COMMON SENSE AND TOUGH LOVE ONLY CURE AGAINST RAGING CRIME

The penalty for living in paradise is having your home, office or auto
ripped off and realizing you can do nothing about it except pay the
deductible. Just ask Vancouver criminal lawyer Phil Rankin, 52, who
recently had some bozo throw a rock through the rear window of his
4-Runner, which he'd parked while watching a movie.

Rankin, in fact, is so used to his SUV being burgled he doesn't lock
it any more. In five years, his Main Street office has been broken
into 11 times.

The robbers clearly don't care that Rankin is the son of the Downtown
Eastside's former unofficial mayor Harry Rankin -- and himself defends
down-and-outers. Drug addicts will rip anybody off, especially their
own lawyer. Their entire life's focus is to get money to buy drugs.

"They are a drug machine," Rankin notes.

They are people like the trio who were roughed up in Stanley Park by a
half-dozen city cops. And there are many long-suffering Lower
Mainlanders who'll say the "victims" in this case got their just
desserts. But that doesn't make what the police did right. These
officers lowered themselves to the level of the druggies.

Thanks to our courts, however, they'll likely get away with a slap on
the wrist -- just like the regular criminals.

In a statement of agreed facts, the police admitted that, suspecting a
drug deal, they decided to "remove" the trio to Stanley Park and to
berate, prod, punch . . . and boot them.

Rankin, who represented the trio, told me the statement was "so
watered down as to be laughable." I agree. Indeed, stating that "P.C.
Kojima contacted Desjardins [one of the victims] with his police-issue
baton in the vicinity of his knee" is like saying Mike Tyson contacted
Evander Holyfield in the vicinity of his ear.

No, we must send a stronger message that this kind of police excess,
common in countries where street folk are routinely "purged" by
"clean-up squads," is beyond the pale in B.C.

I think police chief Jamie Graham has to fire some or all of these
officers. As Rankin notes, it's not good enough for police to say
they're frustrated. "They're frustrated, get a different job," he says.

As for drug addiction, I agree with Rankin that addicts need more
treatment -- compulsory treatment, if need be -- and that the new
safe-injection site is at best a Band-Aid solution.

Indeed, I agree with Rankin so much I'm beginning to wonder whether
I'm starting to sound like a lefty . . . or whether he's becoming a
right-winger like me. The fact is the only way we'll control raging
crime in this city is through common sense and tough love -- not
ideological bickering or vigilante justice.