Editorial: Court system does not do justice to BC

Ask any cop about the Bacon brothers and he or she will tell you that this trio of siblings is one of the most dangerous criminal groups in Metro Vancouver.

There is a mountain of police intelligence linking the Fraser Valley brothers to arms-and-drug trafficking and to gangland slayings on our streets.

Police even took the extraordinary step of announcing that the multi-ethnic UN gang has targeted the three Bacon brothers for death, before issuing a public warning about the potential for violence.

But our judges don’t think these boys need special attention.

Two of them were released on bail recently despite police pleas about the dangers of letting them loose.

A third brother - who was arrested in August 2005 after police busted a home and seized 40 pounds of marijuana, crack cocaine, and ecstasy, along with two prohibited machine pistols, two handguns, silencers, a bullet-proof vest and nearly $100,000 in cash - was acquitted.

The judge said that the police search of a vehicle which led to the search of the house was unjustified.

It is no wonder that few British Columbians have confidence in our provincial criminal court system.

Reflecting the mounting frustration with our legal system is the recent Angus Reid Global Monitor poll, which showed that 56 per cent of British Columbians had little to no confidence in the internal operation and leadership of our criminal-court system.

The judges who let the Bacon boys free upheld the law, at least their interpretation of it.

But they did not dispense justice.

They do not have an inkling of how organized crime works, nor do they show any interest in the greater good of keeping gangsters locked up.

These thugs, aided by judges who are overly slavish to the law instead of focusing on dolling out justice, have given British Columbia an international notoriety.

The latest unflattering comment about our province comes from the venerable BBC, which trumpeted that "British Columbia is probably home to the largest concentration of organized criminal syndicates in the world."

This conclusion is derived from a statement made by Inspector Brian Cantera of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in Vancouver who believes there are 20,000 marijuana grow-ops in residential houses throughout the province.

B.C.’s Attorney General Wally Oppal says he is "upset" with the state of our court system.

That is an understatement.

We have said this before and will say it again.

We are not by any means advocating that police should be given full licence to go after whomever they want, whenever they want, without guidelines.

What is needed in our legal system is a specialized court and specialized prosecutors and judges who deal exclusively with organized crime.

This will allow judges to understand how organized crime works and why they may have to sometimes place the rights of law-abiding citizens above those of career criminals in order to allow police to effectively rid our streets of this violent menace.

Prosecutors should also be involved in the investigative stages, while police should be able to apply for warrants directly from judges, putting an end to disclosure worries.

This will curtail the extraordinary and unreasonable encumbrances, demands and impositions placed on our police and provide for a cohesive approach from inception to investigation to conviction.

Our current court system does not do justice to B.C.