From: “Breitkreuz, Garry
To: “Breitkreuz, Garry –
Subject: Column: Father de Souza, spare me your bleeding heart
Date: Mar 7, 2008 9:34 AM
PUBLICATION: National Post
DATE: 2008.03.07
EDITION: National
SECTION: Issues & Ideas
PAGE: A16
COLUMN: Counterpoint
BYLINE: Jerry Amernic
SOURCE: National Post
WORD COUNT: 529

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Father de Souza, spare me your bleeding heart

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Yesterday’s column by Raymond J. de Souza about the federal government’s
new Tackling Violent Crime Act (“Stacking the deck”) was offensive. Father
de Souza claims the new legislation gives too much power to police, and will lead
to more innocent people being incarcerated. He also vilifies police and Crown prosecutors
for being “not particularly sensitive to questions of individual liberty or
procedural fairness.”

Among other things, the new legislation gets tougher with gun-wielding offenders,
increases mandatory minimum sentences for crimes involving firearms, and offers
new ways to detect and investigate impaired driving, along with tougher sentences
for impaired driving.

If Father de Souza objects to all this, perhaps he should spend a week with police
working the night shift.

He might find, in some seedy alleyway, a repeat violent offender, who has already
been deported numerous times, doing a drug deal and threatening to blow someone’s
head off with a shotgun that –needless to say — wasn’t filed with the gun
registry.

Or he might find himself observing a female officer caught in a life-threatening
situation as she comes between a husband, who has already threatened to kill his
wife, and the threatened spouse.

Father de Souza should meet drug-smuggling king Alfonso Caruana, who was sentenced
to 18 years. He promptly served one, and was transferred to Fenbrook in Gravenhurst,
where you can get a nice 8-oz. steak served to your liking. In Canada it is the
minimum of minimum security. A few weeks ago he was extradited to his native Italy
where he’s now doing a 21-year sentence. Isolation. Maximum security.

He should also meet the parents of the children who were tied up and raped while
a man video-streamed the whole thing over the Internet and got sentenced only to
house arrest and three years probation.

Does he know that 48% of offenders convicted of possession and distribution of child
pornography in the Greater Toronto Area receive a conditional sentence, which means
no jail time? Would Father de Souza change his tune if he saw some of those videos?
Maybe. (Then again, some judges who pronounce sentence on these criminals refuse
to view the tapes themselves because they find them so offensive.)

Father de Souza should go for a drive with Charlie Hart, who finally received federal
time, but not until he had nearly 39 past convictions for impaired driving, behaviour
that resulted in one death in 1971.

Father de Souza says Canada has been heading in the direction of the American justice
system since the 1990s. Is he concerned with anti-gang legislation, which got tougher
in 2001? Before the rules were tightened, the Hells Angels could open up a new chapter
with three members, none of whom had convictions the previous five years, and not
be considered a criminal organization.

The biggest problem with violent crime in Canada is not too many guns coming across
the border from the United States. It is not a proliferation of gangs. It is not
the socio-economic hardships of certain groups. The biggest problem with violent
crime in Canada is a too-lenient justice system. A close second is bleeding hearts.

[email protected] – Jerry Amernic is the co-author of DUTY–The Life of a Cop.

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