Calgary’s Search for Parker Ends Tragically

Parker’s story ends in the saddest way possible 

Calgary Joins the Fray: Extortion Network Spreading, Fifteen Walk Free

16 Charged, 1 remains in custody

The good news is, none are Canadian citizens

Sixteen arrests, nineteen shootings, and a justice system straining to keep pace with non‑citizen offenders.

 That's 16 deportations. Duh. Do ya think? 

Calgary has now joined B.C. on the same uncomfortable plateau: a widening extortion landscape driven by small, mobile crews who treat borders, paperwork, and community fear as tactical tools. Sixteen men arrested, fifteen already back on the street. And the detail that jumps off the page — the one that will resonate with readers of our January piece — is that none of the accused are Canadian citizens.

B.C. Extortion Task Force Investigation Widens

RCMP In Hot Pursuit While BC Premier Calls Out National Links

Dziekanski inquiry on hold, taser-related dying continues

Since the Taser won't go away as a source of controversy, Mack McColl like all rest will continue to report on it. But in so many incident reports one thing seems to be apparent. A lot of those controversial deaths are going to happen to these people from the start. The storyline almost always gives these persons a one-way ticket to die. Tasers don't kill these people, it seems; but Tasers don't prevent the outcome and then Tasers get a bad rap for being engaged in the mortifying event.

A possible example of how this might occur went down twice in Alberta, first in Edmonton, then in Calgary, during the same week. The events occurred in a mirror because of the strange calamity shepherding each of the dying on their one-way ride. Within the same frame-of-time, the same frame-of-mind probably, Trevor Grimolfson died Oct. 29, 2008, at age 38, in Edmonton. And Gordon Bowes died Nov. 1, 2008, at age 31, in Calgary. Both men were tasered in the moments before death.

Trevor Grimolfson died after police deployed a Taser to stop his wrecking spree of pawn shop on the low-track section of a street in Edmonton called Stony Plain Road. Police fired two Taser shots but Grimolfson continued to resist until he was handcuffed and unconscious. He was pronounced dead at the hospital.

His terrible last run was staged in the city's rough and getting rougher west end. The report begins with the deceased in a wild-eyed craze confronting a private contractor in a tattoo parlour, whereupon Grimolfson tumbled onto the commercial street and went next-door. He entered a pawn shop on the corner of Stony Plain Road and 153rd Street, and this happened before noon. During the unfolding event a close witness said Grimolfson, "appeared to be agitated and sweating profusely." A few minutes later he was dead.

Gordon Walker Bowe, 30, of Castlegar, B.C., was caught in a remarkably similar condition, Nov. 1, 2008, in the act of committing a break and enter. First he was tilting and careening down a residential street and harassing people on their property. He appeared drugged and sorely agitated, and finally a concerned community member phoned police when Bowe zeroed in on her property.

Apparently he dove through a window and skittered around the basement of a vacant duplex next to her, and he wouldn't come out when the police found him. They tasered him when he refused to comply with the commands. His medical distress ensued after Bowes was wrestled to the ground and handcuffed. EMS assessed and transported him to hospital where he died. Police said the Taser failed or appeared to fail to stop Bowes, who was clearly drug impaired when he fell head-first, "through a plate glass window."

It may be accurate to say the suspects brought death upon themselves. In reality autopsy will clear up any mystery about the toxicology in their makeup. Regarding the case of Bowes, to say the least, "It wasn't a successful deployment of the taser for this individual," said John Dooks of the Calgary Police Association to the media, "I would say regardless of whether the taser worked or not, this individual died as a result of his own actions." 

 The Alberta Serious Incident Response Team (ASIRT) is investigating both the Calgary and the Edmonton incidents. "ASIRT is an independent agency of the Solicitor General and Public Security department that investigates incidents involving police that result in death or serious injury." (Source: Alberta Solictor General)

It was a year ago in October that Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski, 40, died after being tasered by a squad of four RCMP police officers, about 25 seconds into the interview at the Vancouver airport (YVR) customs lounge. He was electro-shocked before any threats had been uttered, but video from a cell phone or digital camera shows Dziekanski not a well man in the minutes leading up to death. These moments were recorded on camera and watched on Youtube a few million times. Dziekanski was tossing around furniture and didn't seem to know which way to turn. Suddenly he was buried under a pile of officers and equally fast he was dead.

In the face of a massive public outcry against tasering the nation's visitors at the gates, the province of B.C. announced a public inquiry into the Dziekanski incident. It was recently put on hold until January while the Crown decides whether to press charges against the acting officers. Meanwhile, other inquiries are questioning what happened in the Dziekanski death, and what is happening with Tasers.

There is no doubt Taser use is a serious issue, but just how serious comes into question after reading about the odd flick of the Taser switch that occurred earlier this year. It was reported in all the nation's media on May 9, 2008, that an 82-year-old patient was tasered in his hospital bed in Kamloops, B.C.. The RCMP had responded to a call from a nurses station about a cantankerous 82 year old man raising hell in his hospital room.

Nurses phoned police when he pulled a knife out of his hospital gown pocket. When police came in his room, he refused to relinquish the knife, and, "And then, bang, bang, bang, three times with the laser, and I tell you, I never want that again," said Frank Lasser. The former prison guard learned a snappy lesson about taking a knife into the hospital.