Farnworth Teary Over Tasering

Mike Farnsworth was teary-eyed on Wednesday night on the 11 o'clock news in Vancouver. It was when Global television was asking people for comments on the just released video of the taser gun death of polish immigrant, Robert Dziekanski, at the Vancouver airport.

First a Global reporter showed the video to Vancouver lawyer, Cameron Ward. Ward looked momentarily shaken after watching the video but he went on to comment. He pointed out that police – there were four RCMP officers standing with the victim when he was tasered -- seem to be using tasers to subdue people without having to touch them.

Then a reporter turned up at the office of Mike Farnsworth, NDP public safety critic, and played the video for him. After watching it, Farnsworth was so shaken that he had difficulty commenting; he couldn't seem to get the words out. Tears were leaking out and he was trying to hold them back. The camera crew left. But they continued to point their camera through the plate glass window of his office. As Farnsworth turned away, he could be seen putting his thumb and forefinger over his tear ducts, the way people do when they are trying to stem the flow of tears and don’t want to be seen crying.

"He’s a feeling person," I thought. He had watched a man being killed in front of his eyes and it bothered him. It was then that I moved closer to the television to read his name in the caption, "Mike Farnworth, NDP Public Safety critic".

The American therapist Arthur Janov has commented on the importance of electing officials who have not lost their ability to feel. A friend of mine, who has read everything Janov's ever written, explained his view that optimal intelligence involves the intellect working in conjunction with the feeling side of the person. Operating on intellect alone, having "fled to your head", won't cut it. If a politician has lost his ability to feel, if he's making decisions but unable to feel empathy with the people affected, Janov says, we're in trouble.

A quick example of people in positions of authority who have lost their ability to feel: the RCMP officers standing with Dziekanski when he was shot with a taser gun. Dziekanski was writhing on the floor in agony, clutching his chest, obviously not going anywhere, and one of the officers orders, "Hit him again!" Another officer shoots him again.

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CNN Duped by Insite Spokespersons

Last week, CNN did a 3 minute story on Insite, Vancouver's controversial supervised drug injection site. They were duped.

As Insite spokespersons listed key benefits the facility brought to the community, they trotted out the same old, same old. They claimed that Insite had resulted in the reduction of discarded used needles in parks and school yards.

What did they leave out? The fact that there are hundreds of needles discarded on the Downtown Eastside every day but people are paid to quietly walk around and pick them up. That's the main reason there is a reduction in needles on the street.

In fact, in a previous post, the DTES Enquirer pointed out that one needle-collector told us that he had picked up about 200 needles discarded in a pile of garbage in an alley less than a block away from Insite.

According to a Dec. 8, 2006 Vancouver Sun article, "Our Four Blocks of Hell", 8,300 intravenous syringes were found within four blocks of Insite over a three week period by an independent City work crew. The work crew, accompanied by bylaw and police officers, had been assigned the task of cataloguing litter and garbage in the four blocks surrounding the intersection of East Hasting and Columbia St. -- that's the intersection closest to Insite -- from Aug. 14 to Sept. 8, 2006. That means 8,300 people chose not to walk the short distance to Insite. They instead chose to toss their needles on the ground or in the garbage bin in the alley.

Not only are needles being picked up on the Downtown Eastside by a range of publicly-funded workers, needle-drop boxes have been installed in recent years in alleys, on park fences, and in public washrooms on the Downtown Eastside. Street workers with buckets regularly empty these boxes.

Spokespersons are lying by ommission when they cite fewer needles on the streets as a key benefit of Insite. Rule of thumb: if people lie about one thing, they are likely to lie about another.


For the real story on the massive number of discarded needles being collected daily on the streets of the Downtown Eastside, see "Vancouver's Other Olympic Sport".

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Questions Carnegie Would Rather Dan Not Ask

Dan Rather, formerly the news anchor at CBS, is doing a story on Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. He has reportedly been examining issues such as poverty, homelessness, and drug addiction, including the supervised drug injection site, Insite.

There are questions that the Carnegie administration and other Downtown Eastside povertarians would rather Dan not ask. They would rather he have a 'don't ask' policy on certain issues, just as they have a 'don't tell' policy.

1. CAPP is Hypocritical when it comes to the Homeless:
Jean Swanson of the Carnegie Community Action Project [CCAP] is a media go-to person on issues of poverty and homelessness. In fact, she briefed the United Nations representative who was just in town. But Swanson was silent when her colleagues in CCAP supported the barring of homeless man, William "Bill" Simpson, from Carnegie Center.

Simpson was elected, by largely low income people, to the Board of the Carnegie Center in June 2007 and, two weeks later, was delivered a letter by Carnegie Manager Ethel Whitty barring him from the entire building indefinitely. Whitty told him that he would not be allowed inside even for Board meetings. Simpson was accused in the letter on City letterhead of operating a website which "features links" to the Downtown Eastside blog.

Swanson and her CCAP colleagues are conspicuously quiet month after month when this homeless man stands outside Carnegie on the sidewalk as Board meetings take place inside.

2. Povertarians in the "socialist experiment" of the Downtown Eastside have turned into "blog burners" with the support of City Hall

Months before Simpson was barred from the entire Carnegie Center, he was barred from the Carnegie Learning Center on the third floor. He was told by Co-ordinator/teacher Lucy Alderson that it was because he had blogged on the Downtown Eastside Enquirer blog. Alderson had been criticized on the blog for too often locking the poor out of the Center. Roughly eight months later, Whitty completely 'disappeared' the issue of Simpson blogging. She announced at a community relations meeting that he had been barred from the Carnegie Learning Center because he was "not a student". He was in fact a registered student with a man named Chad as his tutor. (Chad later resigned over the Simpson barring, calling Carnegie's treatment of the poor "oppressive".)

Earlier Whitty had personally interrogated a volunteer at Carnegie about who he might have seen blogging. Whitty damaged his relationship with his best friend by attempting to get him to turn her in for blogging. She is not a blogger. Whitty also allowed her staff, Dan Tetrault, Rika Uto, and Colleen Gorrie to separately question this volunteer about who was blogging, leading to accusations of a witch hunt. The guy ended up suicidal.

Whitty also repeatedly slandered DTES Enquirer bloggers at public meetings, claiming that they were engaged in "defamation" and "character assassination." Never once did Whitty provide an example of this -- because none exist.

Board member, Sophia Friegang, announced at a meeting that the blog was well within the boundaries of "free speech". She believed that a "mistake" had been made in barring Simpson. [Friegang later resigned from the Board over this issue.]

In two separate issues of the Carnegie Newsletter produced by CCAP, Simpson was libeled. In an issue this summer, Editor Paul Taylor accused Simpson of writing "sadistic" material, "slime", and having gotten himself elected to the Board through fraud. Taylor later printed a retraction. In a previous issue, Taylor called Simpson -- in that issue, he didn't name Simpson but people knew who he was referring to -- a "blog bozo" and other names.

Earlier Simpson, who supported the DTES Enquirer blog, had kidded Taylor, "Finally, some free media on the Downtown Eastside." Taylor is notorious for censoring any submissions to the newsletter that do not jive with his own hard left political views.

3. Where did the first Insite Report go?
During the first year Insite operated, reporters with questions about its success were constantly told by then Mayor Larry Campbell to wait for the report that would be produced based statistics collected internally. The report was indeed produced based on the first year of operation. Campbell told the media that he was disappointed that the report did not show more dramatic results. The report revealed that Insite staff claimed to have saved just one life. And Campbell, a former coroner, admitted when pressed that they could not even be certain that they had even saved that life; the individual may have survived without intervention.

Where did that report go? You never hear about it now.

4. Insite is part of a Medical-Industrial Complex eroding Civil Liberties on the Downtown Eastside

There is big government money coming into the Downtown Eastside. Every day a swarm of workers arrive from other neighborhoods to collect pay cheques in the lucrative poverty industry. But the emerging medical-industrial complex -- the interfacing lucrative poverty industry and the medical industry on the Downtown Eastside has resulted in the erosion of civil liberties.

Povertarians create case files at every opportunity. The case file economy has gotten so out of control that speaking up about a political issue can get a Downtown Eastside resident a visit from Car 87 -- a police cruiser which carries an armed constable and psychiatric nurse -- and tagged with a mental health smear that remains on their record for life. Car 87 assesses people for "apprehension" to a mental hospital and is supposed to be reserved for people at "imminent" risk of killing themselves or others. Car 87 tactics on the Downtown Eastside have been compared by the ad hoc group, Canadians Opposing Political Psychiatry, to tactics of political repression employed in China.

Carnegie Center street workers and nurses who roam the Downtown Eastside handing out clean needles have been compared to the KGB. A paper trail obtained by the DTES Enquirer reveals allegations outstanding with the Health Authority since 2004 that they worked with VPD Detective Dormand to track a woman intending to publicize Car 87 abuses on the Downtown Eastside. [The abuses publicized were well supported with documenation.] Medical

confidentiality was also disregarded by Dormand and the street workers.

The woman became a target of Dormand immediately after she faxed a letter to the office of Ida Goodreau, CEO of the Health Authority, indicating a determination to seek full accountability for Car 87 fraud and abuse. Half an hour after faxing the letter, the woman received the first of a barrage of voice mail at her unlisted home phone number from Detective Dormand. He revealed that he was under pressure from the Health Authority lawyer at Bull Housser & Tupper. The woman saved the voice mail from Dormand, alleging that the messages were "harassing" and clearly intended to intimidate her into silencing herself. One of the last voice mails from Dormand is alleged to be "tantamount to extortion". There has never been an investigation into the alleged role of the Health Authority in influencing Dormand's conduct, which included the offer of a deal which would see Car 87 documents destroyed -- documents which just happened to be evidence against the Health Authority that the woman wanted criminally investigated. Did I mention that Goodreau's office is the ultimate overseer of Insite.

Players in the poverty industry play dirty. It is a big money game. The stakes are high. Messages that come out of the neighborhood are controlled -- which is why blogging is such a threat -- and povertarians are ruthless with anybody who deviates from the script.

For more on the medical-industrial complex on the Downtown Eastside see: http://downtowneastsideenquirer.blogspot.com/2007/10/safe-injection-site-part-of-medical.html

5. Why is Insite a family affair?
Insite, the supervised injection site on the Downtown Eastside, is run by the Portland Hotel Society. That would be Mark Townsend and his wife Liz Evans and her sister Sara Evans.

Left-wing Member of Parliament (federal) Libby Davies was a proponent of Insite and guess who turned up working there? Her only child, Leif Erickson.

And then there is Member of the Legislative Assembly (provincial) Jenny Kwan, whose husband, Dan Small, turned up as Director of the Portland Hotel Society.

It will be interesting to see if Dan asks inconvenient questions rather than airing the dog-eared script of the povertarians.

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Thinking of donating to United Way? Read Fraudulent Evidence Found in United Way Police Complaint on the Downtown Eastside Enquirer

CUPE Still On Strike

CUPE is still on strike. The strike was supposed to have been over last month. But the poor are still being locked out of services on a semi-regular basis at Carnegie Center.

Last Thursday, a Carnegie member went to the Computer Room on the 3rd floor of Carnegie, just after 2 p.m. and found it locked and in darkness. The excuse was that there was "no volunteer" to sit in there to sign-in people and kill time by web surfing. Never mind that Director Ethel Whitty, who makes $104,000 a year, and her entourage of staff have offices just a few meters from the Computer Room.

Whitty retaliates if bloggers mention the locked doors and the word "Whitty" in the same sentence. She makes slanderous remarks at public meetings about bloggers engaged in defamation and character assassination. She never provides examples.

On Friday, a Carnegie member went to the Learning Center just after 2 p.m. and found students being evacuated by teacher Lucy Alderson. There was a volunteer receptionist there, Jack, but the highly paid Alderson said she wanted two volunteers. She didn't have them so she closed shop. Witnesses don't recall Alderson lifting a finger to find a volunteer. There are CUPE members on staff who are paid to co-ordinate volunteers, but they too let the Learning Center close. Rika Uto, a CUPE member who plays a supervisory role in relation to the Learning Center, was present that day but that didn't prevent the doors from being locked. These people are well paid and just got a 20% raise (that's what it works out to with compounding). So why aren't the jobs being done?

On Saturday after noon, the Learning Center was shut tight and in darkness again. Unlike during the week, it is the sole responsibility of CUPE members on Saturdays to keep the Learning Center open. On Saturday evening, when the Computer Room was scheduled to be open from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m., people arrived to find it locked and in darkness.

These are not the only examples of doors being locked at Carnegie over the past month. The DTES Enquirer has been told that doors are being locked on a semi-regular basis.

What is Ethel Whitty, who takes her orders from City Hall, doing about the problem of CUPE members dragging their asses? She is writing PR material that covers CUPE asses . Look at what Whitty read to a crowd at a by-election and Board meeting on Thursday evening -- that would be just hours after Downtown Eastside Residents had found the Computer Room locked -- in the Carnegie Theatre:

"Staff have returned to work with enthusiasm and good will and quickly resumed providing the services they love to offer."

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Thinking of donating to United Way? Read Fraudulent Evidence Found in United Way Police Complaint on the Downtown Eastside Enquirer.

Fraudulent Evidence Found In United Way Police Complaint

A Vancouver woman feels upset every time she sees United Way Campaign commercials claiming that donations will be used to promote “respect” in the community. If United Way values respect, she says, why haven’t they helped get fake evidence attached to her name in police files expunged. The fake evidence, she says, appears in a Vancouver Police report dated Dec. 18, 2002, written after Ron Dumouchelle, then Executive Director of United Way of Vancouver and the Lower Mainland lodged a police complaint against her.

Dumouchelle wanted police to pressure the Vancouver woman -- we'll call her “the whistleblower” -- to suppress a Report on United Way to which she and others had contributed and were making available to major donors. Dumouchelle stated in an internal document dated the week police were called that if donors got even a “whiff” of this report, donations to United Way could be affected.

Even after Constable J.P. St. Amant admitted in his police report that he and Dumouchelle were aware that this case was “not a criminal matter” but a civil matter, the police report reveals that Dumouchelle continued to pressure police to make contact with the whistleblower.

The whistleblower believes that the VPD, who fundraise for United Way and appear in their newspaper advertisements, were performing a favor for United Way. Certainly it was acknowledged in the police report that Dumouchelle had recruited police to visit the whistleblower because civil court wouldn’t be quick enough for him. And police did not follow the usual procedure of entering, at the top of the police report, the alleged “OFFENCE” being investigated; that section was left blank.

The first visit by police to the whistleblower's home occurred on Dec. 18, 2002, the day police reported taking "oral statements" from Dumouchelle and "witnesses" guaranteed anonymity at United Way Campaign headquarters on Dunsmuir St. in Vancouver. When Constables Lee Patterson [PC 2125] and J.P. St. Amant [PC 2010] arrived at the apartment of the whistleblower, she says, they pounded on her apartment door until the entire wood-framed building shook. "They scared my neighbors and damaged my reputation," she says. Const. St. Amant later left the woman a voice mail, which she has preserved, denying that he and Patterson had acted aggressively at her home.

After this visit, Dumouchelle told Const. St. Amant, according to the Dec. 19 police report, that he was “satisfied with police attention to date” – yet the police report shows that he continued to lean on police for over a week to have further contact with the whistleblower.

The report that United Way wanted suppressed contained information about alleged practices in United Way member groups that several women and men wanted funders to put a stop to. The report focused primarily on allegations against a battered women’s organization, allegations such as unfair labour practices and course entry requirements that differed for different applicants.

Dumouchelle was feeling the heat. He revealed in an internal document dated Dec. 2002 that he had been contacted by the Canadian Labour Congress and a few corporate donors about the Report on UW. It was then that he asked police to press the whistleblower to take out of circulation a form letter which offered the Report on UW to major donors. Dumouchelle noted in an internal document that he wanted this material out of circulation as United Way was facing a Campaign shortfall of $600,000 and was asking corporate donors for a top up.

Evidence Fabrication and Misrepresentation
After reviewing the police report, the whistleblower lodged a written complaint in 2003 to the Board of Directors of United Way in which she outlined evidence that had been fabricated. Shortly afterwards, Dumouchelle resigned as Executive Director – no reason given publicly. But United Way “has done nothing in five years”, says the whistleblower, to have the libelous material attached to her name expunged from police files.

Following is a sampling of falsified or misrepresented evidence:

paranoid in nature
In his Dec. 18th report written after his briefing by Dumouchelle and anonymous witnesses, Const. Patterson claimed that the Report on UW was "paranoid in nature". The DTES Enquirer reviewed the report and found nothing that could be considered paranoid. As evidence of paranoid content, Patterson claimed that the whistleblower had discussed lesbian "couch-trip" practices, "cult-like practices", and "comparisons" with the case of serial killing accomplice Karla Homolka. These claims are examined below as part of a sampling of evidence in the police report that the whistleblower alleges is "clearly fabricated or misleading".

lesbian “couch-trip” practices
Const. Patterson wrote that the whistleblower had written about lesbian “couch-trip” practices in the UW Report. "Outright fraud", says the whistleblower. The term “couch trip” had appeared nowhere in the Report on UW. Yet the term “couch trip” was presented in quotation marks in the police report and identified as a direct quote from the UW Report. The whistleblower has no idea what a “couch trip” is.

“cult-like practices”
The whistleblower was presented in the police report as having gone on in the Report on UW about “cult-like practices” at the battered women’s organization. Perfect for portraying her as a nut. What was conveniently concealed in the police report, though, was the fact that it was clearly stated in the Report on UW that it was an anthropologist from Simon Fraser University who had identified a few practices at the battered women’s organization as being typical of cults – not the whistleblower.

The anthropologist had been particularly concerned about rules in support groups which restricted the flow of information, rules enforced through an explicit threat of being ostracized from the group – literally being asked to leave – for non-compliance. The rules tended to maximize the number of women and non-violent men labeled “battered women” and “batterer”.
The issue of “cult-like practices” actually occupied a small sector of the 16-page report. The fact that this quote was excerpted and magnified in importance was typical, says the whistleblower, of the “tabloid" nature of the police report.

“mentions Homolka case and comparisons”
Another deceptive claim inserted in Patterson's police report on the day he met with Dumouchelle was the following: "mentions Homolka case and comparisons." A review of the Report on UW reveals no "comparisons" whatsoever with the case of Homolka, who was convicted of being an accomplice to her husband in serial killings.

Although the claim of “comparisons” was a complete fabrication, the whistleblower points out that the Homolka case was actually mentioned in the Report on UW. But in the police report, it was stripped of it’s original context, she says, “conveniently making me look like some kind of nut fixated on the Homolka case.” The context was this: An administrator at a battered women’s organization funded by United Way had appeared on BCTV prime time News Hour and performed an assessment of Karla Homolka, clearing her of all wrongdoing. The conduct of this administrator so outraged British Columbians that BCTV announced that their switchboard had been jammed with complaints, prompting them to re-play a segment of the interview on the next evening’s News Hour. The taped BCTV appearance was mentioned in the Report on UW as a tangible illustration of an issue raised in the report – the issue of this administrator consistently presenting herself “in the guise of a psychological professional” when in fact she had no such credentialing.

Neither this administrator or her United Way funders would answer questions about what this administrator’s credentials actually were. In an internal United Way document dated Dec. 2002, though, this administrator was referred to as a “library technician”.

“sexual under tones of lesbian controlled supervisors"
Despite the fact that the bulk of the Report on UW focused on unfair labor practices and fluctuating course entry requirements, it was summarized by Const. Patterson in the police report as having "sexual under tones."

At another point, the report was identified as containing "sexual under tones of lesbian controlled supervisors". The whistleblower insists there was no claim made in the Report on UW that supervisors at the battered women's organization were "controlled" by lesbians. She says there was a segment of the Report on UW which outlined allegations of discrimination against heterosexual women, primarily in hiring, by the lesbian administration of the battered women's organization. United Way never discussed accounts of discrimination with witnesses who were in a position to corroborate them.

The whistleblower says that the salacious entry about "sexual under tones of lesbian controlled supervisors" was typical of the "tabloid journalism" that passed for evidence-documenting in this case.

“requesting $525 compensation for her 16 page report.”
Even the content of a form letter announcing that the Report on UW was available to major donors was blatantly falsified in the police report. An announcement in the form letter that the report was available for a fee of “$25 to cover labour costs” was misrepresented in the police report as “requesting $525 compensation for her 16 page report.” (The date on the form letter was correctly identified in the police report.) The inflation by $500 of this fee on a page of the police report in which the Report on UW was being portrayed as “paranoid in nature” served to enhance the portrayal of the whistleblower as a crackpot.

“paranoid letters” to “undisclosed workers”
Patterson also wrote in his report that the whistleblower had been writing “paranoid letters” to “undisclosed workers”. The whistleblower alleges that this claim is fraudulent. Certainly no such letters were filed in the VPD Property Office. "That’s because they don’t exist", says the whistleblower. No "undisclosed workers" were ever identified either. The whistleblower had one contact person at United Way, Zena Simces, who answered to Dumouchelle. Simces had assured the whistleblower via voice mail that she did not view her communication as harassing and that United Way welcomed her feedback. Simces was conspicuously absent from the police report.

“concerned for the safety of employees” (a claim which was retracted the same day)
On Dec. 18th, Cst. Patterson claimed in his report the reason for the police visit to United Way was, “DUMOUCHELLE…is concerned for safety of Employees.” Yet this claim was retracted just hours later. During follow-up questioning the same day, Const. Patterson got Dumouchelle to acknowledge that safety “is not perceived as an issue.” Dumouchelle further admitted, according to Patterson’s report, that there had been “no threat (direct or indirect) involving physical harm or property damage.” In fact, in the police report which was absurdly redundant, Dumouchelle admitted on 15 separate occasions during questioning either in person or over the telephone that the whistleblower posed “no physical risk”.

Not only is it clear from Const. Patterson’s report that Dumouchelle had not been “concerned for safety of Employees”, it is evident as well from the report of Const. St. Amant. Just as he had admitted to Patterson, Dumouchelle admitted to St. Amant, who often spoke to him separately on the telephone, that he had no safety concerns. On the day after police met with Dumouchelle and showed up on the whistleblower’s doorstep, Const. St. Amant wrote:
“PC 2010 contacted DUMOUCHELLE via telephone and informed of contacting [whistleblower] ….Dumouchelle satisfied with police attention to date… PC 2010 was informed that no employee has been threatened, observed or met [whistleblower] ….”

The fact that the story about being “concerned for the safety of employees” was bogus is supported by a voice mail message that the whistleblower preserved from Dumouchelle’s assistant Zena Simces. Simces, whom Dumouchelle had assigned to be the contact person on issues of concern regarding the battered women’s organization, encouraged the whistleblower to continue to have contact with United Way.

“no improprieties found”
United Way had, at one point, invited a mediator to resolve complaints against the battered women’s organization. Following a conversation with Dumouchelle on Dec. 21, 2002, Const. St. Amant claimed in the police report that mediation had resulted in “no improprieties found.”

The whistleblower says that's not the story she got from the mediator. The mediator had telephoned the whistleblower and said that the battered women’s organization was not co-operating with mediation. The mediator reported that the battered women’s organization had been making excuses, over a period of months, not to meet with her and would not comply with the terms of mediation. One of the terms was that each side would send just one representative to mediation; the battered women’s organization insisted on having up to 7 people in the room, including a lawyer.

The whistleblower found United Way cagey after the mediator dropped the case. The whistleblower asked Zena Simces for a copy of anything written by the mediator. Despite two promises, Simces was not forthcoming with the material.

"acknowledges being in an abusive relationship"
The entry "acknowledges being in an abusive relationship", unlike the others listed above, was not false, but United Way had breached confidentiality by linking the whistleblower's name to this information. "I was shocked to see this being used against me in a police report," says the whistleblower.

The whistleblower had attended confidential support groups at the battered women's organization years earlier when she was leaving an abusive relationship. But her name, like the names of other women who had attended support groups and were witnesses to activities at the battered women's organization were withheld in the Report on UW, other than "Cindi" who did not have a problem with her given name being used. A Collective, not an individual, was identified on the cover of the Report on UW as having authored it.

Request for Criminal Investigation into United Way and Several Major Donors
The whistleblower has never been told the names of anonymous witnesses who, according to Constable Patterson's Dec. 18 report, met with police at United Way Campaign headquarters: "PC's 2010/2125 met with witnesses and complainant at 777 Dunsmuir..." Later on the same page of the police report, though, Patterson entered the names of several major United Way donors as witnesses in the case:

· Canadian Red Cross
· Revenue Canada
· Canada Post
· Toronto Dominion Bank
· Westminster Savings
· Canada Safeway

In requesting a public mischief investigation into this case, the whistleblower named the above-listed donors along with United Way and Dumouchelle. These donors were presented in the police report as witnesses based on the fact that they had obtained copies of circulating documents — a Report on UW or a form letter making the report available. Documents collected from them were later turned over to the VPD “harassment unit”, as indicated by the Dec. 29 police report. [This process may have been interrupted by a ‘Cease & Desist” letter sent to St. Amant’s supervisor, Sgt. Hatchman, as the Dec. 29th page would be the final one in the police report.]

In addition to an investigation into donors, the whistleblower had wanted an investigation into the role, if any, of the national United Way of Canada in the lodging of the “mischievous” police complaint . A letter exists to support the whistleblower’s claim that Executive Director, David Armour, became aware of this case shortly before the police complaint was lodged.

Despite Inspector John De Haas of the VPD having telling the whistleblower that she was entitled to request a public mischief investigation if a police complaint lodged against her had been unfounded and involved fabricated evidence, no investigation took place. When she requested the investigation, she got a call from Sergeant Warren Lemecke making excuses to stall it (an issue to be covered in a separate article).

PART II: United Way and VPD face allegations of further retaliation against the whistleblower based on the ordering of a VPD "Car 87" visit to her home after she put on record her intent to seek a criminal “Public Mischief” investigation.
Canadians Opposing Political Psychiatry have labelled this alleged retaliation, “political psychiatry”. The whistleblower has documented evidence to support her claim that the Car 87 visit was ordered under “fraudulent pretenses”. For Part II, see United Way Implicated in Political Psychiatry

CUPE Continues to Lock Poor Out of Services at Carnegie -- as Mayor Sullivan Cowers

Canadian Union of Public Employees has been back to work at Carnegie Center on Vancouver's Downtown Eastside for some time, but they continue to lock the poor out of services.

These povertarians got themselves a 20% raise -- that's what their 17.5% raise works out to with compounding -- which means that after a period of five years, they will have pocketed an extra full year's pay. So why are the services that they are being paid to provide still not being consistently provided at Carnegie Center. This problem began long before the strike and led at one point for calls for a forensic audit.

Striking Vancouver Public Library workers, the last to settle, returned to work at the Carnegie Center branch on Wednesday. But they took the morning off, along with other CUPE members in the building. It was Welfare Day and that is a day when CUPE members and City management refuse to consistently keep services open for the poor. Every Welfare Wednesday, the Carnegie Center closes down for the entire morning until noon; neighborhood residents showing up to use computers or the library stand on the steps. The staff congregate in the theatre for what Carnegie members call a schmoozefest; staff call it a meeting. One woman who has lived on the Downtown Eastside for 35 years and has sat on numerous Boards sees through this. "They just want time off." There are people on welfare all over Vancouver, yet no other community center uses welfare day as an excuse to leave members standing on the front steps.

Not only does Carnegie staff lock the poor out of taxpayer-funded services at the Carnegie Community Centre for the entire morning on Welfare Day, they repeatedly lock them out during "welfare week". A woman went to Carnegie on Saturday, three days after Welfare Day, only to find the Learning Center locked up tight. CUPE members are responsible for keeping it open on Saturdays; on weekdays CUPE members share that responsibility with two teachers paid by Capilano College.

On Thursday, the day after Welfare Day, a woman went to Carnegie to use the 3rd floor computer room which houses nine much-in-demand Vancouver Public Library computers. She found it locked tight and in darkness, in the middle of the afternoon! There were numerous staff persons on the 3rd floor, just meters from the Computer Room at the time. But the excuse is always the same for locking doors: "A volunteer didn't show up." Carnegie has roughly a million dollar wage bill, yet whether services remain open depends on whether some volunteer has gone on a drunk on welfare week.

Even if a volunteer is not drinking, they often have better things to do during welfare week than volunteer for 80 cents an hour in food vouchers at Carnegie. Carnegie Director Ethel Whitty who is paid $104,000 and Assistant Director Dan Tetrault, a CUPE member, have been reminded in the past that they should have contingency plans in place. In a pinch, they could sit in the computer room themselves and keep it open. Or CUPE member and Volunteer Co-ordinator Colleen Gorrie and her assistant Sindi, could sit in there for a few hours. They could use the computer reserved for the monitor. (Sindi could show off her new diamond ring to the people in there, just as she does in her office.) But they never do.

As the poor looking for jobs, or wanting to check e-mail, do course work, or just spend time on the information highway are frustrated by locked doors at Carnegie, Ethel Whitty is at times attending plays performed during the Heart of the City Festival. But her own performance back at Carnegie is what she should be focusing on.

It's not that Whitty and CUPE members such as Colleen Gorrie lack initiative. They started a virtual witch hunt at Carnegie for bloggers who were whistleblowing about locked doors last year. This witch hunt resulted in the barring of homeless man and elected Board member, Bill Simpson, for allegedly being involved in a blog. Whitty has persistently slandered bloggers at public meetings, of course never once providing examples to support her false claims. The police were even called to intimidate bloggers as an apparent favor to a CUPE member, but police admitted in the end that what bloggers were writing was accurate. So much taxpayer funded labour time expended on a 'kill the messenger' strategy, but the poor continue to find doors of services at Carnegie locked in mid-day.

Mayor Sam Sullivan has known about the great taxpayer rip-off at Carnegie since last year and has done nothing. Nada. Sullivan now says that the CUPE strike will not be over until the 2008 Civic Election when he intends to challenge CUPE's attempts to run rough shot over City Hall. But Sullivan is going to have to explain why he has been essentially covering for CUPE at Carnegie.

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