Five former Toronto drug cops go on trial today in what the CBC is calling “the largest case of alleged police corruption in Canadian history.” The case dates back to the late ’90s, when the officers were busting high numbers of drug dealers and allegedly beating up suspects, stealing drugs and cash and working together to cover it all up. The officers were charged way back in 2004, but some nifty legal acrobatics slowed the case’s progress to a standstill. A judge even stayed the charges in 2008 before the province’s court of appeal decided the five would stand trial. Former mayor and head of the city’s Police Accountability Coalition John Sewell says legal stalling can often go on so long that witnesses die or leave the country, which has already happened with two witnesses in this case. Okay, maybe it won’t be quite the high drama of Law and Order, but we’re still looking forward to watching the story unfold. Read the entire story [CBC] »
The comprehensive index of every blog post, magazine story and restaurant review that appears on Torontolife.com
All stories relating to court
Why three prominent Chinese-Canadian writers launched a $10-million plagiarism suit against Ling Zhang
A tale of death threats, tarnished reputations and literary jealousy
(Image: Daniel Ehrenworth)
The streets near Scarborough’s Confederation Park curve and loop in a vertiginous web. The neighbourhood was built in the 1970s—several blocks of low-lying split-levels and bungalows divided by neatly trimmed hedges and 20-foot pines. The 401 is just a few blocks away, but these houses are quiet and isolated, even prim. Ling Zhang lives here in a large mock Tudor. She answers the door on the first ring, a diminutive woman with full moon cheeks and a bashful smile. At 54, she wears her hair in a wispy, youthful updo and is dressed in a peacock-blue sundress, a simple cardigan and slippers. The house is immaculate. We pass through a large front hall with a formal dining and living room off either side. Matching white leather sofas sprawl across polished cherry floors. Everywhere I look, there are vases filled with flowers in pastel pink and white. They’re all fake, but the effect is cheerful.
In the kitchen, Zhang makes me a cup of tea. Her husband, Ken He, a slight man in a short-sleeved plaid shirt, pops in to say hello—but not much else. Zhang explains his English isn’t great. “Moving to Toronto was a big sacrifice for him,” she says. The couple met in Vancouver, at the church where Zhang, a born-again Christian, was baptized as an adult. They came to Toronto so Zhang could take a job at Scarborough General Hospital as an audiologist. Her husband, who was an ophthalmologist in China, now sells real estate to the GTA’s Chinese immigrant community.
Read the rest of this entry »
How bullying became the crisis of a generation
Kids are committing suicide, parents are in a panic, and schools that neglect to protect students are lawsuit targets
Mitchell Wilson had a short life. He was born in March 2000 at Markham-Stouffville Hospital to Craig and Shelley Wilson. From the age of three, he had trouble running and jumping. He climbed stairs slowly, putting both feet on each step before moving up. He fell often, and sometimes he couldn’t get up on his own. His doctors thought he had hypermobility syndrome—joints that extend and bend more than normal.
When Mitchell was seven, his mother was diagnosed with an aggressive melanoma. Her treatments left her distant, sometimes testy and mean, and in so much pain that she rarely left her bedroom. “I sort of kept Mitchell away,” Craig Wilson told me.
“He basically didn’t talk to his mother during the last four months of her life.” Wilson often left his son to his own devices while he took care of his dying wife and ran his family’s industrial knife business. Mitchell spent most of his time in his bedroom, playing video games. He comforted himself with food, and by the time he was four feet tall he weighed 167 pounds. Once, in a Walmart, he fell to the ground and his grandmother had to ask store employees to help her lift him.
Read the rest of this entry »
Drunk, unruly RIM executives were tied up on an Air Canada flight—and then chewed through their restraints
The basic story reported two weeks ago was amusing enough—two Research in Motion executives get in a drunken row on a plane to Beijing, force it to land and then get sacked—but court documents and eyewitness accounts have revealed just how desperate the situation really was (we’re talking plastic handcuffs, packing tape and temper tantrum desperate here).
Read the rest of this entry »
Rob Ford is hoping an Ontario court will disregard a compliance audit committee’s findings and instead hold a trial to determine whether he violated the Municipal Elections Act during his mayoral campaign. Ford’s campaign finances have been under scrutiny since earlier this year when the Globe and Mail uncovered certain, let’s say, irregularities, and citizens Max Reed and Adam Chaleff-Freudenthaler called for an audit. A three-person compliance audit committee was convened and called for a full review of Ford’s books. The decisions of committees like this one no longer go before council for approval, so Ford won’t be able to count on his allies to bail him out. Going to trial probably won’t help either, but luckily for the mayor, he’s unlikely to actually wind up on the witness stand. Read the entire story [Globe and Mail] »
The pre-trial of the “G20 geek” accused of planning an attack on the G20 summit with home-cooked bombs continues. The Toronto Star reports that footage of Byron Sonne’s police interview was submitted yesterday as evidence. In a lengthy interview with Toronto detective Tam Bui, Sonne fields questions about his interest in the international summit and his now-infamous Flickr photos. Sonne says that although he possessed the necessary ingredients for making a bomb, he never broke the law (plus, he didn’t have a detonator). The Star also reports that “giggles arose from the body of the court” when Bui demanded to know about a powdery white substance. “That is almond flour,” Sonne returned. Take cover! Read the entire story [Toronto Star] »
Occupy Toronto gets crushed by the man, then fights the power and actually wins (at least, momentarily)
Protesters at St. James Park after being served with an eviction notice (Image: Kevin Hamilton)
The campout will continue. After the city served Occupy Toronto with an eviction notice yesterday morning, it looked like the party was over. Written by city manager Joe Pennachetti, the notice ordered occupiers to “remove immediately any tent, shelter, structure, equipment and debris” from the park and to stay out between 12:01 a.m. and 5:30 a.m. The protesters began hashing out a series of contingency plans, while a group of sympathetic left-leaning councillors issued a letter to Mayor Rob Ford calling for more discussion. But after a day of frantic action, a last-minute injunction spared the group from eviction—at least until Saturday.
Read the rest of this entry »
Professional grifter Garth Drabinsky refuses to just give up and go to jail already. The Toronto Star is reporting that Drabinsky, who was convicted of fraud last month, will ask the Supreme Court to appeal his convictions. He’s also hoping to be granted bail while the Supreme Court mulls everything over. Drabinsky’s partner in crime, Myron Gottlieb, on the other hand, doesn’t appear to have filed a similar bail application. We’ve been wary of Drabinsky for a while now—a feeling that was only exacerbated when we learned his swindling ways may have extended to ripping off musicians. And, of course, the longer the legal shenanigans drag on, the longer we’ll have to wait for that Edward Greenspan tell-all book. Read the entire story [Toronto Star] »
Conrad Black talks to Matt Galloway about the broken American criminal justice system (and how it’s done him wrong)
(Image: Charles LeBlanc)
We’ve learned a lot about Conrad Black this week—be it his ability to make friends in the big house or that his verbose style of elocution even extends to anal cavity searches. Today, in an interview with Matt Galloway on the CBC’s Metro Morning, we also learned that Black is a self-professed victim of the American criminal justice system (of course, we’re used to hearing Lord Black insult the court—but this was a little bit different). “Once you’re targeted in the United States,” Black told Galloway, “you don’t really have much chance. And that’s not how a justice system should operate.” We sympathize, Conrad—we all know the American system is broken. But he loses us once he seems to suggest that when people talk about overcrowded prisons and unfairly treated prisoners they’re also talking about wealthy former media barons.
G20 aftermath: court allows class action lawsuit to proceed
Police at the G20 Summit in Toronto (Image: andrewarchy)
Without any kind of serious, thorough and official reckoning in the wake of the G20 summit in Toronto last summer, we were finally starting to get used to the idea that what Ontario ombudsman André Marin called the most massive compromise of civil liberties in Canadian history was going to be brushed off with nothing more than a pat on the head from the feds, a province desperate to pass the buck and an SIU that couldn’t get Toronto police to identify more than a handful of officers. But it looks like we got used to the idea a little too soon. News broke yesterday that a class action lawsuit on behalf of the people rounded up during the G20 will, in fact, go forward.
Read the rest of this entry »
As if the family of Conrad Black didn’t have enough to deal with, Conrad’s son Jonathan Black is now facing criminal charges for harassing and threatening his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend. Taking a page from the old man’s book, Black Junior says he’s completely innocent and only being prosecuted because of his public position. While we admire the loyalty to his father—and his tactics—we sure hope Jonathan’s got a better legal defence than that. Conrad’s legal strategy of “screw the court, I’m Conrad Black” didn’t keep him out of jail, nor did it get him out early. Read the entire story [Toronto Star] »
Danforth business owner and arsonist may get 10 years in the slammer—but he’ll also get to profit from his crime
The law came down on John Mango—sort of (Image: walknboston)
This story reads more like a true crime novel with each passing day: a Danforth family business is burned to the ground, killing one of the arsonists in the process. Then, the operation’s master planner—who also happens to be the owner of the burned-down business—was found guilty of conspiracy to commit arson but somehow still allowed to profit from the redevelopment of the property that once housed his business.
Read the rest of this entry »
Is a Toronto woman’s right to testify in a niqab an unreasonable accomodation?
A case involving a Toronto woman’s right to testify in a niqab is now headed for the Supreme Court. Maybe it’s time to acknowledge that some accommodations are just plain unreasonable
(Image: Jillian Tamaki)
Naiyra Fatah smiles when she recalls the year she first started wearing a burka, the Islamic garment that’s the sartorial equivalent of a tent. She was 13, and she loved cracking up her stepsister, then 15, as they walked to Lady McLaughlin Girls High School in Lahore.
It wasn’t easy clowning around when neither sister could see the other’s face. “So I would suck the fabric in through my mouth,” recalls Fatah, who is now 84. “My sister would always laugh so hard she would drop to the sidewalk.” Seeing my puzzled look, the elderly woman tosses a filmy floral scarf over her head and demonstrates. The effect is hilarious: a flowery ghost with a mouth that resembles the wrong end of the alimentary canal.
Conrad Black will have plenty of time to ponder whether insulting the court was the best idea after receiving another year of jail time
Lord Black is going back to the big house (Image: Brian Kersey/Conrad Black/Getty Images)
Conrad Black, former Canadian citizen, current British lord and now and forever a convicted felon, is heading back to prison to serve out another year of incarceration. On Friday, U.S. federal judge Amy St. Eve found that despite the fact that federal prosecutors dropped some of his charges, Black still deserves to spend a little extra time in the slammer. And while Canadian media might be suffering from Conrad fatigue—the reaction to his re-sentencing has been subdued in comparison to previous Black-related events—there is one common thread that is prevailing: don’t spend your time as a free man insulting the U.S. court system, especially when that same U.S. court system is about to decide your fate for the near future.
Read the rest of this entry »
How Byron Sonne’s obsession with the G20 security apparatus cost him everything
The fence, as the notorious G20 barricade was known, was three metres high and 10 kilometres long. It was put up at a cost of $9.4 million to cordon off the public from two parts of the downtown core during the summit’s two days in Toronto last year. The most crucial area to protect was the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, where the world leaders were set to meet. A second barricade enclosed Bay Street to Blue Jays Way and Wellington to Lake Shore Boulevard—home to the hotels where the Internationally Protected Persons would sleep.
In the buildup to the summit, Byron Sonne, a slim, balding 37-year-old computer consultant, shot photos and videos of security measures and uploaded them to the Internet under the nickname Toronto Goat. Sonne was obsessed with finding flaws in the security apparatus. Some of his comments on Twitter and Flickr derided the fence’s integrity and strength; a couple of photos showed climbing tools called tree steps that he said could be used to scale the fence or tear it down. Other security measures came under his scrutiny, too. Sonne posted a link to a Toronto Star map of the 71 new CCTV cameras that had been installed for the summit, and took photos of loose wires behind one of them, implying that they could be rendered useless with one snip.
Read the rest of this entry »
Follow Toronto Life on Twitter, Facebook and via RSS