For 57 Days City Hall has Avoided Giving Barred Carnegie Member Reason "in writing"

A witness who has spoken up about the use of the City of Vancouver "security" database at Carnegie to make fraudulent entries about critics, has found herself barred from Carnegie Centre for 57 days now, with no end in sight. She is not allowed to enter the building, not even the Vancouver Public Library branch there. She was notified of the barring on April 25, 2010 and immediately asked to be given the reason "in writing". Her request was instantly refused by the security guard who informed her that she was "barred", a guard who identified himself as "Ty" only after she asked his name.

There is evidence that the ban was pre-meditated and politically-motivated. From the beginning of the process of being informed that she was barred, the fact that she had been one of the Carnegie members who made complaints to Penny Ballem was referred to by Ty as the "problem." [If I obtain a copy of the statement she submitted to police, I will quote Ty's alleged comments more completely.] A few minutes later, when Ballem's name came up again, Ty reportedly claimed he didn't know who she was. Toward the end of the barring, after he had followed the woman to the bathroom, Ty revealed that the barring was a result of pressure from Penny Ballem and Gregor Robertson to clear her out of the building. "I guess, they don't want witnesses around", says the barred woman.

Police have been made aware of everything from verbal abuse to assault experienced by this woman since coming forward as a witness to fraud and other abuses involving the City's "security" database at Carnegie. A male Carnegie member recalls eating dinner with this woman at Carnegie in the spring, when a volunteer took her photograph, using a flash, without her permission -- she would later be told that the photo had been taken on instructions from Tio, a City staff cashier on duty, a fact she says Tio did not deny when she asked him about it -- and then stood yelling insults at her at the top of his lungs, grabbing the attention of the crowd of diners in the cafeteria. "Why isn't security doing anything!" the witness demanded to know. A security guard stood beside the yelling man, just inches away.

She was also at Carnegie having dinner -- she had just finished -- on the evening in April when Ty told her she was now barred from the entire building and refused her request to "put it in writing". At a later point, she asked that he at least allow her to read the "Incident Report" so that she could counter false statements. He refused. He told her that he did not need input from her. She told him she wished to sit down and write her own incident report about what she was experiencing, but he refused, ordering her out of the building. Such biased practices -- including outright fraud -- had been previously brought to the attention of Penny Ballem, once during a meeting in January at City Hall. The Mayor was also made aware of these practices.

Shortly after being barred, the barred woman mailed a request to City Hall and requested, under the Freedom of Information & Protection of Privacy Act, a copy of the incident report and a copy of entries made in the City's electronic "security" database. She then telephoned the Freedom of Information office twice to see if they had received it. She spoke to a male assistant to manager Paul Hancock. The assistant told her on April 29th that he had finally received her letter. She explained that she needed a copy of the incident report quickly so that she could appeal the barring; she asked him to keep in mind that for every day that passed without this Incident Report, she was denied access to City Services in her neighbourhood, such as the public library at Carnegie. She told him that there should be no reason for extensive delay in getting the incident report to her, as it was easily retrievable from the Incident Report binder which sits on the front reception desk at Carnegie for all staff to review. The assistant reviewed her request letter and said it seemed straight forward to him and he didn't anticipate it taking long. He said he would "send it out" that day.

Shortly after speaking to the assistant, the banned woman received a letter dated April 30th from Paul Hancock, Manager, Corporate Information & Privacy, City Clerk's Office. Hancock wrote:

"This will acknowledge receipt of your request dated April 26, 2010. . . for a copy of an incident report written about you by Ty, a security person at Carnegie Centre at approximately 9:00 p.m. on Sunday, April 25, 2010."

"Under the Act, we have thirty (30) business days to respond to freedom of information requests. The City received your request on April 29, 2010 so we are required to respond by June 11. 2010 at the latest."

I ran into her on Sunday, June 20th, at Sunrise market and she said she had not received it. Even if the City had mailed the Incident Report on the last possible day, June 11th, she would have had it last week as Vancouver has over night delivery.

Hancock ended his April 30th letter to her with,

"We understand that this is an urgent matter for you so we will do our best to expedite this request for you."

That was 52 days ago, as of Sunday.

Cease & Desist Order To Target Jacquie Forbes-Roberts at City Hall

If Jacquie Forbes-Roberts, the Mayor’s top woman in his Civil City initiative, can’t be civil, she is going to be slapped with a Cease & Desist order. “This is bullying!”, says Carnegie Centre Board member Grant Chauncey of the behaviour of Forbes-Roberts’, who is also General Manager of Community Services. Chauncey was speaking to a small group of Carnegie Centre Board members and the public at a Community Relations Meeting at Carnegie Centre last Thursday afternoon, July 26th .

A couple of Carnegie Board members are heading to Pivot Legal Society on the Downtown Eastside to ask about the possibility of a Cease & Desist order for Forbes-Roberts. The first step, explained Chauncey, would be to have a lawyer send Forbes-Roberts a letter telling her to cease and desist and that if she does not, we will go to the courts to ask that she stop. Chauncey and others would like Forbes-Roberts to stop blocking Carnegie Board member Bill Simpson from entering the Carnegie building until such time as mediation can be arranged between Simpson and herself. Chauncey, like numerous Carnegie members, insists that Forbes-Roberts has no evidence to support barring Simpson from the building.

The Cease & Desist would be a response to a letter Forbes-Roberts had delivered to Simpson on June 21st, just after he was elected to the Carnegie Board of Directors. She notified the homeless man in the letter that he was barred from entering the Carnegie Centre “indefinitely”. Simpson now stands outside on the sidewalk as Board meetings take place inside, with security guards instructed to prevent him from entering the building. Supporters of Simpson say they want Forbes-Roberts to adopt a more civil approach to an elected official.

Chauncey pointed out that Carnegie Centre members make rules and regulations governing behaviour in the Centre and that Forbes-Roberts is overriding them. “She obviously has no respect for any of our rules. Within the guidelines that we have regarding behaviour, Bill Simpson has not broken an iota, anything. He has not to my knowledge broken any rule or regulation and she, Jacquie Forbes-Roberts, has made no accusation of anything he did wrong. And so they’re making a decision on what? We don’t know. But as far as it being legal…she doesn’t have a leg to stand on. She’s doing it to usurp the community.

“People are in an uproar about this,” said Sophia Friegang, a Board member.

One criticism of Forbes-Roberts is that she was not precise enough in her letter about alleged wrongdoing that had resulted in Simpson being barred from the building, making it difficult for him to defend himself. Forbes-Roberts informed Simpson in her letter that he was barred because he operates a web site, Downtown Eastside Enquirer .ca, which “features links” to the Downtown Eastside Enquirer blogspot which she claims contains “inaccuracies”. Simpson asked the obvious question when Carnegie Director Ethel Whitty who is supervised by Forbes-Roberts delivered the letter to him: “What are the inaccuracies?” Whitty refused to identify any.

“Has the City come back after giving us that first letter, giving us any indication as to why this is occurring other than the vaguest of things?” Chauncey asked Whitty. Whitty responded, “No. Other than that letter.” “If you ask me there’s no proof of anything…And if there was at all, they’d take legal action.”

“Having a link to a site is not the same as publishing a site,” said Board member Rachel Davis.

Although the only reason given in Forbes-Roberts’ letter for barring Simpson was that he “links” to the blog, the City did come up with a second reason after the barring attracted media attention. The second reason, announced by Whitty, was that there had been a Work Safe [WCB] complaint against Simpson by a Carnegie staff person who claimed that the blog created an unsafe environment at work. Rachel D. wasn’t buying it. “There’s nothing in that letter saying that William Simpson can’t come in because of Work Safe …If it’s a Work Safe issue, why don’t they just say it’s a Work Safe issue.” Whitty interjected, “It was alluded to in the letter.” Maybe she means “eluded”, says Serg, one of several Downtown Eastsiders who can’t find any hint of a Work Safe issue in the letter. Indeed Simpson has yet to be informed in writing or verbally that he is barred due to a Work Safe issue -- even though Whitty has announced this reason to the public on behalf of her boss Forbes-Roberts at two public meetings at Carnegie.

Chauncey, a former union member and outspoken supporter of the current CUPE strikers, has the Work Safe manual at home. “It’s not a Work Safe issue,” he said. “It’s just not.” He pointed out that there were no threats on that blog. “And I’ve looked and I’ve looked and I’ve looked and I’ve looked.”

Chauncey, like many Carnegie members, sees the Work Safe angle as a ruse. He explained that if inaccurate statements had been made on the blog, if there was “defamation” -- a word Forbes-Roberts used in the letter but for five weeks has evaded supporting with examples -- legal recourse is available. “You do it legally; you don’t hide behind some veil.” He is convinced that the City did not pursue the defamation issue legally because, “They’ve got nothing.”

Despite his vigorous support for legal action against Forbes-Roberts whose behaviour he believes will get worse if a check is not put on it, Chauncey is actually not a supporter of the DTES Enquirer blog. He believes the blog, in which contributors don’t identify themselves with real names is “gutless and cowardly and that [Simpson] should come in and apologize.”

Wilf R., a new Carnegie member, told Whitty that he was concerned that barring Simpson from Carnegie -- particularly a previous barring from the Learning Centre when he claims he was told that it was because he was blogging on the DTES Enquirer -- has resulted in him being "tarred as the blogger". Wilf R. claimed he heard people at Carnegie talking about Simpson as though he was the blogger. Indeed Whitty herself had just spoken of Simpson minutes earlier as though she assumed he was the blogger, saying "He can write about me all he wants. . . ." And indeed the blogger does write about her, criticizing her failure to consistently provide services Carnegie is funded to provide.

Friegang asked Whitty, "Don't you have a concern . . . that Bill Simpson might be wrongly accused?" She added, "If I were Director, I would be doing something about this. I would be doing something."

“There’s no proof that [Simpson] writes that blog,” said Debbie Gosselin, a Carnegie member who attended the meeting, and indeed Forbes-Roberts did not accuse him in the letter of actually writing it, only linking to it. Gosselin asked Whitty, “Are you saying that anybody who links to the Downtown Eastside Enquirer blog will be barred from Carnegie?”

Whitty responded by explaining that in barring Simpson, City lawyers working with Jacquie Forbes-Roberts made their decision “based on probability”. Simpson operates a website with the same name as the blog, and links to the blog appear at the top of his website “so he probably intends for people to read that blog.”

Although the Community Relations Committee discussed the Cease & Desist order, they require approval of a majority of Board members before getting any legal ball rolling. They unanimously passed a motion at Thursday’s meeting to ask Pivot Legal Society on the Downtown Eastside to for help in wording what Friegang called “a legal motion” to be brought to the next Board meeting.

Simpson is not entirely optimistic about Pivot Legal Society helping him though. He went to Pivot on his own shortly after he was banned from Carnegie but was rebuffed. Pivot claims in their literature that their goal is to fight civil liberties abuses of marginalized people on the Downtown Eastside, creating a “trickle up” effect which strengthens the civil liberties of everyone in society. When Simpson asked a Pivot lawyer for help with the Carnegie case, she responded, “But they’re our friends.”

At this point, Simpson, who calls himself “home-free” and “welfare-free” seems to be lawyer-free. When interviewed on Co-op Radio on Monday, along with Rachel D. and other Carnegie members, Simpson was asked if he had a lawyer. He responded that any lawyer interested in helping him could contact him at his website.

Whether Jacquie Forbes-Roberts will be ordered to Cease & Desist is not yet certain. It remains, to use the language of City lawyers, a “probability”.

[It has become necessary for supporters of Bill Simpson to tape meetings due to the fact that Whitty and the City regularly revise their stories -- this meeting was no exception -- about the various barrings of Simpson. Copies of tapes often find their way to the DTES Enquirer. Quotes in this post are taken from a tape of the meeting.]

More members kicked out of Carnegie Centre

The Republic newspaper has picked up on some of the themes raised by the Downtown Eastside Enquirer about unfair barring practices at Carnegie Centre and whether Carnegie staff genuinely promote "community" on the Downtown Eastside. The author of the article, Tavis Dodds, specifically mentions the Downtown Eastside Enquirer and it's exposure of the barring of homelesss man Bill Simpson.

Peter Haskell and Ricky, two other men who have been barred from Carnegie Centre, are quoted in the article. Haskell's case is particularly interesting as he provides evidence that after being barred for free speech, he became the target of political psychiatry by a Carnegie staff person. The Downtown Eastside Enquirer has in the past pointed to emerging signs that Carnegie staff were participating in the epidemic of political psychiatry on the Downtown Eastside.

See The Republic article: Celebrating 104 years at Main & Hastings

Sarti Party for leftists leaving Carnegie

"What will Cuba do without Castro?" Those words were written in orange icing on top of the humongous carrot cake at the going away party for Bob Sarti and Muggs Sigurdson.

After 20 years of involvement with the Carnegie Centre, Sarti and Sigurdson are moving to Hornby Island. A party was held for them in the theatre of the Carnegie Centre on Saturday night.

See article on NowPublic.com