FACING JAIL, FELGER STILL LIKES COPS

A graduate of environmental economics from the University of Ohio, Tim
Felger served two years in the U.S. military, by the age of 22 was the
owner of Felger Garbage Disposal in Vanwert, Ohio, and later opened seven
Domino's Pizza outlets in B.C.

He once had a wife, a son named Emmitt-Lee, a healthy body and an elaborate
marijuana growing operation. But all that's gone now.

"I have 25 acres of land, a house, a Mercedes, two tractors, a pickup, an
excavator - if a person has more than that, they got too much," said Felger
of his near-million-dollar self-appraisal.

He left the military because "they're so corrupt." He sold his waste
management business and invested in the hot pizza market. He lost his
six-year-old son to a brain stem tumor.

"He called me Luke, he never called me dad," said Felger, smiling at
Emmitt-Lee's photo on his bedroom wall. "He was Bo and I was Luke - the
Duke brothers."

Felger still suffers from severe arthritis in his legs and back after being
injured in a car accident.

"A semi [truck] hit me in an intersection," Felger explains. "He was doing
90 kilometres an hour, dragged me 160 feet into a 25-foot ditch and never
even apologized."

Felger sold the pizza companies and moved into the market of growing pot.

He likes "to be in an industry that no one else is into."

"That's where the money is. You don't make money doing what everyone else
is doing. When I first started selling pizza, there was hardly anybody in
the business," he said.

But Felger doesn't only attract attention from competition. He's been in
trouble with the law since the day he was born - or at least since the age
of three when he rolled his tricycle to an elementary school, used the
trike as a step latter to pull the fire alarm.

But at the family's Vanwert, Ohio home the police blamed older brother Richard.

"The cops tried to take him in for finger printing but my father told them,
'If you want to finger print him you are going to have to arrest him - and
if you do that we'll sue you for wrongful arrest,'" Felger explains.

This story sounds strikingly similar to the Tim Felger the city of
Abbotsford has come to know.

However, in his pre-Abbotsford days his antics and run-ins with the law
never led to any criminal charges. Since moving to Abbotsford, he's been
arrested 41 times.

"I've been arrested 41 times, walked away 38 times and I am going to beat
the other three," Felger said. "And I'm as guilty as hell," he adds with a
laugh. All this hoopla from a man who claims to have a great respect for
police officers.

"I've always been fascinated by the police," said Felger, down on all fours
admiring his 2,000 antique police badges - some more than a century old and
one worth as much as $40,000.

He also has century-old handcuffs, police uniforms and RCMP horse blankets.
Numerous historical books of the RCMP and U.S. police forces are scattered
throughout his Bradner Road home.

"I like cops with moral courage," said Felger.

So why is he trying to strike down the city's pot prohibition bylaws? Why
is he planning to take selected police officers to court? Why is he running
against Randy White in the next federal election?

"I went to St. Mary's Catholic school and they taught me to be a good
citizen and to stand up for what I think is right," Felger explained. "I'm
tired of being pushed around, I'm tired of poor people being pushed around
. . . I'm doing what a good citizen should do - I'm speaking the truth
because I want to better my community.

"People don't see that right now. There's not too many people who will
stand up and say, 'Tim's a good guy,' but history will treat me right and
some day they will accept me."