Archive for February, 2007

EDMONTON SUN

Original

A police internal affairs probe has wrapped up into allegations a school resource officer obliged a teen’s request to get zapped with a stun gun to see what it felt like.

Edmonton Police Service spokesman Staff Sgt. Greg Alcorn said the alleged incident happened about a year ago.

The allegation is that the officer used a Taser on the youth at the youth’s request, said Alcorn.

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EDMONTON SUN

Original 

There are still questions and concerns surrounding a Dec. 2 police drug training program. It saw drug users - including aboriginal sex-trade workers - recruited to show up high so police could study them in the wake of proposed tough new federal laws cracking down drug-impaired drivers.

The training sessions saw nine drug users show up at Edmonton’s Metis Child and Family Services Society, 10437 123 St., to be observed by 24 law enforcement officials including a Crown prosecutor and members of the RCMP and Edmonton Police Service.
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EDMONTON SUN

Original

Ever since Sun columnist Kerry Diotte wrote his exclusive column last week about how aboriginal sex-trade workers were recruited to get high on drugs so they could be studied by cops in a training exercise, the piece has come under fire not because of its content, but because of its author.

There were, sadly, some Edmontonians (including a few police officers and some journalists at radio station 630 CHED), who concluded that because the column ran under Diotte’s byline, it had been entirely made up by a columnist with a grudge against the Edmonton Police Service in light of the Overtime scandal.

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EDMONTON SUN

Original

An Edmonton MLA wants answers from the Solicitor General over police experiments that recruited drug users to be studied while high on illicit substances.

“I hope Fred Lindsay listens to my message or he’ll have a mess on his hands,” Edmonton-McClung MLA Mo Elsalhy told the Sun yesterday.

Elsalhy said he’s had two calls from constituents upset at the way the experiment has come across to the public.

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Original

EDMONTON (CP) - A judge who led an inquiry into the deaths of two men during a raid by Edmonton police says he can’t recommend ways to avoid similar deaths in the future.

Provincial court Judge L. J. Wenden says there isn’t enough evidence to determine why the two fell to their deaths from a fourth-floor apartment balcony on Sept. 24, 1999. During the raid, police threw explosive flash-bang grenades into the apartment from outside as a team of officers used a ramming device to break down the door.

The two victims, Adam Miller, 21, and Huu Pham, 15, died of their injuries.

In his report Wenden says the raid wasn’t precisely timed and could have been better planned.

He recommends that members of the police tactical team should train more and should only be used in high-risk situations where there is a potential for violence.
© The Canadian Press 2007

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EDMONTON SUN

Original

You have to have thick skin to be a journalist. But the reaction by police and some of my media colleagues to last Friday’s column appalled me.

I received a tip from an upset person who alleged that the Edmonton police contacted a social worker at Metis Child and Family Services to round up some drug addicts so they could be used in a law enforcement study. There was a hush-hush EPS internal inquiry into it, said the tipster.

The study was meant to train cops to recognize people impaired by drugs in light of a proposed federal law to target drug-addled drivers.

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EDMONTON SUN

Original

The mother of a slain prostitute says police training that recruited drugged-up addicts so cops could study them sounds like “just another level of exploitation.”

“I can’t imagine that it would have served any useful purpose. It creates conditions in which people participate in harmful behaviour,” said Kathy King yesterday.

King’s 23-year-old daughter Cara King was found dead in a Strathcona County canola field in 1997. Her death is being probed by Project KARE, a task force looking into the deaths and disappearances of 72 people who led high-risk lifestyles.

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EDMONTON SUN

Original

Here’s a question for the Edmonton Police Service regarding the disturbing story first reported by Sun columnist Kerry Diotte in yesterday’s Sun about drug addicts being recruited to get high so they can be studied by cops as part of a training program.

If this exercise was entirely legitimate and on the up-and-up, why didn’t the EPS simply admit it when Diotte was looking for answers this week?

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EDMONTON SUN

Original

The Edmonton Police Service has launched an internal investigation into allegations that aboriginal sex-trade workers were recruited to get high on drugs so they could be studied by cops in a training exercise.

The training was aimed at helping police enforce proposed federal laws that would would target drivers who are impaired by drugs, say officials.

A whistle-blower who contacted the Sun, and did not want to be named, said the subjects had been recruited at the request of police by an Edmonton social worker who helps reform street prostitutes and is connected to the Metis Child and Family Services Society, Edmonton.

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Upgrading Wordpress and fixing some other issues with permalinking and the tags plugin.  Everything should go smoothly.

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