Category: Nova Scotia

… what the odds are that we’re not allowed to have the first clue who these little bastards are? Not that people haven’t known for a long time what a farce the YCJA is…

Here we have a vid from Dartmouth, NS, showing how three of these little YCJA-shielded pricks ganged up on and robbed a lone kid. They’re always brave in packs, aren’t they? No doubt, the usual suspects will bleat away that they’re just misunderstood, they didn’t have a basketball court nearby, Mike Harris is to blame (even though this is NS, we’re talking about), the little dears shouldn’t have their lives ruined over this, blahblahblah… Tough.

After leaving the victim the three older attackers are joined by four more young boys, the smallest of whom appears to be younger than 10.

The group can be seen quite clearly, hanging out at the corner of Mountain Avenue and Lakeview Drive.

But police say without hearing from the victim, it’s hard to say exactly what happened. Halifax Regional Police spokesman Const. Jeff Carr said the call came in at 7:26 p.m. but the victim was gone from the scene when officers arrived.

“It’s not clear whether it was a robbery,” Const. Carr said. “It’s clearly an assault, but whether it resulted in injuries, you just can’t jump to conclusions.”

Of course you can’t. After all, it’s not like there’s any friggin’ EVIDENCE or anything now, is it? Well, the vid is out there, everybody knows who they are, and the genie’s not going back in the bottle. All the thug-huggers on the planet aren’t a match for a few folks with camcorders. Suck it up.

Some people don’t need to be told some things. Some people just already know things like: water is wet; fire is hot; if you run nekkid through a blizzard, you’re going to freeze your twig and berries off… stuff like that. Other folks, though, need to blow a buttload of taxpayers’ money to figure out whether or not a bear craps in the woods. And that‘s just what they got in Nova Scotia, following the 11-month inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the tragic death of Theresa McEvoy (right), who was killed by 16-year old Archie Billard as he was fleeing, stoned, at high speeds from police through the streets of Halifax in October of 2004. Billard was already facing 27 charges related to a string of car thefts.

And guess what the conclusion they reached was? That the YCJA is TOO DAMNED LENIENT!

HALIFAX (CP) – Canada’s youth justice system must be tightened to protect the public from dangerous teens whose lives are “spiralling out of control,” a Nova Scotia inquiry has concluded.

Well, DUUUHHH!!! Figured that out all by themselves, did they? The rest of us have known that since the damn thing was passed. Some of the recommendations in retired judge Merlin Nunn’s 381-page report are [all emphasis mine]:

• make it easier for judges across Canada to detain teenagers before trial
• changes to the definition of “violent offence” in the Act to include conduct that endangers or is likely to endanger the lives and safety of others
• staff at the Windsor courthouse should be provided with “adequate and working telephone, facsimile, printing, computer equipment, and e-mail communication,” along with access to the province’s online justice information system
• allow judges to detain youths if they show “a pattern of offences”
• slash the time lag between when a youth is arrested and they first appear in court [average 175 days in NS] to “within one week of arrest“
• more Crown attorneys and a fully staffed attendance centre where youth who are released on bail will be forced to regularly meet with probation officers before their trial

In a prepared statement, the former judge said the title of his report – Spiralling Out of Control: Lessons Learned from a Boy in Trouble – was chosen to reflect the fact that Billard’s life was headed into a “remarkable crime spree.”

“None of our responses seemed to be effective in stopping him,” Nunn wrote. “They should have.”

Personally, I think we need a hell of a lot more than that but I suppose this is as good a start as any. Now look for the usual handwringing suspects to start popping out of the woodwork to bemoan that those advocating stronger measures “just don’t understand the real nature of the problem” and all the other usual pap.