JUDGE RIGHT TO RIP INTO DRUG DEALER

For anyone who failed to understand why Queen's Bench Justice Donald
Bryk ripped into the personal character of convicted drug dealer Jose
Neves -- someone he didn't even know -- this week, the answer lies in
one simple explanation.

Cocaine trafficking is not a victimless crime.

Neves was handed a 10-year sentence in Winnipeg Tuesday for selling
cocaine to a police agent while on parole for a previous cocaine
trafficking conviction.

Bryk let him have it at his sentencing hearing, calling him
"cold-hearted, greedy, manipulative, dishonest and deceitful,"
accusing him of creating misery and caring nothing for human life,
and suggesting neither his children nor the city's Portuguese
community should be proud of him.

All this despite several glowing letters of support that indicated
Neves is an honest, decent and caring family man who happened to get
caught up in the wrong lifestyle.

But Bryk rejected any suggestion a twice-convicted big-time cocaine
dealer could be anything resembling honest and decent. Bryk's
comments were based on the idea regardless of what other
characteristics a cocaine dealer exhibits in his "everyday" life, the
fact he knowingly deals cocaine is enough to consider him a
cold-hearted peddler of poison.

Bryk is absolutely right.

Police will freely admit the majority of crime in Winnipeg -- yes,
the majority -- is related to drugs.

Drug addicts, especially those hooked on crack, commit any number of
crimes to acquire money to buy more drugs, including robberies,
muggings, thefts, break and enters, and, of course, prostitution.

Many of those people have kids, so not only do they create victims of
their crimes, but they also create victims of their addiction.

Then there's the crime related to those who sell drugs. Debts to pay,
turf to defend -- much of it leads to violence, including kidnapping,
assaults and murders.

It all leads back up the chain from the addicts and street dealers to
the big time distributors. Ask the convenience store clerk who gets a
knife shoved in his face by a crackhead what he thinks of cocaine
dealers. Ask the woman who gets her purse stolen or her house or
garage or car broken into.

Ask the mother and father of the teenage boy who gets shot in a gang
dispute, or the teenage runaway who turns tricks for crack money
because she's got nothing else left to sell.

Justice Donald Bryk doesn't need to ask them.

He, and all his fellow judges, see the victims of people like Jose
Neves in court every day.