News - Police (419 items)
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| Sep 11, 2007 |
B.C. Man Taking Pot Message To Ottawa
Neil Magnuson is skating across Canada to raise awareness about the prohibition of cannabis and stopped in Moose Jaw on the weekend. Magnuson started in Vancouver in July. He is making his way across the country to Ottawa. In Ottawa, Magnuson will be speaking on Remembrance Day about his cause. On his way, he will be stopping in different towns to talk to the people about cannabis. |
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| Sep 8, 2007 |
It's For Tobacco, Really (Wink-Wink, Nudge-Nudge)
In every quadrant of our city, one can find shops where brightly coloured bongs line the shelves and a wide selection of pipes sit in glass cases. The stores have names like Grass Roots, Hemporium and Bongs and Such, just in case you still don't get the idea. Known to some as "head shops," such businesses have been sprouting like, well, weeds all over booming Calgary. You can find them in Forest Lawn, in the northeast industrial area and in the tony shopping districts of Kensington and 17th Avenue S.W. |
| Sep 2, 2007 |
Retired Prescott Police Officer Faces Drug-Trafficking
A retired officer with the Prescott police force was one of nine people charged this week in connection with drug trafficking in the border town. Bruce Perrin, 58, was arrested on Aug. 29. He is the second current or former police officer from the Seaway Valley to face drug charges this year. |
| Aug 31, 2007 |
ON:
OPP Says RIDE Check At Hempfest Was Legitimate
Ontario Provincial Police say an impaired driving checkpoint outside Hempfest wasn't a ploy to search festival-goers for pot, and deny charges by organizers of the annual cannabis festival that police attempted to drive off attendees. ...Rob Waddell, organizer of Hempfest, pointed out this week that no impaired driving charges were laid, for drugs or alcohol. He also charged OPP went above and beyond their normal practice at RIDE checks by questioning passengers, checking for documentation and doing vehicle safety checks. Some who attended Hempfest described a military-style roadblock a short distance from the event, manned by as many as 20 police officers. |
| Aug 27, 2007 |
ON:
32 Drug Charges at Hempfest
Ontario Provincial Police laid 32 drug charges and four weapons charges over the weekend during a RIDE stop set up during Hempfest 2007. OPP say most of the drug charges were for possession of marijuana. [Crushing the culture] |
| Aug 27, 2007 |
ON:
Judges Tosses Out Drug Charges Against Whitby Man
WHITBY -- Durham police seriously breached the constitutional rights of a Whitby man during a drug investigation, a Superior Court judge said in tossing out charges against him Monday. Cops were acting solely on a hunch and denied Roland Liebregts the most basic of rights afforded to him under the Charter of Rights when they apprehended and questioned him near his Taunton Road home in the early morning hours of Sept. 23, 2005, Justice Barry MacDougall said in his ruling. |
| Aug 25, 2007 |
ON:
Police Will Be Out in Force at Hempfes
The Cannabis Festival Runs Through Sunday in Ophir A police traffic checkpoint aims to smoke out any possible problems during Hempfest. The ninth annual cannabis festival runs through Sunday in Ophir about 30 kilometres north of Bruce Mines. Ontario Provincial Police started checking vehicles on Poplar Dale Road Thursday afternoon. Motorists will be stopped through the weekend. |
| Aug 24, 2007 |
ON:
Church Leaders Go To Court Over Confiscated Pot
The spiritual leaders of a church that uses marijuana as its sacrament are seeking a court order for the return of several pounds of pot and other items seized from their Barton Street headquarters during an RCMP raid. Church of the Universe ministers Walter Tucker, 74, and Michael Baldasaro, 58, were charged with possession of marijuana for the purpose of trafficking after the Mounties executed a search warrant on May 15, 2000. The raid came after a sting operation in which undercover police officers pretended to join the church and began to buy the sacrament. However, all charges against the pair were ultimately withdrawn by a federal drug prosecutor on Dec. 15, 2005. |
| Aug 10, 2007 |
BC:
Pot Not a Police Priority, Deputy Chief Testifies at Trial
Deputy Chief Bill Naughton said the society's Cormorant Street office of the Vancouver Island Compassion Society has not generated any complaints, adding marijuana ranks behind drugs like cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin in terms of Victoria police priorities. ....Also testifying yesterday in Victoria was Senator Pierre Claude Nolin, who chaired the Senate Special Committee on Illegal Drugs, which called in 2002 for the legalization of marijuana in Canada. Nolin told the court the regulations, as they currently exist, are an obstacle to Canadians who want access to medical marijuana. He said the rules ask doctors to be "gatekeepers" for access to legal marijuana. It's a role doctors don't want, and so Canadians are being denied access to a medical product. |
| Aug 9, 2007 |
ON:
Church Argues Marijuana A Sacrament
CHURCH ARGUES MARIJUANA A SACRAMENT Parishioners Plan Charter Challenge, Say Current Policy Infringes On Their Religious Rights If some religions sip wine at the altar, others should be allowed to smoke pot. At least according to Rev. Edwin Pearson and Rev. Michel Ethier, two ordained ministers behind a proposed $25 million class action lawsuit challenging Canada's marijuana laws. |
| Aug 9, 2007 |
Roach Burn (class action suit)
The irony is too delicious. A lawyer named Roach, in this case Charles Roach, taking on the feds' reefer madness pot laws. Roach argues in a class action filed Tuesday ( August 7 ) in federal court that laws making possession of pot illegal have had no force or effect since July 2001. That's when the federal government was ordered to enact a constitutionally valid law. It still hasn't. Roach's suit asks for $25 million in compensation for persons prosecuted under pot laws. Maybe the threat of having to pay out millions in damages will finally light a fire under the feds' asses to stop with their anti-cannabis charade. We're happily holding our breath on this one. |
| Aug 3, 2007 |
Activist Spreads His Message
The journey for justice, which began in Victoria, has Magnuson rollerblading 12,000 miles to Ottawa, where his journey culminates on Remembrance Day. Many commuters may spot the activist rolling along highways and downtown streets, sporting a Canadian cannabis flag on the end of a hockey stick. |
| Jul 31, 2007 |
Drugs And The Police
In 1967, John Conroy was a clean-cut University of B.C. student and a member of the varsity swim team. It wasn't until after he graduated that he formed the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws ( NORML ) in Canada, becoming its first president....Today, an estimated 600,000 Canadians have been busted for pot possession. A recent United Nations drug report said five million Canadians smoked pot in 2004, the fifth-highest percentage of usage in the world. [ The 600,000 Canadians with criminal records was <a href="http://www.mapinc.org/newstcl/v97/n000/a008.html">true in the early 1990's,</a> but more than <a href="http://www.johnhoward.ca/document/drugs/fact/1.htm" target="_blank">1.5 million are now estimated to have criminal records</a>.] |
| Jul 18, 2007 |
Marijuana Maverick Says It's About Rights
Two weeks ago a civil suit, launched by Reimer, was thrown out of court with Ottawa Justice C. McKinnon saying that Reimer "was the author of his own misfortune."... "It's not publicity," says Reimer, who's been lighting up joints on a daily basis since he was 13. "What I want to do is to make sure people stand up for their right." With tears filling his eyes, he adds, "I love my county; it's getting less and less free all the time and it's very scary." |
| Jul 13, 2007 |
The Police Aren't Experts On Drug Use
When the renowned social scientists of the Canadian Police Association testified to a Senate committee on illicit drugs, they claimed there is lots of evidence that liberal drug policies lead to greater drug use. "Legalization and permissiveness will increase drug use and abuse substantially," a spokesman told the senators. ..The experts I listen to are scientists. "Existing research seems to indicate that there is little apparent relationship between severity of sanctions prescribed for drug use and prevalence or frequency of use," concluded a 2001 report by a panel of the National Research Council, one of the U.S. National Academies of Science, probably the most esteemed scientific body in the world. |
| Jul 11, 2007 |
CFL Gone To Pot, Ex-Player Says
A Lot Of Players In The Cfl Smoke A Lot Of Marijuana. This is the word from Sean Millington, who spent 13 seasons as a running back with the B.C. Lions, Edmonton Eskimos, Winnipeg Blue Bombers and Toronto Argonauts and who has been a member of the CBC's CFL broadcast crew off and on since 2003. ...Millington claims that, unlike NFLers, CFLers generally don't get paid enough to be able to afford drugs -- except for marijuana. |
| Jul 11, 2007 |
Legalizing Pot Makes Sense
What's really remarkable about Canada's status as a cannabis capital is that if you were to set out looking for reasons to worry about it - -- reasons that do not amount to disliking it for its own sake -- you would have an awfully hard time finding them....That would seem to leave very little, aside from the omnipresent trade and travel considerations that come from being a neighbour of the U.S., to stand logically in the way of decriminalization. |
| Jul 9, 2007 |
An Apology Required
WINNIPEG police officers were understandably dismayed that the man accused of shooting the officers in December has been released on bail, the judge having been convinced Daniell Anderson was neither a risk to the community or of fleeing. Their abusive comments, however, directed toward the judge are unacceptable and the officers must formally apologize to Court of Queen's Bench Justice Karen Simonsen. ...One officer was heard to say someone -- Daniell Anderson? -- should have been killed, while the mutterings of others called into disrepute the justice system. Said in the heat of the moment, they were nonetheless alarming remarks. |
| Jul 6, 2007 |
ON:
Police Officer Arrested During Series Of Raids
Toronto police have accused one of their own officers of helping an Eastern European organized crime group charged with importing and exporting marijuana and cocaine between Canada and the United States. |
| Jul 6, 2007 |
Pot Documentary Has Local Filmmaker On A Roll
A Kelowna man's documentary film about the marijuana industry is making waves on the film festival circuit. The Union: the business of getting high, won outstanding feature documentary honours at the Winnipeg International Film Festival last month. Next month, it is slated to appear at the Rhode Island International Film Festival. |
| Jul 5, 2007 |
ON:
Home-Grow Registry Wanted
Real estate agents and local police are working together to ensure potential homeowners don't get duped into buying a home once used in an illegal drug operation. |
| Jun 28, 2007 |
Punting Pot
Inmates Use Footballs And Baseballs To Smuggle In Drugs Guards at the Fort Saskatchewan Correctional Centre foiled a bizarre attempt to smuggle drugs in a football. On Saturday night, a prisoner doing cleanup duty triggered an alarm when he got too close to a fence line at the jail, sending guards scurrying to the scene, where they grabbed the inmate and discovered a football filled with tobacco, said Solicitor General spokesman Christine Skjerven. |
| Jun 27, 2007 |
Gatineau Officer To Remain Jailed Until Trial
A Gatineau police officer charged with possession of narcotics will be detained until his trial. At the end of a day-long bail hearing, Justice Jules Barriere ruled that Peter Vranas, 41, should not be released, to "maintain the confidence of the public in the administration of justice." |
| Jun 26, 2007 |
MB:
Local Energy-Drink Maker Pitches To Pot-Heads
Clarus Canadian Springs is carrying Bong Water Energized Sports Drinks, a line of beverages where references to marijuana and the drug subculture abound. Bong Water is the brainchild of Growth Capital Group. The drinks are made with Clarus's own spring water. Bong Water comes in four versions -- the Original Bong Water 420 Chronic Tonic, Purple Haze, Green Dreams and Rasta Cherry. The drinks are available at stores in Canada and the U.S. |
| Jun 22, 2007 |
QU: Gatineau Officer Arrested On Cocaine Charge
A Gatineau police officer has been charged with drug-related offences after more than two kilograms of cocaine was found in the car he was in late Wednesday. Peter Vranas, 41, remained calm as he was remanded yesterday. The 20-year veteran of the force will remain behind bars until his bail hearing, which is scheduled for Tuesday at the Gatineau courthouse. |