"Car 87" Abuse Raised by Mayoral Candidate for the First Time in a Vancouver Election

Soviet-style political psychiatry practiced in Vancouver has been attracting attention internationally but I’d never heard it mentioned by a candidate in the civic election campaign. Until Monday. At an All Candidates meeting in the theater of Carnegie Center, Independent mayoral candidate Golok Buday (pictured above in black cap), said:

“Car 87 forces it’s drugs on you and forces you to go places based on arbitrary political reasons. And I think that should be acknowledged.”

Car 87 is a police car, carrying an armed police officer and a psychiatric nurse. There is a stockpile of documented evidence that it is being used by the Vancouver School Board and other organizations to smear critics. Politically vocal people against whom no evidence of wrongdoing can be found too often find Car 87 arriving at their homes to assess them for “apprehension” to a mental hospital.

Vision Council candidate Andrea Reimer (on left in above photo), who took Al Gore’s training program to become a presenter of his “An Inconvenient Truth” seminar, didn’t look up when Buday mentioned Car 87 civil liberties abuses. But an inconvenient truth is that Reimer has been implicated in a cover-up involving fraud of Car 87 abuses while on Vancouver School Board in 2003

The alleged cover-up came after several adults had independently lodged complaints about a verbally and physically abusive teacher. VSB sent Car 87 to the home of the last complainant, identifying the fact that she had made “freedom of information requests” as the official reason. The only evidence they turned over to Car 87 to be used against her, though, was a document indicating that she intended to campaign about their mishandling of bullying complaints in a School Board election. Police-School Liaison, Sergeant Garry Lester, admitted that the Vancouver School Board had pressured him to send Car 87 to the woman’s home even after he had emphasized to them that there was “nothing untoward” about her conduct.

How did Reimer and her colleagues address this Car 87 visit arranged by the VSB under fraudulent pretenses? With more fraud, says the victim. Reimer and her fellow elected School Board trustees arranged for an “in camera” review of the case, which they conveniently concealed from the victim. They invited a primary offender in this case of criminal wrongdoing to brief them. He re-offended. He fabricated claims such as that the teacher didn’t actually work for the VSB when her abuses occurred. This cover-up has contributed to the international boycott of VSB diplomas organized by Canadians Opposing Political Psychiatry.

The use of in-camera meetings by elected officials in Vancouver to ensure secrecy was mentioned at the All Candidates meeting by mayoral candidate Betty Krawczyk (in top photo wearing yellow scarf) of the Work Less party. “When they have something important to do, they do it in camera.”. Krawczyk told the audience that she had moved to Canada from the U.S. because she was opposed to the Vietnam war. “Every year I’ve been here, there’s less democracy”.

Krawczyk was referring to what others had said earlier. Nicholai, an audience member, had said, “When I arrived in Canada as a political refugee, the democracy I expected was not so much in place.” Buday had added, “My father is a refugee from Hungary and he told me that Canada was less of a democracy than his family expected too.” But by being the first politician in Vancouver to mention the use of Car 87 as a political tool, he has moved us a step toward more democracy.

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Who's Who in the above photographs?

Top photo: (left to right) Ellen Woodsworth, COPE councillor candidate; Mark Emery, mayoral candidate; Golok Buday, Independent mayoral candidate; Betty Krawczyk, Work Less Party mayor candidate; Lea Johnson, Independent councillor candidate

Bottom photo: (left to right): Andrea Reimer, Vision councillor candidate; Michael Geller, NPA councillor candidate; Ivan Doumenc, Work Less Party candidate for Park Commissioner; Jamie Lee Hamilton, Independent candidate for Park Commissioner; [name unknown] Work Less Party; Geri Tramutola, Work Less Party councillor candidate.

United Way Implicated In "Political Psychiatry" Comparable To China

United Way of the Lower Mainland has been linked to “political psychiatry” comparable to that practiced in China and the former Soviet Union, according to the ad hoc group Canadians Opposing Political Psychiatry [COPP].

Accusations of political psychiatry began after a police complaint was lodged by Ron Dumouchelle, CEO of United Way of the Lower Mainland, in Dec. 2002 against a Vancouver woman. Dumouchelle wanted police to press the woman -- we'll call her the whistleblower -- to stop making a Report on United Way available to major donors. Dumouchelle would eventually admit to police that he knew this was "not a criminal matter" and that he had recruited them because the civil court process would be too slow for him. His police complaint, though, resulted in Constables Lee Patterson and J.P. St. Amant writing a police report rife with fabricated and misrepresented evidence on Dec. 18, the day they met with Dumouchelle and anonymous witnesses at United Way Campaign headquarters. (See earlier post, "Fraudulent Evidence Found in United Way Police Complaint".)

The whistleblower fought back.

She faxed St. Amant a memo announcing her intention to seek a fraud/public mischief investigation. She sent a copy of the memo to Dumouchelle. Inspector John de Haas of the Vancouver Police had told her she was entitled to request a public mischief investigation. St. Amant labeled the faxed memo, "the Public Mischief letter". It is the actions of Dumouchelle and St. Amant, though, in response to the "public mischief letter" that have led to accusations of political psychiatry.

A problem for United Way and the VPD: the whistleblower knew her rights

In addition to the whistleblower's assertion in the "public mischief letter" that she intended to seek an investigation into fraud and public mischief, she made reference to her earlier assertion that she would be exercising her right not to speak to police. That assertion had occurred via a voice mail she left for St. Amant on Dec. 20 in response to police hounding her by showing up at her door, talking to her neighbor, and leaving voice mail messages for her. St. Amant received the voice mail, told Dumouchelle about it and made notes on it in his Dec. 21 report: “[Whistleblower] called BC Civil Liberties and was instructed not to talk to police.” St. Amant appeared to initially recognize that right, noting in his report that he had left the whistleblower a response voice mail: “PC 2010 stated that [whistleblower] is free not to talk to police ….” But even after the whistleblower's refusal to talk to police, St. Amant remained under pressure from Dumouchelle to stop the circulation of the Report on UW which Dumouchelle felt could reduce campaign donations.

Dumouchelle may have been nervous about the whistleblower's intent to seek a criminal public mischief investigation as he wasted no time in trying to reach St. Amant after learning of it. The two had a telephone conversation about the "Public Mischief letter" on Boxing Day, according to St. Amant’s report dated Dec. 26th. “These guys had barely digested their Christmas dinner,” exclaims the whistleblower, “when they were on the phone talking about me.”

“PC 2010 returned call from Dumouchelle whom advised PC 2010 that he received a copy of the Public Mischief letter as well.”

Car 87 visit arranged under fraudulent pretenses

Just minutes after his Boxing Day conversation with Dumouchelle, St. Amant was on the phone arranging a visit to the whistleblower’s home by police “Car 87”. Car 87 is a marked police car staffed by a constable and a psychiatric nurse. They are granted the extraordinary power to disregard an individual’s civil liberties and enter their home to assess them for “apprehension” to a mental hospital. “How convenient,” says the whistleblower. “I’d invoked my right not to speak to police and Car 87 was a way they could circumvent that right." But there was one problem: this case did not come anywhere close to meeting the criteria for a Car 87 visit.

Car 87 visits are restricted by legislation to individuals at “imminent” risk of physically harming or killing themselves or others. This fact was confirmed by Jan Fisher, Director of Client Relations at the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority, in a telephone call about a similar case a month earlier, a call which was taped by an advocate and passed on to Canadians Opposing Political Psychiatry. Fisher added that Car 87 is for “extreme emergencies” in which “the public” is at risk of physical harm. This confirmation by Fisher supports the whistleblower's claim that Car 87 was ordered under "fraudulent pretenses".

Prior to the Car 87 visit being ordered, St. Amant, Patterson, and Dumouchelle had repeatedly confirmed, according to the police report, that the whistleblower posed “no physical risk”. Constable Patterson wrote in his Dec. 18 report, “No signs of direct threats or suggestion of violence to person/property.” After a conversation with Dumouchelle, St. Amant noted in his Dec. 18 report that Dumouchelle “agrees” that safety “is not perceived as an issue.” St. Amant reiterated this point in his Dec. 21st report after a follow up conversation with Dumouchelle: “No safety concerns….” In fact Constables Patterson and St. Amant, in their typewritten reports based largely on conversations with Dumouchelle, stated 15 times in the week prior to arranging the Car 87 visit that the whistleblower posed no safety risk.

One entry made by St. Amant on Dec. 21 is adequate though, according to the whistleblower, to substantiate her position that the Car 87 visit was ordered under fraudulent pretenses: “At this time there is no evidence to substantiate [whistleblower] being a physical threat.” That was five days before Car 87 was ordered. What could possibly have occurred over the next 5 days to justify ordering a Car 87 visit on Dec. 26th? Just one thing is on record as having occurred: Dumouchelle and St. Amant received a fax of the “Public Mischief letter” from which they first learned of the whistleblower’s intent to pursue a criminal investigation into the unfounded police complaint and accompanying falsified evidence.

Until the “Public Mischief letter” left Dumouchelle and St. Amant in a jam, St. Amant repeatedly noted in his report that he and Dumouchelle agreed that the proper “strategy” for dealing with the whistleblower would be a civil court injunction. In fact, five days before Car 87 was ordered, St. Amant reiterated in his report, after a conversation with Dumouchelle on Dec. 21, that a civil court injunction would be the “appropriate” approach to handling this case. Even at the moment Car 87 was being ordered on Dec. 26, Dumouchelle continued to view an injunction as the appropriate approach but was frustrated by the fact that one would not be delivered quickly enough, according to St. Amant's report. “If these guys thought I'd be receptive to an injunction," says the whistleblower, "they must have seen me as a sane person."

Dumouchelle's stated preference for an injunction was not the first indication that he viewed the whistleblower as sane. In another entry in his Dec. 21 report, St. Amant wrote: “Dumouchelle wants [whistleblower] to know that the Battered Women’s society is only a small portion (receiving funding) from the United Way.” The content of this entry – ignore, for a moment, the poor grammar and oddball use of parentheses – reveals that Dumouchelle and St. Amant saw the whistleblower as somebody who could be reasoned with, in other words, a sane person.

Whistleblower alleges that the Car 87 visit was politically motivated

The fact that the motivation for ordering the Car 87 visit was political is supported by the fact that the sole evidence turned over to Car 87 was the “Public Mischief letter” in which the whistleblower had stated her intent to seek a criminal investigation. “What better way to send me a message,” says the whistleblower.

Targeting her for a Car 87 visit, the whistleblower believes, was also an attempt to ensure that she would not be taken seriously when pursing a public mischief complaint. St. Amant wasted no time in ensuring she had a Car 87 record on the police computer system where any officer formally taking her public mischief complaint would see it. On Boxing Day, he wrote:

“PC 2010 forward recent letter from [whistleblower] to Car 87 and has requested a
memo be placed for Car 87 concern. PRIME report updated…PC 2010 request an assessment of [whistleblower] by Car 87.”

The term “PRIME” refers to the police computer system. St. Amant made this entry despite having confirmed that there was nothing in the whistleblowers medical history to indicate that she had ever been treated for psychiatric issues.

There is no doubt that a Car 87 visit can severely harm a targeted individual’s credibility. Even if cleared, a targeted individual is left with a “DISTURBED PERSON” notation adjacent to their name on the police PRIME computer system – for life. But here’s the catch: the targeted individual is never actually cleared. The best outcome the targeted political activist can achieve is that the Car 87 psychiatric nurse puts a check mark beside the section of the official form indicating that the individual is not a candidate for apprehension “at this time.” At this time. “COPP is right,” says the whistleblower. “This is the way dissidents in China are treated.”

Dumouchelle was waiting for an update after the Car 87 visit

The whistleblower was outraged to learn from the police report that Dumouchelle at United Way was waiting to be briefed after the Car 87 visit. She had read the following passage entered by St. Amant in his Dec. 26 police report as he was ordering the Car 87 visit:
“PC 2010 advised Dumouchelle that police are continuing to attempt to make
personal contact with [the whistleblower] and will advise when they have in order
to inform her of events and make an assessment as to her well being.” [italics added]

The whistleblower says, “My rights are being overridden and a United Way bureaucrat is waiting for an update.”

Dumouchelle was quoted as providing the reason for the Car 87 visit

It is going to be difficult for United Way to adopt a ‘blame the cops’ defense in response to accusations of an unfounded Car 87 visit that had the earmarks of political psychiatry. After once again noting that Dumouchelle had expressed concern that the civil court process could not meet his need to quickly silence the whistleblower, St. Amant finished the sentence by revealing that it was Dumouchelle who had provided the reason cited for getting Car 87 on the road: “Dumouchelle stated he…is concerned about her “cyclical” letter writing indicating possible mental illness.” Dumouchelle was directly quoted as using the term “cyclical”.

Odd. In an internal document dated just three days earlier, Dec. 23, Dumouchelle had detailed his concerns about the whistleblower. He made no mention of cyclical letter writing or cyclical anything.

The claim of “cyclical” letter writing was left completely unsupported in the police report. No evidence of cyclical letter writing was filed in the Police Property Office or given to Car 87 staff – despite the fact that this was the sole reason provided in the police report to justify the Car 87 visit. Only one document, the “Public Mischief letter” that the whistleblower had faxed to St. Amant and Dumouchelle, was turned over to Car 87 and filed with the Police Property Office.

The “Public Mischief” memo could hardly be considered evidence of cyclical behavior on the part of the whistleblower as this communication had been solicited by St. Amant. He had left his fax number at the whistleblower’s home and hounded her to make contact with him; he’d even asked her neighbors to have her contact him. She communicated in writing for her own protection, she says, because by this time she had read the falsified evidence in the police report, an issue she had raised in the “Public Mischief” memo.

The only thing cyclical in this case, says the whistleblower, was the “run around” you got at United Way if you lodged a complaint. That’s why the Report on UW was made available to donors with a request that they ensure the issues were addressed.

After quoting Dumouchelle’s term “cyclical” on Dec. 26 as the basis for the Car 87 visit, St. Amant then paraphrased the same claim of cyclical letter writing on the following page with the same date – but added a new twist: “The structure of letters and pattern may suggest Mental Health concerns….” Again, this claim was left entirely unsupported, no examples were given. So the DTES Enquirer combed the written material in the file in search of structural flaws. None were found. The Report on UW was well organized, with subheadings for each separate complaint that women and men coming into contact with the battered women’s organization had brought forward. All complaints were illustrated with examples. The form letter sent to corporate donors making the report available was succinct and well organized.

Illegal Release of Whistleblower's Medical Records

When a police officer orders a Car 87 visit, Health Authority personnel are required to review the targeted individual's medical records and tell the officer whether they are considered to pose a physical risk. That's all. Privacy legislation strictly prohibits the release of specific details of medical records. But privacy leglislation was ignored in this case.

Intimate details of the whistleblower's physical body were entered in St. Amant's report, copied verbatim from her confidential medical records. Any police officer involved in processing her complaint of fraud/public mishief against Dumouchelle and St. Amant could be expected to read this as well, the whistleblower points out. "I can count eight people in the police department alone who have had access to it," says the whistleblower.

"The whistleblower holds United Way partially responsible for the fact that interactions between Health Authority personnel and St. Amant resulted in confidential material being entered into the police report. It is unlikely that St. Amant would have even had contact with the Health Authority, she says, if Dumouchelle hadn't "played the mental illness card".

Above photo from TV series, "Car 54 -- Where are you?"

Car 87 -- Where are you?

Shortly after the Car 87 visit was ordered, a marked police cruiser parked in front of the whistleblower's home and created a spectacle for the neighbors. "It was just after Christmas," says the whistleblower, "I think it was Boxing Day." The lights on the police car flashed for at least 20 minutes. "The red and blue lights on the top were circling around and around, like there was some major emergency." Her buzzer rang relentlessly. She peeked out and saw an officer, "not too tall, Hawaiian-looking" straining his neck to look up at her window.

The lights in her home were off at the time. "They must have thought there was nobody home," she says. She didn't speak to them as she had already made it clear to St. Amant that she was invoking her right to remain silent.

Arranging a Car 87 visit to her home during the Christmas holiday period compounded the "mental cruelty" of this exercise, says the whistleblower. The holiday period is one in which people are likely to have friends and family visiting, thereby maximizing the possibility that she would be humiliated when Car 87 showed up to perform an assessment for apprehension.

Cease and Desist letter

When the whistleblower obtained a copy of the updated police report from the a VPD Freedom of Information officer shortly after Christmas, she learned that she had been targeted for a Car 87 assessment for having written the "Public Mischief letter".

And she saw no sign that there was going to be an end to this "harassment". On Dec. 29, St. Amant re-iterated his Boxing Day entry in his report, "Letter referred to Car 87 for continued follow up as per request." On the same page, St. Amant noted that he had forwarded the file to the Harassment Unit "for further investigation" -- despite his earlier claim that this was "not a criminal matter." In his next entry on the page, St. Amant noted that the whistleblower was expected to continue to make the Report on UW available to donors "in early 2003" -- leading to accusations by the whistleblower that this new investigation was politically motivated. It is noteworthy that at the top of this page of the report, St. Amant did not follow protocol of entering an "OFFENCE" to be formally investigated. "Because he knew there was none", says the whistleblower.

The whistleblower had had enough.

A Cease & Desist letter was sent to Acting Sergeant Hatchman who was supervising St. Amant and Patterson. At that point, the whistleblower says, the "harassment" stopped.

Unfinished business

There is plenty of unfinished business in this case. It has been five years now and United Way has done nothing to make amends to the whistleblower for their role in the alleged political psychiatry. "They could start by helping me get the Car 87 record expunged," she says. "As long as political psychiatry is on my record, it's going to be on their record", she says. "They better get used to it."

And donors better get used to it too. Because the whistleblower is not letting them off the hook. In her view, donors that were listed as witnesses on the first page of the police report -- President of the Toronto Dominion Bank, Canada Safeway, Revenue Canada, Canadian Red Cross, Canada Post, Westminster Savings -- must take responsibility for lending their names to an "unfounded" United Way police complaint that spiralled out of control.

Int'l Boycott of Vancouver High School Diplomas Concealed By School Board

(photo: Ken Denike, Chair, Vancouver School Board)

While the Vancouver School Board is exporting schools and diplomas to the children of the elite in China's Communist Party, Vancouver residents say it is importing tactics of political repression used by China's Communist Party.

The result is an international boycott of Vancouver School Board secondary school diplomas. The boycott was launched in 2004 by individuals who have since formed the ad hoc group, Canadians Opposing Political Psychiatry. The DTES Enquirer has learned that Vancouver School Board trustees and administrators, including Principals and Vice Principals, were sent written notification of the boycott but concealed it from the public.

Organizations around the world "are being asked not to recognize these diplomas", according to a Feb. 13, 2004 notice entitled, "International Boycott of Diplomas Issued by the Vancouver School Board", received by the VSB.

The boycott stemmed from evidence that the VSB was using police intimidation and political psychiatry to deter legitimate citizen complaints. Pursuing a complaint against the Vancouver School Board can earn the complainant a visit from Vancouver's notorious "Car 87", a police car in which an armed constable and psychiatric nurse ride. They arrive at a complainant's home, according to official forms that they complete during the visit, to perform an assessment for "apprehension" to a mental hospital.

A psychiatric notation appears for life adjacent to that individual's name on the police computer system -- even if they are cleared. But here's the catch: even when you're cleared, you're never really cleared. The wording on the form reveals that an individual is simply not a candidate for apprehension "at this time".

In the fall of 2002, outgoing President of the BC Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils mentioned intimidation of individuals pursuing complaints with school administrators in an interview with the Vancouver Sun. Reggi Balabanov stated that complainants were discovering police on their doorsteps. This has put a "chill" on the willingness of people to pursue complaints, Balabanov said. [Balabanov was not involved in organizing the boycott.]

The boycott was ultimately triggered by a case involving police intimidation and classic political psychiatry in October 2002.

The woman targeted for political psychiatry was the last (last known) of several individuals, both female and male, who had lodged complaints --with no knowledge of one another's complaints at the time -- with the School Board about a verbally and physically abusive teacher. The VSB instructed her to submit her complaint in writing to Violence Prevention Co-ordinator Lisa Pedrina, but when she did, she got no response. Months later, she wrote a letter to the VSB criticizing this lack of response. She quickly received a letter dated Sept. 12, 2000 from the VSB in-house lawyer, Richard Hall, threatening her with legal action for "liable and slander" -- this lawyer could not spell "libel" -- if she dared criticize Pedrini again. The woman asked trustees to ensure that the VSB stopped issuing threats to prevent the raising of legitimate concerns with staff.

Hall had told the woman in the threatening letter, that if she wanted her complaint processed, she would have to re-submit it. This is a typical "obstructionist tactic" she says. She asked trustee to investigate why this in-house lawyer could not simply pull her original submission out of a VSB filing cabinet? Hall later left his job at the VSB.

With Hall's departure, the VSB hired an external lawyer, Wendy Harris, to send the woman a letter stating that "no substantiation was found" to support her claims that previous individuals -- who had by now heard of her case and contacted her -- had lodged complaints about this teacher. "There are no records which could be located to indicate that either of these individuals had made complaints against [the teacher]...." Complainants were stunned by this response. The VSB ignored written notification that a previous complainant, a male, was willing to provide them with letters on VSB letterhead brushing off his complaint against this teacher, as well as a postcard he had received from the teacher apologizing for 'attacking' him. The VSB also ignored written notification that an earlier female complainant was willing to speak to them, a complainant who had been telephoned at home by a VSB supervisor when she suddenly stopped all school volunteer work after being physically assaulted by this teacher; the supervisor told her that the teacher would be sent on "sensitivity training." The VSB had been given contact information, in writing, for both these complainants. They had also been provided, in writing, the names of two VSB supervisors who had received complaints about the teacher.

The above example was one of several outlined in an Oct. 12, 2002 letter to the Vancouver Board to illustrate that they were paying hundreds of dollars an hour in taxpayers' dollars to evade a genuine investigation into this case. The woman stated in the letter that she intended to campaign in the election, just two months away, about VSB "duplicity" in the handling of bullying complaints, specifically their practice of assuring the public that such complaints were being taken seriously when in fact letters complainants were receiving told a different story. The ruling party, the Non-Partisan Association, was poised to lose the election; any campaigning by the woman could have been damaging to incumbents.

The VSB called police "Car 87".

In the morning of Nov. 5, 2002, the woman responded to pounding on her door by opening it and discovering an armed constable, Michelle Sevigny, standing with psychiatric nurse, Don Getz. Getz was flapping her Oct. 12, 2002 letter to the VSB in his hand. It is noteworthy that her Oct. 12, 2002 intent-to-campaign letter was the sole evidence submitted to police and the psychiatric nurse to justify the visit.

The woman felt sufficiently terrorized by the Car 87 visit that she dropped plans to campaign in the School Board election.

At the beginning of the visit, Getz told the woman, "You seem fine to me." As he was leaving at the end of the visit, she claims -- this is something she reported in writing to the Health Authority and the VSB at the time -- Getz told her that he shared her view that the upcoming tight School Board election had motivated the VSB to arrange this visit.

In his official psychiatric report, though, the sole reason Getz provided for going to the woman's home to assess her for "apprehension" was that she had made "freedom of information requests" to the VSB. Indeed, at the end of the Oct. 12/02 letter, the woman had requested that documents from the file be released to her under the Freedom of Information Act. The woman had made two routine freedom of information requests over the previous year. Getz revealed in his report that the only person the VSB made available to meet with him was Georgina Kosich, the Labour Relations and Freedom of Information Assistant at the VSB. (When he arrived, he had chatted with the VSB's new lawyer, Michael Hancock, who had directed him to Kosich.) The woman has in her possession letters from Kosich responding to her Freedom of Information requests and inviting her to feel free to contact her again.

The revelation in Getz' report that the VSB had diverted him to a freedom of information clerk reinforced the fact that they did not feel at any risk. Yet Car 87 is, according to Health Authority policy, to be reserved for cases where the targeted individual poses an "imminent" risk of killing themselves or others. That policy was confirmed in a taped telephone call with Jan Fisher, Head of Client Relations at the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority. Fisher told the woman that she "might get an apology" as a mistake had obviously been made. It wasn't a mistake, says the woman. "It was a pre-meditated attempt to intimidate me and discredit me with the electorate."

The fact that the Car 87 visit was no mistake tends to be supported by comments made by Police-School Liaison, Sergeant Garry Lester, whom the woman telephoned for answers on the afternoon of Nov. 5th, just hours after the visit. He told her during a taped telephone conversation (advocates routinely advise DTES residents to tape conversations in cases of police intimidation and political psychiatry) that he had stressed to the VSB that there was "nothing untoward" about her Oct. 12/02 letter. But the VSB pressured him, he revealed, so he approved the visit. (Such soliciting by bureaucrats of a favor from the VPD in order to have a critic visited has turned up in documentation pertaining to four cases of political psychiatry and/or politically-motivated police intimidation brought to the attention of DTES Enquirer bloggers.) Lester confirmed, when asked by the woman during their telephone conversation, that the Oct. 12, 2002 letter was the sole evidence considered in the decision to send Car 87 to her home.

Despite the lack of evidence that the woman posed a risk, approval of the Car 87 visit allowed instant access by Car 87 staff to her medical records. "They had no evidence against me," she says, "so they went on a fishing expedition to see if they could find anything to use against me." [She can prove that content of her medical records was altered when transferred into the Car 87 report. She has copies of both the original record and the Car 87 report. But this will be covered in another post.] She has no history of mental illness.

During the year and a half between the Oct./02 Car 87 visit and the organizing of the boycott of diplomas issued by the Vancouver School Board, records confirm that efforts were made to have VSB trustees take responsibility for their alleged instigation of police intimidation and political psychiatry. In 2003, trustees held an in-camera review of the case of the woman targeted by Car 87. She was not invited. But a staff person implicated in wrongdoing in the case was invited to brief the Board. The woman learned from meeting notes obtained through Freedom of Information that evidence in the case had been consistently misrepresented at the meeting. "He said the teacher wasn't working for the Vancouver School Board at the time we lodged our complaints, like we were all too stupid to know what school she worked at." All they had to do was check the payroll records, she points out, to confirm that she had definitely been a VSB teacher when the complaints were lodged.

Jane Bouey, elected in Nov. 2002, was a Vancouver School Board member during the term in which the in-camera review was held and the VSB persistently evaded addressing allegations that they had restricted freedom of expression via Ca 87. No hint of Bouey's record was provided to the public as she appeared in the media to sell a draft of "Safe Schools" legislation. This "Safe Schools" draft was criticized for imposing excessive and heavy-handed limitations on informal, day-to-day speech of students. Critics who believe the VSB is comfortable with tactics typical of the Communist Party in China and the former Soviet Union are hardly dissuaded by the fact that Bouey is Assistant Manager of the Communist Party's People's Co-op Bookstore in Vancouver and uses the internet domain address of the Communist Party's People's Voice newspaper as her personal e-mail address. While on the School Board, her partner in her personal life was (and may continue to be) Kimball Cariou, editor of the People's Voice.

There is no doubt that the Vancouver School Board was aware of the boycott ultimately triggered by this case. A Freedom of Information request to the VSB by the woman visited by Car 87 resulted in the release of a copy of the notice entitled "International Boycott of Diplomas Issued by the Vancouver School Board" bearing the stamp, "RECEIVED Feb. 23, 2004 HUMAN RESOURCES". The VSB also released other documents pertaining to the boycott bearing "RECEIVED" stamps with dates in 2004. Further, a copy of the notice of the boycott was hand-delivered to the Vancouver School Board headquarters at Broadway and Granville in March 2004, at which time proof of receipt was provided by a receptionist who signed a photocopy of the notice and signed her name on it.

The VSB has never formally responded to the boycott. An internal memo, though, does reveal a somewhat flippant response from a VSB administrator, "Wendy", in a handwritten memo to another VSB administrator, Sue Arthur, dated Feb. 27, 2004:

"Sue – put your "Legal Counsel" hat on for this . . . . Take care & happy Friday!"