Sharon Get your Gun

There is something so Canadian about the reactions of women runners to the murder of Wendy Ladner-Beaudry in Pacific Spirit Park at UBC. Over and over again, women have been telling the media that they will get a whistle.  One woman said she will be giving out whistles.  American women would be holding taser parties or applying to get real guns.  But Canadians seem to be long past thinking along those lines.

Except for Sharon Gregson.  

Gregson, a Vancouver School Board trustee, caused a furor when she posed on the cover of a gun magazine and stated that she believes that women should be allowed to carry guns for personal protection.  

Actually, if there is anyone who should be feared it's Sharon Gregson.  Canadians Opposing Political Psychiatry have a paper trail of evidence establishing that Gregson is one of the trustees who has been covering up the use of criminal tactics and political psychiatry by the School Board to deter bullying complaints.  These tactics are behind the current international boycott of Vancouver School Board diplomas.  Gregson is not roaming the woods ready to pounce and murder but the tactics she has tolerated at the VSB, particularly smear tactics involving the manufacture of psyhiatric and police records to destroy the reputation of a complainant, could conceivably result in the death of a targeted citizen.   But when it comes to Gregson's gun stance, I'd like to hear more from her.  

Over the past month, the American radio show Coast to Coast radio has twice had a guest -- I'm trying to remember his name -- who did his Ph.d research on gun violence.  He claims that gun men on shooting sprees in the U.S. consistently choose places where guns are prohibited; unarmed people make easier victims. In Vancouver yesterday, the would be jewelry store robbers on Robson St. ran out of the store immediately after the owner fired one shot.  I was surprised the owner even had a gun. 

Dr. Laura has a gun.  She's a karate expert but she's not relying solely on that to protect her if she is a victim of crime.  She has a problem with California's gun law though, that requires that you keep your bullets separate from your gun.  Dr. Laura makes fun of the fact that when being attacked you have to stop and load the bullets into your gun.  That's about as effective as jogging in Pacific Spirit Park with a whistle.   A whistle is better than nothing, but I think women jogging should at least carry a knife; afterall, they have to have something on them to carve up the apple they take with them for a snack. 

Wendy Ladner-Beaudry: Murder on the Right Side of the Tracks

Wendy Ladner-Beaudry wasn't white trash.  

On Monday, the CBC website printed this about Friday's murder of Beaudry-Ladner in Pacific Spirit Park at UBC:

"Dozens of RCMP homicide investigators continued to scour a heavily forested urban park in Vancouver's west side on Monday, searching for clues in the killing of a jogger."

Dozens?

On Tuesday, Metro News printed this: "About 75 police officers are working around the clock to gather evidence and interview witnesses in the murder of Wendy Ladner-Beaudry, who was killed while jogging through Pacific Spirit Park."

Seventy-five police officers?  

If a woman on the Downtown Eastside, whether white or aboriginal, was murdered, there is no way there would be dozens of homicide investigators scouring the area for clues.  You wouldn't see that on the day of the murder and you wouldn't see it four days later.

Take the young white woman who was allegedly shoved out a window of the Cobalt Hotel during a dispute over drugs. A man who lived down the hall said a homicide detective knocked on his door and asked him if he had heard anything. He said he hadn't. But later he recalled that he had heard what sounded like a cat screeching and had peeked out the door.  He remembered too late though. That homicide detective was gone never to return.  And there weren't dozens of investigators combing the Cobalt for evidence.  

I can understand why women who live high risk lifestyles get less sympathy from the cops and the public when murdered than a straight-living jogger. I don't agree with it -- murder is murder -- but I can understand it; if you treat your own life like it's cheap, then expect other people to treat it as cheap too. But even if a straight woman living on the Downtown Eastside, not into drugs or the sex trade -- and there are many such women on the DES -- was found dead and bloodied in Crab Park like Wendy Beaudry-Ladner in Pacific Spirit Park adjacent to million dollar homes, do you think there would be "dozens" of homicide detectives scouring the scene for clues?  Then you're on drugs.

Another thing.  After the murder of Ladner-Beaudry, there was speculation that the attacker could have been a homeless man in the park.  A neighbor said she had seen an "unusual" looking man in the park who was unwashed and smelled. 

But police know that statistically women are more likely to be murdered by an intimate male partner than a stranger.  At the press conference yesterday, the victim's husband Michele Beaudry provided himself with an alibi.  "I was at Whistler having lunch", he said with a short laugh.  I'm not saying he was involved, but he knows he's being looked at.

Bus Kills Pedestrian at Main & Hastings

A "Top Class Limousine" tour bus was at the bottom of it's class tonight when it had a pedestrian under it's wheel. The 68 year old pedestrian was struck by the bus shortly before 9 p.m. as it turned north off Hastings onto Main St., by the Pathways Job Search Center. A witness who passed by shortly after the accident, said, "They had to take him out from under the wheel." (The pedestrian can be seen lying under a white sheet at the left of the photo above.)

The bus appeared empty of passengers.

At least one security guard came to help from the Carnegie Community Center across the street. The pedestrian still had a pulse but as a police officer entering the Carnegie Center said, "It doesn't look good." He died shortly afterwards at the scene. He did not die enroute to hospital as CTV television reported. He was put into a wine colored body bag at the scene and loaded into the coroner's van.

A bearded VPD Constable wearing a turban (on right of photo above) stood behind the yellow tape across the street from the accident to make sure nobody violated that boundry. But his skills as a community-friendly cop were less than stellar; he was defensive and snooty when a local resident politely asked him if he could walk on the Main Street sidewalk to get home. That same Constable was standing by the yellow tape at the Cambie Hotel on February 15th, the night Steve Seymour was shot to death.