CPS: "Our worst fear" - innocent bystander shot in the face...

[RougeUnderoos]

Originally Posted by flylock shox

Legalizing and regulating marijuana would go a good way to undercutting the funding of Canadian criminal organizations, and limit the flow (although driving up the value) of drugs like cocaine and heroin in Canada. Those are the drugs we really need to worry about from a social standpoint.

It would definitely take money out of their pockets, and that's obviously a good thing. If it did drive up the value of cocaine and heroin, well, that's good too. The more it costs, the harder it is to do.

Originally Posted by flylock shox

As for meth... well... that would likely become a boom industry if the above were to happen. How that would play out is harder to envision.

I'm not sure I follow. Meth would become a boom industry why? Because you can make it here?

On a not-very-related note but weird in a macabre kind of way, that poor guy has a helicopter fall on him a few months ago, and now this happens to another exchange student.

[missdpuck]

We had a lot of trouble with gangs here.fortunately on the "other side of the tracks" but hey we all have to pass through there. Rival illegal immigrant gangs,drugs and real bunch of losers called TopSix. I think they are international and were causing problems in a couple of small towns in Virginia too. In any case some of us chuckled when the Guardian Angels were brought in but so far it's seemed to work. Maybe just coincidence. Weren't they up in Calgary? Did it do any good?http://www.browardpalmbeach.com/2007...ews/wingin-it/ http://www.mostlywater.org/guardian_angels_threaten_anti_poverty_c...

[CaptainCrunch]

Screw the civil rights of these gang members. All of the cops in the world isn't going to solve the problem unless the legal system takes proper care of these drug dealing scumbags.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, any crime where a fire arm is used is automatic life in prison with no chance for parole for 25 years. Rape or molest a kid, its corporal punishment and involuntary castration. Sell drugs to a minor, its a 5 year jail term.

All that we're doing with this soft on criminals approach is encouraging them to commit more crime with a smirk on their faces, especially the ones that are involved in criminal gangs who make jail time a status symbol.

Sure spend money trying to get these kids away from the gang, educate people better, but the minute that they cross the line then you stomp the boot down on them.

Hugs make thugs it seems.

[missdpuck]

Thanks Norm.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

Screw the civil rights of these gang members. All of the cops in the world isn't going to solve the problem unless the legal system takes proper care of these drug dealing scumbags.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, any crime where a fire arm is used is automatic life in prison with no chance for parole for 25 years. Rape or molest a kid, its corporal punishment and involuntary castration. Sell drugs to a minor, its a 5 year jail term.

All that we're doing with this soft on criminals approach is encouraging them to commit more crime with a smirk on their faces, especially the ones that are involved in criminal gangs who make jail time a status symbol.

Sure spend money trying to get these kids away from the gang, educate people better, but the minute that they cross the line then you stomp the boot down on them.

Hugs make thugs it seems.

I'd tentatively agree with most of this. It seems that the only way to get the message across is through the liberal application of force and the justice system.

The only problem is that this approach has a tendency to promote escalation which those on the other side of the law have no problem with, but on the right side of the law it requires increased legislation and funding to match so that the officers on the street arent over their heads.

Angry mob justice is always an alternative.

Norm needs a beer....hes angry....

[Cawz]

Originally Posted by getbak

Did you know that heroin was first marketed by Bayer as a cough medicine?

I wonder if I could still get a sample if I wrote to them.

[flylock shox]

Originally Posted by RougeUnderoos

I'm not sure I follow. Meth would become a boom industry why? Because you can make it here?

On a not-very-related note but weird in a macabre kind of way, that poor guy has a helicopter fall on him a few months ago, and now this happens to another exchange student.

That's exactly right. Cheap, relatively easy to make in high quantities in Canada, used as a substitute for crack cocaine. Not to mention highly addictive and easily combined with ecstasy, another soft drug which is popular with young people.

And that's one of the first things I thought of after reading this too. Student exchange programs should be posting travel advisories about Canada.

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by getbak

Did you know that heroin was first marketed by Bayer as a cough medicine?

Sure, get me some earth 20th century Coca-Cola and Coca-Wine as well please.

[GGG]

An interesting article was in the sun a few weeks ago with a gang expert from Boston or Chicago on what they did during their big run up in gang killings.

They gist of the article was that adding cops does very little to help the situation. When someone gets shot no one will testify so more investigating doesn't help that much.

What they did was sat down with known gang members and told them that every time a shot was fired or some one was stabbed every single known gang member would be brought in on some kind of warrent. Unpaid parking tickets, speeding tickets, minor posession, littering. They would charge a few hundred people with minor offenses. The effect this had was it didn't reduce gang activity but it reduced gang violence. Gangs began to police themselves in terms of reducing violence because the harassment by the police hinders their oppurtunity to due buisness.

I am also for full scale legalization of every drug. I would say regulate through perscriptions and ween people off. It would turn it closer to the oxycotin problem rather than the crack problem

[Slava]

Originally Posted by GGG

An interesting article was in the sun a few weeks ago with a gang expert from Boston or Chicago on what they did during their big run up in gang killings.

They gist of the article was that adding cops does very little to help the situation. When someone gets shot no one will testify so more investigating doesn't help that much.

What they did was sat down with known gang members and told them that every time a shot was fired or some one was stabbed every single known gang member would be brought in on some kind of warrent. Unpaid parking tickets, speeding tickets, minor posession, littering. They would charge a few hundred people with minor offenses. The effect this had was it didn't reduce gang activity but it reduced gang violence. Gangs began to police themselves in terms of reducing violence because the harassment by the police hinders their oppurtunity to due buisness.

I am also for full scale legalization of every drug. I would say regulate through perscriptions and ween people off. It would turn it closer to the oxycotin problem rather than the crack problem

I agree with this sentence (and I think that most people understand that). But the one thing that more police does is makes people feel safe...and that is critical. I don't think that people are over-stating things when they say that they don't feel safe.

I hope that adding more police just gets some of this under control so that the pro-active solutions have time to work.

[SeeGeeWhy]

Originally Posted by Super-Rye

It's hard to do without imposing on someone's rights as a human. Honestly the best way to deal with gangs is to take away the things that give them funding. The government starts regulating drugs and prostitution and what funds the gangs? Bake sales?

It's not ideal but if the people are going to sit there and bitch about drugs and stuff and push it all underground, prepare to deal with the gang violence that comes with it.

Outside of drugs and prostitution, I think that human trafficking, gambling, real estate, and extortion are big revenue streams for major gangs.

[4X4]

I kinda figure that a few more cops means that new hires work the beat and some of the more veteran cops get re-assigned to Homicide and Gang Unit, which means more man power to crack cases.
In other words, "more cops" doesn't necessarily mean more cops walking down 8th ave. It means more people working on cracking cases and more criminals getting caught.

[pepper24]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

Screw the civil rights of these gang members. All of the cops in the world isn't going to solve the problem unless the legal system takes proper care of these drug dealing scumbags.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, any crime where a fire arm is used is automatic life in prison with no chance for parole for 25 years. Rape or molest a kid, its corporal punishment and involuntary castration. Sell drugs to a minor, its a 5 year jail term.

All that we're doing with this soft on criminals approach is encouraging them to commit more crime with a smirk on their faces, especially the ones that are involved in criminal gangs who make jail time a status symbol.

Sure spend money trying to get these kids away from the gang, educate people better, but the minute that they cross the line then you stomp the boot down on them.

Hugs make thugs it seems.

Agreed, you can have tons of resources spent on policing and prevention but you won't be able to curb this problem unless you fix the judicial system. The police are responsible for prevention, arrest, charges etc. and with better resources can do a much better job but then the suspect is left with the judicial system. The crimes need to be much tougher to deter these crimes from happening. It's a joke.

Maybe no matter what the punishment for the crime is, some clowns will still commit these crimes. But at least make sure once they commit these terrible acts that they get harsh time behind bars.

[habernac]

the brutal headline on Canoe makes it look like the cops shot the innocent bystander in the face. Nice work, Sun.

[CaptainCrunch]

I always envisioned that Fotze would be the first member of our little community to be featured on an episode of Cops.

[Muta]

Terrible news about that exchange student. What kind of message does this send to the people of Brazil, and people around the world? That they can't come here now because of gang violence? This city should be heavily encouraging foriegn students to come here and study, and then our reputation gets tarnished because of low-life trash that seems to be growing in numbers in this City.

Although, the African student that was living in Cranbrook last year and got killed by way of falling helicopter from the sky while he was listening to his iPod is probably a little bit worse in terms of the outcome... but I digress. Atleast the Brazilian student still has his life.

Anyhoo, I wonder if any of this 'trash' that lives in Calgary actually notice that this is what is going on? Do they not watch the news and see that they will now be targeted as a result of their actions?

I guess my question is... what ever happened to doing good for society? Why do people always turn to gangs, guns, drugs, illiegal grow ops and violence? Surely people would know that in Calgary.. ESPECIALLY in Calgary, you get a little bit of education and you can make ALOT of money LEGALLY.

This city is quickly becoming the armpit of major cities across North America right now.

[corporatejay]

Originally Posted by habernac

the brutal headline on Canoe makes it look like the cops shot the innocent bystander in the face. Nice work, Sun.

You mean this one

Calgary cops shoot bystander

brutal.

On another note, there was a sexual assault in Shawnessy last night.

The female victim was walking west bound on 162 Avenue from
the Shawnessy Shopping Centre area when a male offender
grabbed her from behind and fondled her chest and groin areas
while attempting to drag her into a nearby park.

Link

I couldn't help but think to myself, if a man breaks into homes and brutally rapes women and is likely to reoffend gets 10 years, this guy would probably get community service.

Unfortunately the breaking point is going to come when an innocent civilian stands up for themselves and in the process of defending themselves kill/injures one of these criminals and gets brought up on some ridiculous charge for carrying a weapon.

Oh, I also wanted to mention, that there was a murder in Chestemere yesterday (or the day before) and a shooting Queensland at 11:30am within proxmity to two schools.

So yeah, within about a 12 hour period there were 3 shootings, 1 out of the 3 ended in a death, but that doesn't make it any less scary.

[habernac]

Originally Posted by Muta

Terrible news about that exchange student. What kind of message does this send to the people of Brazil, and people around the world? That they can't come here now because of gang violence? This city should be heavily encouraging foriegn students to come here and study, and then our reputation gets tarnished because of low-life trash that seems to be growing in numbers in this City.

Although, the African student that was living in Cranbrook last year and got killed by way of falling helicopter from the sky while he was listening to his iPod is probably a little bit worse in terms of the outcome... but I digress. Atleast the Brazilian student still has his life.

Anyhoo, I wonder if any of this 'trash' that lives in Calgary actually notice that this is what is going on? Do they not watch the news and see that they will now be targeted as a result of their actions?

I guess my question is... what ever happened to doing good for society? Why do people always turn to gangs, guns, drugs, illiegal grow ops and violence? Surely people would know that in Calgary.. ESPECIALLY in Calgary, you get a little bit of education and you can make ALOT of money LEGALLY.

This city is quickly becoming the armpit of major cities across North America right now.

While I'm concerned about the recent events, this is a little dramatic don't you think? The entire city isn't exactly South Central.

[Muta]

Originally Posted by habernac

While I'm concerned about the recent events, this is a little dramatic don't you think? The entire city isn't exactly South Central.

It may be a little bit dramatic, yes, but this gang problem has been going on for a several years now. You'd think that proper political measures, legislation and physical force would have been implemented and cracked down upon the root causes of the problems by now.

Don't forget the amount of grow operations in our city, sexual assaults, home invasion robberies and random attacks / beatings. They're even more numerous than the routine gang violence now.

[Bring_Back_Shantz]

Originally Posted by Muta

Terrible news about that exchange student. What kind of message does this send to the people of Brazil, and people around the world? That they can't come here now because of gang violence? This city should be heavily encouraging foriegn students to come here and study, and then our reputation gets tarnished because of low-life trash that seems to be growing in numbers in this City.

Although, the African student that was living in Cranbrook last year and got killed by way of falling helicopter from the sky while he was listening to his iPod is probably a little bit worse in terms of the outcome... but I digress. Atleast the Brazilian student still has his life.

Anyhoo, I wonder if any of this 'trash' that lives in Calgary actually notice that this is what is going on? Do they not watch the news and see that they will now be targeted as a result of their actions?

I guess my question is... what ever happened to doing good for society? Why do people always turn to gangs, guns, drugs, illiegal grow ops and violence? Surely people would know that in Calgary.. ESPECIALLY in Calgary, you get a little bit of education and you can make ALOT of money LEGALLY.

This city is quickly becoming the armpit of major cities across North America right now.

Wow. I've got to say that I think this is more than just a little bit over dramatic.

Yes Calgary has experienced a pretty sharp increase in gang violence in the last 6 months to a year, but you're making it sound like this is the only place/time in the world this has ever happened.

There have been criminals killing criminals and innocent bystanders pretty much since the dawn of civilization, this isn't a new problem and it isn't one that is ever going to go away.

Moreover, Calgary is nowhere near becoming the armpit of major cities in North America. The only reason this seems so bad is because for a very long time we were very much sheltered from this type of violence. I can guarantee there are A LOT of cities in North America where this string of violence would be a welcomed reduction compared to what they normally see.

That all being said, that doesn't mean something can't be done to try to curb this violence before it gets any worse.