Washington Post and others found was that the war and the efforts of the Americans and the many other countries, including Canada, in Afghanistan has proven to be not just a failure, but a failure of epic proportions. It’s worth looking at their findings.

It was in 2001 that President George Bush announced the first military action in Afghanistan with the goal to disrupt terrorist operations and attack the Taliban. Today, eighteen years later, the Taliban control much of the country and are killing Afghan security force members sometimes in the hundreds per week. Even though the leadership of the Taliban moved to Pakistan, they have now expanded into Yemen, northern Africa, Somalia and Syrian.

Over $10 billion was spent on counternarcotics. Despite this, Afghanistan remains the source of over 80% of the global supply of heroin. Before the war the Afghanistan government had almost completely eradicated opium when the actual Taliban were in power. Opium production has now quadrupled.

They spent $87 billion to train Afghan military and police forces yet today no one believes that the Afghan military could support themselves. The army is continually fighting desertion and casualties making them replace over a third of their Forces every year.

War related spending has doubled the size of the Afghan economy but the current rate of unemployment is 25%. Corruption in all its forms still runs rampant.

$30 billion was spent on infrastructure and reconstruction. Most of that money has been considered “wasted”. The Inspector General documented over $15.5 billion lost to fraud and abuse between 2008 and 2017.

$500 billion on interest to finance the war spending, as all the monies have been borrowed which will take years to pay.

Over $1.4 trillion will be spent on veterans that fought in post 9/11 wars by 2059. About $350 billion has already gone to medical and disability care for veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They are estimating the total spending bill for the medical problems, over the next 40 years, to amount to another $1trillion.

Afghanistan remains one of the largest sources of refugees and immigrants.

What has this got to do with all of us? It demonstrates the problem when incremental spending and single narratives are accepted as gospel and when the problem is allowed to fester year after year. It demonstrates the need for a great big spotlight to be shone on this smaller version of Afghanistan. Not a study by an interest group that continually circles the DTES, but an independent study, independent of all who have been part of the thirty years of problems.

The usual self-described experts always avail themselves to the cameras and microphones, to riff or to lecture the rest of us on what they believe is the cause of the problems. They have no shortage of people to blame, but that blame seems to stop short of any introspection.

The Libby Davies or Jenny Kwans, or the Pivot Legal Society do not need to be consulted in this proposed study. Their versions are already clear and predictable. They are always pointing to some level of government not providing “more”. The money being demanded is an endless request which re-invents itself with another justification, in one form or other, for the next year.

Money clearly is the common cure all whether you are asking the firefighters or the housing advocates.

Each agency demands annual funding, taking credit for successes which go unchallenged or doesn’t seem to reflect the reality.

There have been studies and counter-studies over this continuum. The studies, like the DTES many services often operate in silos and not always in a singular approach.

Donald McPherson, is a typical example. The former drug policy co-ordinator for the city of Vancouver (who now heads another Drug Policy Coalition) talks about the 10 year plan outlined in the Vancouver Agreement in 2000. It was designed to improve housing and social welfare. He blames the collapse on the Harper government.

Mr. McPherson in this proposed future study should also be ignored.

Governments themselves have come and gone, each offering up their particular version of what is needed. Liberals and NDP equally share responsibility for these disastrous results. None of them take the time to look in the mirror.

On one side of the ledger, groups like the BC Centre for Disease Control takes credit for saving 3000 lives between April 2016 and December 2017.

On the other side of that account is that 2177 people also died in this Province during this time.

There is no shortage of positive spin.

Twenty-three operating supervised injection sites claim to have saved 230 deaths. The overall goal of these sites is to decrease “needle sharing”. Their “observational studies” dutifully report favourable results. Their evidence is that fewer people are “injecting in public”. Anybody walking down Hastings may disagree.

The annual operating cost for the injection sites alone is $ 2,948,101.

The injection sites define “saving lives” and count those that have been treated by “agonist treatment” or “opioid replacement” treatment where the people get put on a methadone program.

Meanwhile those running the Needle Exchange program say that Insite is exaggerating the numbers.

In 2017, 60,000 naloxone kits were distributed. At roughly $70 apiece that works out to about $4.2 million this year just on the kits.

Health officials claim that through their services that they have saved “hundreds of lives” but the numbers often vary according to the individual study quoted. The dearth of agreed upon results and the fact that there is a lot of self-reporting remains one of the major roadblocks to any comprehensive study.

But the fail safe fallback to any counter-argument is the oft quoted maxim that “even one life saved” means that their programs can be deemed a “success”.

On the negative side of the ledger.

Calls to Oppenheimer Park in 2019 for the Vancouver City Police have increased over 50%. Shots fired calls have increased over 800%, weapons calls have increased 300% and assaults in progress are up over 17%.

Vancouver City police estimate the policing costs for Oppenheimer park encampment are over a million dollars so far this year. That is for an encampment of about 100 people in amongst the 2700 estimated homeless in the area.

Meanwhile the BC Centre for Substance Abuse and the University of British Columbia in a recent study argued that the police need to stop policing the DTES because it leads to drug users fearing the police, intimidated, and being harassed by the police.

How did they come to this conclusion: they interviewed 72 persons in the DTES and spent 200 hours hanging around overdose prevention sites. They feel police shouldn’t be checking for drugs, or running persons for warrants and such minimal breaches of the law.

What is not answered is how do they propose that we “de-criminalize” if the people are still doing criminal acts?

In the last five years the number of break-ins to vehicles has doubled to 6538 incidents in the Strathcona area alone.

Vancouver City Police records show in 2018 there were 666 assaults and 68 robberies in the Strathcona area.

In the single month of June 2019 in this small geographic area there were 70 assaults, 106 thefts from vehicles, 11 robberies and 31 break-ins to businesses and residences.

To add insult to injury the number of homeless has increased from 2181 people last year to 2223 this year.

Like the war in Afghanistan over 18 years have now gone by since Mr. McPherson’s study in 2000.

Does anyone doubt that during this time there have been misuses of funds, fraud and corruption? Does anyone believe that governments are providing a full accounting of the costs?

Maybe, just maybe, government spending for more counsellors, housing or drugs is not the answer.

Maybe, it is unjustifiable, or maybe an alternative to a policy of more of the same is out there somewhere.

However, it is difficult to contemplate any alternative which does not include forced rehabilitation; or removal from the core (sorry Pivot Legal Society).

The only way to honestly answer is to see the entire package of funds and resources which have been expended over the many years; the layers of government action and in-action; the levels of bureaucracy; the levels of private industry and the number of social housing models which have been proposed and tried over the decades.

The results may be shocking, but nothing less than a Royal Commission level of study is needed. Just as importantly, it must all be seen by a fresh set of eyes–eyes from outside the DTES, eyes with no vested interest in the promulgation of the current norm.

The first thing is the most difficult admission, especially for those that have toiled under the most trying of circumstances with the best of intentions, is the admission that as of today, it has all been a massive failure. On a small scale, this may be our Afghanistan.

*All crime statistics are from the Vancouver City Police records, as reported by the Vancouver Courier.

Photo courtesy of Dan Toulget of the Vancouver Courier – Some Rights Reserved

And then there were none….

Posted on by Pete Cross

Last night I re-watched the 1976 movie “All the Presidents Men”; the story of an investigative journalistic effort that led to the discovery of the illegal activities of The Committee to Re-Elect, and then to President Richard Nixon himself. In the end there were many guilty pleas, and the resignation of the President himself. The two year long investigative reporting was unprecedented, and may be never duplicated in our current climate as we head forward, where we seem to only want news fixes, like a junkie in the alley looking for a cap of heroin. We want this short burst of adrenalin laced news feeding our eyes and not our heads, before we duly nod off.

The parallels to the situation in the U.S. in 1974 to today, become obvious upon review, almost startling. The Trump presidency is difficult to even fathom, but in no way do I think that Trump and the family lackeys who are already proven liars, are not capable of further deception, not capable of illegalities, in order to maintain their power.

The positive side of this, in some backward fashion, at least in the short term, has been the rejuvenation of an active and determined group of journalists who have now tasted blood. They have the resources, and the experience to both confront the administration and write about it. Even more importantly, they seem to have the backbone necessary to withstand the onslaught of government power run amok, who try to bend, or deny each and every story with a spin that is both dangerous and sometimes laughable.

The Washington Post and the New York Times seem to be the central figures in this relentless daily battle with the truth. Both are decorated newspapers. The Washington Post with Woodward and Bernstein were the central figures in the Watergate matters in 1974, which brought down Nixon. And here again the Post is providing in-depth laudatory coverage of the daily crisis, which is the Trump Whitehouse.

Before Trump, both newspapers were in financial trouble, both cutting personnel and funding. Since Trump, their subscriptions have increased and they have been given a temporary respite from the unenviable and seemingly inevitible dwindling of subscriptions.

The sourcing of their stories, and protecting those stories is relentless. Anybody with an interest in how to conduct, and source investigations should take note. This is not an easy undertaking, their jobs are often on the line should they misspeak or be wrong in any of their reportage.

Where is television in all of this?  Unfortunately, in the last few years, it is trying to re-invent itself, it has become a medium, not a message. They are consumed with banner headlines, breathless “breaking news” but make no mistake, and they seem to have abandoned the time and effort needed for investigative reporting. Their  “news” is no longer journalism.

In an effort to capture the attention of the latest generation, they have come to believe, maybe correctly that this generation is only capable of 30 second attention spans. Therefore anything on video, twitter, Facebook, or trending on YouTube is re-invented as the news regardless of its worth. A good video of a cat up a tree jumps the news queue and becomes headline material. It is cheaply available, and citizens with their phones have become their “stringers” in the field, at no significant cost.

In covering Potus, the TV news groups; CNN, Fox, CBS etc. are for the most part reporting what the newspapers are writing, then putting a lot of talking heads around a dais to pontificate about it.  The more outrageous the talking head, the better the chance of capturing the eyes of the viewing public so we get the likes of Kelly-anne Conway spinning ludicrous analysis and misinformation about the latest Presidential gaff posing as policy.

In many ways, this President has mastered Twitter and the wants of the new age, and has reduced governing to a sitcom. His statements, such as the one where he talks about grabbing women by the genitals, is outrageous, but it goes no further than that, the outrageousness is the news, not the meaning or the implications.  The United States reputation around the world is now tarnished, and may not recover for some time. The United States is now reduced to being a large military with an unstable leader. Sound familiar?

Of course this lack of investigational interest is all applicable to Canada, with its smaller population concentrated around the cities and the borders with the U.S., our television is a smaller mirror image of the U.S. It is astonishing to see how much the CBC National news coverage now revolves around the U.S. trending stories. In  the last couple of days, hours of repetitive footage of the hurricane stories. Here they are able to rollick in the abundance of 10 second videos that are available showing  bent over palm trees, shot through a rain covered lens;  and of course always maintaining a look out for  a “Canadian” located in the centre of the storm to give them some relevancy to Canada.

I am not saying this big story should not be reported, but it should not be all consuming. Are there no issues in Canada worthy of some form of journalism? Of course there are, but they are hampered by this new age of video at all costs, and dwindling funds to conduct those stories. A journalistic Catch-22.

As I opined before, television should be written off as a model of investigative journalism as it simply does not exist at any measurable level, nor is it even possible in their new corporate mission statements.

Newspapers in Canada are in equally dire straits, The Globe and Mail, although business oriented still is the bell-weather of Canada’s newspapers, today they announced a couple of further layoffs.

But the other problem, although we are a highly literate country, is that we are no longer reading.

The newest generation has fallen prey to the love of convenience, wanting summaries, not depth in their reporting. Coles Notes versions, not the details. They need to be constantly fed only enough for them to form an opinion in a few seconds, and damn the details.

Of course, the devil has always been in the details.

This leaves us susceptible to being victimized by misleading or downright false reporting. We are often misled by the headlines, and only when one chooses to read the whole article does it make sense, and it is usually a more calm explanation than advertised.

We are manipulated as a result. Our own governmental agencies have learned that if they issue singular statements of little meaning, it goes unquestioned. The reporters can not be bothered to check the truthfulness of the statement as they are being pre-empted and diverted to a story which may have caught the attention of YouTube and the assignment editor. If you don’t believe me, check out what is currently trending on Youtube, or what the top 10 stories are on Reddit.

Justin Trudeau gives speech after speech making generalized statements of fixing this problem or the next. It goes un-examined for the most part, but we will get pics or video of his latest selfie canoeing, or of him photo bombing a wedding. It makes me think that Trudeau may be a Canadian version of Trump, one who has mastered social media, but but not the relevant issues, but he is young, photogenic and polite. The left in the United States think he is god like, as they too are only reading the headlines. He is a former high school drama teacher, born with a famous name and reputation, how could we not be concerned about what he actually understands.

As experienced journalists are being replaced by the young, the photogenic, who stand in front of endless monitors and fast-moving graphics (I assume it is their attempt to show they are on the cutting edge of technology), and push buttons which play the latest newly trending video.

And now the Americans have confirmed that the Russians and other intelligence agencies have figured this out. You just need to put out the headlines, no need for details, nothing gets checked.

Facebook just revealed the confirmation of false ads, a total of 3000 from 470 “dark accounts”, during the American election, in-directly tied to the Russians, and aimed at altering the election to a candidate they feel they can manipulate. Despite some intrepid reporting a few months ago which Facebook initially denied, it was not until two days ago that Facebook admitted to the problem. The New York Times summed it up by saying “we are in the midst of a world wide, internet-based assault on democracy”.

None of this sounds good, or leaves much room for optimism.

Will we go back to newspapers, unlikely?  Will television be simply a stopping off point where they re-package video? Likely.

There is no immediate answer to these changing times, but this generation does need to question, and it needs to go deeper than Twitter; our democracy depends on it, and we will lose faith if truth becomes the first casualty.

Photo Courtesy of : Razvan Orendovichi via Flickr Creative Commons licence