(This column was published in the North Shore News on June 4, 2003)
Judge wanted to jail racer, but couldn't
By Leo Knight
LAST week I made the point that it is next to impossible to go to jail in this province.
Short of committing murder, a vicious assault, multiple armed robberies or making disparaging comments about a one-legged, gay male hair stylist who drives a Toyota RAV4, the chances of going to jail are pretty remote.
My point was aptly underlined by North Vancouver provincial court Judge Bill Rodgers on Friday with the conditional sentence handed down by him in the West Vancouver street racing trial of Ali Arimi.
On Feb. 9, 2001, Arimi was involved in a street race with another vehicle in which Payam Yaghoobi, 17, was a passenger. Yaghoobi died when the car he was in crashed into the West Vancouver library. The driver, a 17 year old male, cannot be identified because of the limitations of the Young Offenders Act.
As a side note, he can join the army, fight and die for the country, buy cigarettes, buy condoms, be a parent, but for some stupid reason best known to the Liberals of Jean Chretien, he cannot be identified when his actions take the life of another.
Makes sense to someone I'm sure, but not me.
So, where were we?
Oh right, the Rodgers decision. In his decision the judge said he wanted to send Arimi to jail after convicting him of dangerous driving causing death.
Certainly the Crown prosecutor asked for jail, specifically three to five years in custody or a federal jail sentence.
Certainly, the circumstances warranted it.
But a funny thing happened on the way to jail.
Rodgers didn't send him there.
Instead, Arimi was sentenced to a conditional sentence with conditions that amount to house arrest.
Like many teens, he was grounded, but by the courts, not his parents.
So, what gives? Is the learned judge being soft on crime?
Not in this case.
Despite the howls of outrage being wound up by the talk show hosts, Rodgers pointedly said he was gong to send Arimi to jail, but he could not.
He said the widely criticized decision of B.C. Supreme Court Justice Linda Loo in the case of the street racers who killed grandmother Irene Thorpe bound him to follow the judicial precedent by a superior court.
Thorpe was out for her evening stroll when she died as a result of a street race crash in Vancouver.
Or, in simple terms, Rodgers didn't have a choice because of Loo's decision except in a case with more aggravated circumstances were present.
Since in this case, Arimi didn't kill an innocent civilian, it could not be considered more egregious.
What Rodgers did with this decision, and what was missed by the knee-jerk media commentators, is focus the blame, if you will, directly on the source of the problem, the ridiculous decision by Justice Loo.
It's true he could have gone with whatever sentence he wished, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead and all that, but he would probably have been appealed and what would the result have been?
Instead, Rodgers has forced the issue by saying his hands were tied by the Loo decision in spite of what he really wanted to do.
He threw up his hands at a system that does not allow a judge to dispense justice and he pointed his judicial finger of blame where it rightly belongs.
And good on him.
Liberal leadership candidate and heir apparent to prime minister Paul Martin said in the intensely boring debate here on the weekend that Parliament would have to review law changes to prevent these types of sentences.
Pity he didn't speak up when the current law was made and he had his Guccis comfortably parked under the cabinet table while seated in the second most powerful chair.
But a late awakening is better than none, I suppose.
The proposed reorganization or the RCMP within the Lower Mainland has brought about some knee-jerk reactions of late.
Not the least of which came from the North Vancouver City Mayor Barb Sharp.
She was quoted in the North Shore News complaining about the proposed restructuring saying she didn't want her municipality shortchanged with North Vancouver RCMP Supt. Gord Tomlinson having responsibilities for a larger area including Squamish.
She also suggested that taxes might go up by two per cent to cover the changes.
This is nothing more than fear mongering that has no basis in fact.
If taxes go up, it is simply because that is the creed of the political left.
Quite apart from anything else, I have a big problem with the ideologically-driven left musing about what might happen or waxing philosophically about what may be planned and talking about it like it's a done deal. Look at the big deal made about the alleged sell-off of BC Hydro.
Despite the fact the government has said time and time again this is not on the table, according to BC Fed's very own Chicken Little, Jim Sinclair, you'd think Campbell has already cashed the cheque the way he is flapping his gums.
Here's a dose of reality for Sharp: the recent murder case of the young man shot in the basement suite of his parents' home on April 7 turned out to be a prolonged, complicated investigation.
Because of the nature of the investigation, the file was transferred to what is called an E Division (B.C.'s RCMP headquarters) collator code along with all associated costs, including the not insignificant overtime of all the police officers involved. This ensured these are not borne by the good burghers of North Vancouver, but shared by the pooled resources of the province.
In other words, we saved a ton of local dough despite this being a local crime.
Equally, the two other recent homicide files of last week - the missing North Vancouver woman found dead in Coquitlam and the Vancouver woman's body found near Capilano Road - are being handled by the new integrated homicide team with their combined budget despite the fact that team was not due to start until June 1.
The local resources of the North Vancouver detachment would have been stretched to the breaking point were this not the case.
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