DRUG TRAFFICKER'S SENTENCE MORE TOUGH THAN JUST

Provincial Court Judge Carol Baird Ellan, who sits on the North Shore,
is on a one-woman crusade to get tough on crime.

Those behind the BC Rail scandal that cost us millions got house
arrest, but she thinks a repentant first-time drug trafficker deserves
jail given the damage illicit narcotics do to the community.

The former chief judge of the provincial bench says she wants to send
a clear, unequivocal message.

"It seems that offenders are under the impression that they can
conduct this kind of activity until they get caught, and then expect a
sentence that is not particularly disruptive to their lifestyle,"
Judge Baird Ellan said.

"In my view, a more consistent message is required.... The issue to my
mind at this point in this community is the prolific nature of these
crimes, which we see on almost a daily basis in these courts.

"The sentences being imposed are not achieving deterrence, and people
who are disposed to engage in these kinds of schemes to supplement
their incomes are apparently not receiving the message that these are
serious crimes that prey on the buyers and endanger the safety of the
community."

In the recent case that sparked her comments, Gordon Adam Thompson was
nabbed last November in a West Vancouver police sting on a dial-a-dope
operation.

Over the course of a week, the cops bought two $40 packages of cocaine
and then busted the unemployed 32-year-old who sold it to them.

They found in his car three grams of crack in 11 individual packages
and seven grams of powder in 14 flaps. That's less than $1,000 worth
of illicit drugs.

Thompson had $82.90 in his jeans.

This was no big-time bust and what happened highlights in my opinion a
problem with the mandatory, one-size-fits-all kind of approach to
sentencing.

In an attempt to curb the burgeoning number of dial-a-dope operations,
the B.C. Court of Appeal said in 2007 that lower court judges should
consider jailing such offenders.

It reiterated that opinion earlier this year, that "absent unusual
circumstances, jail sentences are the usual response to offences of
this nature."

But Thompson wasn't your average offender and putting him in jail
seems wrongheaded -- it costs taxpayers too much money to keep him
locked up and makes him pay too high a price for his crime.

Like the former civil servants convicted of breach of trust, I think
Thompson deserved a conditional sentence.

He had a stable upbringing, didn't have a record and had a steady work
history. He ran his own fitness business until the economic downturn
last year put him in a situation where, like a lot of desperate
people, he made a really bad choice.

Thompson recognized his mistake and pleaded guilty at the first
opportunity.

He got a job last December, a month after the sting, and has been
working since. He has plans for further education.

Yet in spite of all that, and even though this was an offence at the
lower end of the scale, Baird Ellan was unmoved.

She maintained the fiction that dial-a-dope operations are somehow
more insidious than other trafficking rings because they bring drugs
to the suburbs and people don't have to go to the Downtown Eastside.

I think that's nonsense: The suburbs were flooded with drugs long
before dial-a-dope operations appeared and no one had to go to the
east side to score.

Still Baird Ellan added: "In my view, selling in the suburbs, even to
people who do not appear to be addicts, can itself be considered to be
a predatory activity, particularly when crack cocaine is involved."

That's make-believe as well to justify a too-harsh sentence.

Thompson poses no risk to the community, is working again and even
Baird Ellan conceded she didn't expect he would be back before the
courts.

But cut him some slack like they did those former Liberal scoundrels?
Not a chance. She gave Thompson six months in jail.

So much for his job.

Tough, for sure, but just? Hardly.