1) treats those who desire to keep and bear arms for self defense like criminals while treating REAL criminals as if they have rights…..

2) proves that gun control only affects the law abiding while criminals continue to prey on the unarmed victims cause by strict gun control
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First cop killer in Ontario history to win a sentence reduction

PUBLICATION: The Windsor Star
DATE: 2004.09.30
EDITION: Final
SECTION: News
PAGE: A3
BYLINE: Kelly Patrick
SOURCE: Windsor Star

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Early release of officer’s killer feared

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Anxiety has gripped Rita Awrey for 22 years. Ever since a cop killer on a booze-fuelled rampage aimed the barrels of two hunting rifles at Awrey and her children, the 50-year-old Windsor woman has suffered irrational fears, sleepless nights and nervous breakdowns.

But now that a jury has knocked 15 months off her attacker’s prison term — making him the first cop killer in Ontario history to win a sentence reduction — Awrey’s anxiety has reached its zenith.

“I was totally speechless,” she said Wednesday, nearly a week after a Guelph jury ruled 40-year-old Jeffrey Breese could apply for full parole Feb. 1, 2006. “I feel like I’ve been slapped in the face.”

Awrey said she’s suffered regular crying spells since receiving the news. Tears filled her eyes and her voice faltered as she spoke about the pain sparked by the decision.

“It’s like I’m not a whole person now,” she said.

Breese was supposed to stay behind bars until May of 2007. He had been sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years for the 1982 murder of OPP Const. Rick Hopkins in Arthur, Ont., a small town north of Guelph.

On the night of the murder, Breese, then 18, grabbed his father’s hunting rifles and smashed and set fire to a clothing store before shooting Hopkins in the neck and face.

He fled the scene and broke into Awrey’s home, where he threatened to kill her if she refused to give him the keys to a brown Dodge Satellite parked out front. Nearly an hour later Breese peeled out of Awrey’s driveway, but not before pressing a rifle to the temple of Awrey’s eight-year-old daughter and pointing one at her five-year-old son.

Breese was never charged for terrorizing Awrey and her family because the first-degree murder charge laid for killing Hopkins carried the longest sentence possible. Awrey said that left the jury at Breese’s hearing in the dark.

“They do not realize how he terrorized us and took away our lives,” she said. “They’re letting him get away with too much.”

Awrey slammed the jury and Canada’s penal system for what she considers the coddling of criminals.

In a letter she submitted to the Guelph Crown attorney arguing against Breese’s early release, Awrey lamented the psychological damage Breese inflicted on her family. “Criminals now appear to get more consideration than their victims do,” she wrote.

Awrey also said the decision to cut Breese’s sentence short showed a blatant disregard for Hopkins’s memory and for his family.

“I just felt the courts were disrespectful,” she said. “It’s just like his death didn’t mean anything.”