:dubious:
Um, really, I’m not a fan of Smash, but his reference to the movie was pretty good. 
She’s not the only one. That little aphorism is a good 30 years old, at least.
You’re “dubious” about what, exactly? That he was waiting for trial? That he was being charged with making a disturbance? That he was denied bail for violating conditions of bail on another charge? That he was being held in a local prison? Seriously, between you and DrDeth I’m baffled about what I’m supposed to be lying about.
I didn’t touch on this, but I’m somewhat dubious that your story, which implies that he’s the victim of police oppression, has correct implications. What exactly was the disturbance that led to his being banned from the homeless shelter, and why is it that you seem to think he was morally entitled to return to the homeless shelter afterwards?
I can imagine disturbances that would lead to his having no moral right to return to the shelter–e.g., if he was verbally or physically abusive toward other folks living there. I’m sure there are other possibilities under which he shouldn’t have been banned from the shelter, e.g., if a worker there refused to let him enter with his wheelchair, and upon his protest the worker called the police. Without knowing the nature of the disturbance, his subsequent rearrest may or may not have been just.
May I respectfully request that “anarchist union organizer” be added to the Great List of Oxymorons, right below “jumbo shrimp” and above “friendly fire”?
No, you may not: “anarchist” refers to a lack of rulership, not a lack of organization.
You have to understand that I live with this every day, so I often forget that others may not understand what I’m talking about if I don’t make certain things explicit. He was not banned from the shelter, he was “red-zoned” by the court from being in the area where the shelter is located. This is going to take some explanation.
Red zones are a tool used by the police and the courts to try and drive the homeless from the downtown core. The city councillors are quite up front about it, often boasting about their efforts to drive the homeless away, since it scores them votes*. The police and the courts, while they do the same thing, have to be more circumspect about it, because, while it’s technically not illegal in Kanada to discriminate against someone on the basis of social class or income, using the law as a weapon can attract unwanted media attention. One of the favourite tools of the police and the courts, therefore, are red zones.
When a person is arrested on a minor charge, what generally happens is the police agree to release the person on hir own recognizance – provided they sign an undertaking to abide by certain conditions as set down by the police. When dealing with panhandlers and the homeless, the police use this as an opportunity to “red zone” the person from the area where they know all the support services exist. All of the shelters and soup kitchens and nearly all the drop-in centres and community health centres are located in an area of about six square blocks. The police know that if they “red zone” the person from this area, one of two things will happen. Either the person will be forced to leave the city, or the person will violate the conditions and end up being held in prison until trial. Either way, their problem is solved: the person has vanished from the streets, so they get fewer complaints from merchants and the politicians get off their backs.
The situation is similar with the courts. For more serious charges, a person goes to a bail hearing, where the court sets similar conditions – which is hardly a surprise, since the court generally rubber-stamps the conditions recommended by the Crown and the Crown gets their recommendations from the police. When I was arrested for attempting to cut the lock on the fence, for example, the police tried to shut down the OPU and the copwatch program by setting a “red zone” the size of the entire city where I could be arrested on sight. Of course I refused these conditions and was sent to prison to await a formal bail hearing (which occurs when a person declines to accept the initial bail conditions, arguing as to why these particular conditions should not be applied). I took the opportunity to start organizing the inmates at the prison to fight for better conditions and arranged a front-page story in the local newspaper about conditions in the prison. By the time my bail hearing came up six days later, they Crown wanted me out of prison so badly that they dropped ALL of the conditions except staying 100 metres from the fence. The judge glared at me and said, “I am well aware he’s using this as an opportunity to get media attention,” and then reduced the red zone from 100 metres to 20 metres, presumably so I wouldn’t have any possibility of crying “oppression” to the newspapers. Quite a change from their initial proposed red zone of the entire city, plus an 11pm-7am curfew.
I explained my situation in detail not to boast – as I will most likely be accused – but to show how the courts routinely use “red zones” as a means of getting rid of those they don’t like, relenting only when they realize the media is paying attention. I was fortunate that I had two organizations (the OPU and the IWW) agitating on the outside and assisting me with keeping the media’s interest focused on me. At one point they had to set a line of riot cops at the door of the courthouse to prevent a group of a hundred or so angry anarchists from storming the courtroom. This sort of pressure and attention is not something the average panhandler has; they generally sign whatever conditions are put in front of them.
In the case of the fellow I mentioned, the court red zoned him from an area where he generally panhandles, which included the homeless shelter where he slept. He wasn’t banned from the shelter, he was banned from the area which included the shelter.
The “disturbance” charge came from his defiance of police oppression. This particular panhandler happens to be an anarchist – he actually sells anarchist books from his wheelchair, sometimes, on the street – and when the police try to “move him along” he asserts his civil rights, which he knows quite well. Of course, this infuriates the police, so he is constantly being arrested. In this specific instance, he had told a cop who was harassing him, “You think you have a big dick.” This made the cop handcuff him. While lying on the sidewalk in handcuffs, he then called the cop a “faggot.” Loudly. There was a Starbucks patio nearby and the police went and interviewed all the people sitting there until they found someone willing to state that he was offended by the “faggot” comment. This was their justification for the disturbance charge.
You see why a lot of what I’ve been explaining about the activities of the OPU doesn’t seem to make sense. In order to understand, I’d have to explain a great deal of background information which most people will find very dull. You can see how much explanation just this small detail took.
- The mayor of Ottawa, Larry O’Brien, referred to panhandlers at one point as “pigeons,” and that if people stopped feeding them they’d go away. During his election campaign, he said that panhandlers were like pigeons at the dump, that to keep them away sometimes you had to shoot a few of them. Realizing what he had said, he quickly added that he meant it only in the metaphorical sense. I note that Larry O’Brien is currently on trial on bribery charges.
This.
That they actually put him in prison prior to a trial.
Wait, what? You find it unbelievable that people get denied bail? 
You ceep using that word. I don’t thinc it’s spelled the way you thinc it’s spelled.
I think he finds it unbelievable that you’re outraged by the fact.
No, they usually get put in jail until the trial starts. Prison is a new one to me.
And that you seem to be outraged.
Isn’t the town spelled “Kanata”, with a t?
The jail here is in the police station and is only used until the police are done their processing. What I’m referring to as prison here is the regional detention centre, where people go when being held over for trial or remand. The detention centre is the equivalent of a maximum security prison, since it has to hold everyone from panhandlers to axe murderers and suspected terrorists, with the added drawback that it is not required to provide any of the services of a long-term facility such as a library and treatment programs. Conditions at the detention centre are in fact so bad that judges have, in the past, awarded triple-time for time served there.
Wow, people here have lost the ability to detect humor. Next you’ll be explaining why “Take my wife…please!” contains poor sentence structure.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think that StS is an idiot, as many others here evidently do. From reading his posts, I’m of the opinion that he needs medication, and if he’s on medication, he needs more.
He’s not an idiot…he’s like Der Trihs in that he seems pretty smart, but he’s so over the top that it’s hard to say.
A agree with the meds, but I’d say…up the voltage.
-XT
Given your explanation of the guy in the wheelchair’s situation, my thoughts:
- I still see no evidence that the threat of a picket line did anything. It seems extraordinarily likely to me that cops who are looking for reasons to arrest homeless people in an effort to get them out of the city would be delighted to hear that a bunch of homeless people are going to congregate in front of the local jail and probably violate some ordinance or another in the process (you know as well as anyone that the police can find violations when they look for them, of course). Instead, it seems likely that someone reviewed the case and decided it was bullshit.
- If things went down as you described, your union member sounds like a real piece of work. He’s someone else that needs to learn chess. It never pays to antagonize the guys with the guns, unless you’ve got an excellent backup plan. Doing it as he did just made his situation worse, and gained him nothing, unless he’s so terribly insecure that he must confirm the size of his genitals by insulting someone else’s. And calling the cop a faggot? Lord.
- Even assholes like this guy are entitled to protection from abusive cops–and cops who can’t handle an asshole like this without performing an arrest need to lose their jobs. If the guy was genuinely not violating a law, he shouldn’t have been arrested.
- Your story has a discrepancy in it. Lemme quote, underlining the problems:
So I understand he was arrested twice. The first time, if I understand, was for some charge you haven’t told us about. The second time, was he arrested for the disturbance or for violating bail conditions?
If it’s the former, then your claim that they arrested him after 20 violations to be sure the judge wouldn’t let him out is nonsense: on the contrary, it sounds as though they let him get away with violating his (bullshit) bail conditions 20 times without arresting him for it.
5) Finally, their proposed solution–letting him have the wheelchair in solitary–seems reasonable, with very slight changes, namely, he should have access to reading materials. I am skeptical that they would have denied reading materials, but stipulating that they would’ve, that’s what needed changing. Or do you think that, given the current system (no answering “destroy all prisons!”), it’d be best to put a wheelchair-bound inmate in general population with a wheelchair? The weapon concern seems legitimate.
“prison” in America and “prison” in Canada may be two separate things.