Notes From a Prairie Silence

Creative non-fiction by Natasha Laurence

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Notes From a Prairie Silence Second Edition Copyright 2012 Natasha Laurence All rights reserved

There are things not solved in this town, though tomorrow came. There are things time passing can never make come true. We live in an occupied country, misunderstood. Justice will take us millions of intricate moves. Thinking for Berky, William Stafford

Time turns everything into a story. A touch, a laugh, a conversation, a fist meeting a face, a truth spoken, a lie returned - every second lived is full of the raw material for time and its stories. Time can heal through stories, told and re-told, the sharp edges softening under its constant faithful flow, their ability to cut deeply dulled by the bumbling kindness of new thoughts, new actions and new stories. We count on this gift of time. We wait, with varying degrees of patience, for its power to comfort by dulling, smoothing, simplifying. By the easy animal choice to breathe and to breathe again, we trust our lives to its hands. We hope the happy ending is being written in time, the final story that will make sense of our whole collection of stories. We hope. We breathe. We wait. We live our stories. But we forget that time is impersonal, unable to care about our happy endings, our secret dreams or our private pain. Time passes, that's all. And as it passes, its apparent generosity can become its biggest threat. What if the sharp edges meant something? What if the pain was important and we missed its lesson in our restless waiting for the tic-toc relief of time? What if we failed to notice a truth that could heal us?

What Love Says I am a mountain. Not a prairie laid out as far as the eye can see, beauty passive before you easily explored each step no different than the one before taking you nowhere. I am a mountain. If you hope to know me, mean it. There is nothing in the beginning that resembles the end. If you set out careless, laughing confident that what you see, small enough to fit in your eye, is the flatness of simplicity and the pretty distant white is taken to be, 'Oh, the snow! How lovely' You will not survive. I am a mountain. Somewhere along the way before you leave the forest behind for the heights and rocks you will falter your feet blistered, your muscles whining. You might convince yourself 'the forest is the mountain,' build a fire, rest your feet, then turn and head back home. I will watch you from above. But if you set out knowing no heart that did not hold in the first steps

the seriousness of the journey, no mind that did not see the distant white and already feel the cold, no body that did not carry in it, burning like a flame, the desire to succeed, has ever felt the glory of the world spread out beneath its feet. I will meet you there.

For four years I worked with Edmonton's street newspaper, Our Voice, the last two years as Managing Editor. I left the last position in February 2003, after an agreement to disagree with the organization that funded the paper. At the time I was exhausted. I didn't have the will to fight, or the wits to negotiate. I walked away taking my confusion, anger and sadness with me, closing the door firmly behind me with the belief that it was over. During that time I wrote a poem, my last contribution to Our Voice as Editor - What Love Says. It is a message about the awful choices love requires and the risks it demands - a warning to myself and others because I believed that it was true. The trouble is when I wrote the poem, six months ago, I didn't realize how much I had yet to learn about what it meant. My words came back to haunt me, though, as if, in them, I had written my own parole order, the conditions of my freedom, ignorantly conceived yet binding - what love says. As far as I was concerned it said too much. It said: 'Forgive', when forgiveness seemed like the smiling judge who let the murderer go free. It said: 'Trust', when the idea of trust felt like the bared teeth of a mouse in the face of the family cat. It said: 'Hope', when hope appeared to be nothing but the punch line of an unnecessarily long joke. It said: 'Love', but what it really meant was act. Get up. Keep moving. Get up. Keep moving, even though, to me, moving seemed like the useless spinning of a tape long after the reel was empty. And then there was the haunting. The whispering. The nagging feeling that I'd forgotten something important, even though I wasn't sure what it was. The haunting grew until it became a constant eerie presence in every room I entered, a squeezing pressure always around my heart, a herd of butterflies that would not leave my stomach.

It said: 'Do something! Act! Love!' But it never said anything specific like: "Go to the store, buy five cartons of milk, and give them to the first person you see" or: "If you take the No. 5 bus, and get off five stops after the Royal Bank building you will meet the person who will tell you what to do next." It left all those decisions to me. It has always left those decisions to me. And I have always tried to make them to the best of my ability, seldom certain that where I was was where I was supposed to be, or that what I was doing was what I was supposed to be doing. Except for those rare, special times when I knew that the universe was lined up; the piece fit the puzzle, slipping gently and surely into place, perfect. That was Our Voice to me. I couldn't figure out what it meant when it was over. I didn't know what love said then except those things I mentioned earlier: forgive, trust, hope, act. So. I am a writer. Maybe to write is to act, even though, at the moment, it seems a hollow comparison, like to describe the music is to play the flute, or to paint the water is to swim. I'm not sure, but for now I trust writing is what I need to do. In the final months of my time with Our Voice, I was obsessed with the battle for justice. I saw enemies everywhere, real and imagined; all of them larger than life. I didn't sleep much; I didn't eat well; I smoked more than I should have. You would have had to hit me with a two-by-four to get me to stop. Luckily, I suppose, some one had a two-by-four handy, and they hit me with it. I stopped. Often now, during this time after the blow, I wonder about that obsession, that dark vision with its ferocious anger and undertow of despair. Where did it come from? Where was it trying to get me to go? And by what strange process did it take such full possession of my life?

January 13, 2004 Dear reader: We are about to embark on a journey toward understanding. It is only fair to warn you, here at the beginning, that I have no idea what this understanding will look like. At the moment all I have are thoughts, memories and experiences - a thousand pieces of a puzzle spread before me and the determination to figure out how they fit together to form a picture. It would help if I had the box the pieces came in- the one with the picture on the lid - to give me some idea what the finished product should look like. At one time, not long ago, I was almost certain I did. It was only the painful and embarrassing experience of being caught with mismatched pieces all jammed together to form no recognizable picture at all that I finally faced the fact: the pieces I had to work with didn't seem to go with picture on the box I'd been given. That was not a good moment in my life. When I regained consciousness, I realized I would have to start from scratch - all the pieces of the puzzle separate on the table - and attempt, if possible, to put them together properly once and for all. From that hope and to that end I have set the following simple rules: - Trust that it will make sense. - Only when the pieces fit together without force may they be put together. - If any two pieces fit together in the manner described above, they must be trusted as a whole and under no circumstances may they be divided. - There will be no hiding of pieces that don't seem to fit. - There will be no creating false pieces to fill empty spaces. So there you have it: the puzzle pieces, the goal and the rules.

January 15, 2004 Things aren't going that well. All day yesterday and most of today I wanted to die. To be honest I still do. Or as I read on a suicide web page - I don't want to die, I just want the suffering to stop. That's true, actually. It made me feel better to read it. Now I just have to figure out how to get that to happen without dying. Which, of course, is my problem. They talked a lot about depression on the suicide web page, because, apparently, no one commits suicide unless they suffer from an illness called depression. Healthy people do not kill themselves. I want to. I must be sick. But that's OK, in fact that's good, because sickness can be medicated, thank God. The problem is I'm on anti-depressants already. Maybe I need to think about what happened yesterday and today that might have led to the intense pain I want to escape by dying. Oh shoot, this is where it gets complicated. I have to think 'puzzle pieces'. Pick one, just one, put it down on the table and name it. John is on the cover of the January issue of Edmonton Street News. I recognized him as soon as I saw the paper last night, looking up at me from a mat on the floor of a warming center for the homeless. That's the cover story and there's John. I wanted to wave but, of course, I realized he couldn't see me - it's only a picture of the man, not the man himself. That's a good sign I'm not totally off my rocker - I know the difference. Anyway. There he was. The last time I heard about John he was in the hospital recovering from a heart infection; he looked good, seemed happy and I meant to visit him. I even phoned to see which room he was in. But I didn't go. I think I care about John because he comes to my mind so often. Yet I couldn't make the effort to visit him. Why? Even when I think about it that familiar feeling starts. The aching in my chest like a ten-pound weight is sitting on my heart. I have to breath quickly to make sure I don't stop breathing altogether. I have to remind myself that this too shall pass. John is one of my first memories of the inner city. I'd just started working in the drop-in as relief staff for the summer. I was way over my head in a world I knew nothing about - showers, laundry, coffee, toothpaste and razors all provided free of charge to a large, diverse collection of inner-city people, some pure street - chronically homeless and addicted, some poor for any of a multitude of other possible reasons: age, injury, illness, bad luck, bad management, bad government.

A beautiful young woman with such a gentle face and manner that she seemed completely out of place in her surroundings asked me for a clean shirt for her brother. And just like a clerk at the Bay on a quiet day for sales I said: "I'm sorry, we don't have clothing here." She explained very patiently that her brother had blood on his shirt and he needed a clean one. That's when I met John. He appeared behind her, long hair hanging over his face, staggering and filthy... with blood on his shirt. "Ahhhhh...." I said, " Ohhhh.... right....ahhhh...I'll be right back.... don't go away...blood....yes....shirt....." And I rushed out of the drop-in, muttering to myself, into the back room where all the donations for the thrift store were kept for pick-up. I found a shirt. That's where the memory ends. I only remember it because I was so impressed with the woman's gentleness and concern for her wild-man brother. John himself only became real to me two years later. It happened slowly, incident by incident, deciphered phrase by deciphered phrase. His language was not my language. When I said love, he thought, maybe, sex. When I said friendship, his eyes narrowed, looking for the angle. When he said he was the son of the devil I heard: I hate myself. I don't deserve to live. Sometimes when he came to visit, he would read his favorite psalm - Psalm 88. Pulling a ragged paper-back Bible out of his pocket he would begin in a slow, deliberate voice, his head bent over the book, his eyes squinting down on the page: "Lord God, my Savior, I cry out all day and at night I come before you. Hear my prayer; listen to my cry for help!" It was hard not to notice his hands as he ran his finger along the tiny lines of print - dirty, calloused, swollen from fighting. "So many troubles have fallen on me that I am close to death. I am like all the others who are about to die; all my strength is gone." His hair fell over his face and the smell drifted up from his clothing - unwashed, slept in for days, every fiber ground through with dirt, blood and alcohol. "I am abandoned among the dead; I am like the slain lying in their graves, whom you have forgotten completely, who are beyond your help. You have thrown me into the depths of the tomb." Here, usually, he would pause and sigh, "into the darkest and deepest pit." He discovered this psalm in the Remand Centre, a place he spent quite a bit of time. Always he would call and leave messages: "Did you go to church on Sunday? Are you looking after your kids?" Once he told me when he looked down from the fourth floor window in the morning at all of us going to work, he thought how much he wished he could live like we did, hold down a job, raise a family, but he didn't know how. "Your anger lies heavy on me, and I am crushed beneath its waves. You have caused my friends to abandon me; you have made me repulsive to them." "This is true," he would say at this point, "this is so true." "I am closed in and cannot escape; my eyes are weak from

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suffering. Lord, every day I call to you, and lift up my hands to you in prayer! Do you perform miracles for the dead? Do they rise up and praise you? Is your constant love spoken of in the grave, or your faithfulness in the place of destruction?" Off and on, he believed that when he got out of jail he would work in a church, sweeping the floor. He would keep the church clean and they would give him a place to stay, but he was never sober long enough. Every time he was released back on to the street with nothing but the clothes he'd been arrested in, he ran into people he knew and it started all over again. He became real to me by showing me his scars and wounds: his leg bruised and swollen after an attack by a group of teens who called him a "fuckin' Indian" as they whipped him with a chain; the back of his head protruding and bloody from being hit with a pipe; the bite-size chunk missing from his forearm after a fight. "Your furious anger rolls over me; your terrible attacks destroy me. All day long they surround me like a flood; they close in on me from all sides. You have made even my closest friends abandon me. Darkness is the only companion I have left." When he became real to me I realized how lost he was - how like a child in the wilderness. Seeing John on the cover of the paper reminded me and for some reason that's painful. That pain is a piece of the puzzle.

January 17, 2004 This morning while I was having coffee, Leona stopped by to tell me that she had finally received her disposition letter from the Edmonton Police Service; they found no grounds for her complaint against them. This is interesting because over two years ago, I saw a police officer strike Leona on the face, breaking her nose, while she was seated, handcuffed, on the pavement. I just happened to be walking by as the incident unfolded. Several minutes later, the same officer completely lost his temper, grabbed her by the neck and forced her down on the seat of the police car striking at her as she screamed for help. The incident still bothers me, partly because of the violence and partly because there was no justice for Leona. She was charged with assaulting an officer, paid a lawyer $4000 to prepare for a trial the police forgot to attend, the charge was dismissed and the EPS in investigating the incident found nothing wrong in the officer's actions. It was shortly after that I developed an intense dislike for the police. Of course, I'd never admit to it. I would say, as sincerely as possible that, in fact, I don't dislike the police. I know there are good police officers - it's a question of accountability. And I trust people to believe me.

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It doesn't seem that they do. They seem to think I dislike the police. Well, OK. I do. I would like to say, in my defense, that I have good reason. The first is Ed, a former Our Voice vendor and street person. Threeand-a-half years ago, Ed told me how two EPS officers had taken him from a restaurant on Jasper Avenue while he was waiting for his order. They took him to their storefront office two doors down, and behind a partition made him get on his knees and put his head against the wall. Then they hit him on the shoulders and neck with some kind of stick or club; he wasn't sure what exactly because he couldn't see. They told him to stay off Jasper Avenue or they'd break his legs, then they let him go back to the restaurant. Ed showed me the rectangular bruises on his shoulders. To be honest, I didn't know whether to believe him - he's a homeless street addict, after all. But he swore it was true, that's what had happened. And everything except the actual beating could be checked out - the restaurant owner and the officers themselves confirmed the day, the time, the order, the walk from the restaurant to the office. It was just the beating that couldn't be confirmed. There were no witnesses and the officers said they didn't do it. They simply took Ed from the restaurant as an act of "proactive policing", you know, just wanting to talk, visit a little, see what was up with good ol' Ed. The bruises could have come from anywhere. From today's Edmonton Journal: Everybody lies, but that doesn't matter because nobody listens.

January 18, 2004 I had to quit writing yesterday; something happens when I think about the police assaulting people. I can feel it happening now: the heaviness in my body, the constriction of my chest, I start to cry... 'Such a baby you are,' I tell myself, 'Crying. Crying about what? It's not your problem, is it? Forget it, for God's sake, give everyone around you a break, give yourself a break.' That's when I really start to cry, because everything seems so hopeless. So, I quit writing. Today, I decided to be happy. It's a beautiful winter day: the sun shining, blue sky, white snow; it's like living in a piece of Delft china; perfect. I went for coffee with my partner, Gaston. We read the paper in the Italian coffee shop at our table in the corner. Actually, it's my table; I just let him share it with me sometimes. I started sitting at that table almost two years ago and every day since, rain or shine, snow or hail - I've had a latte at that table in that coffee shop. I even went

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there on New Years Day, peering into the darkened interior from the empty parking lot, hoping against hope a light would come on inside. That was embarrassing. Holy shoot, that was embarrassing! I suddenly realized what a loser I must look like: New Years day and there I was hanging around the locked door of a closed coffee shop. In the snow. That's when I started looking around as if I'd lost something, sometimes scanning the horizon, sometimes searching the ground at my feet walking faster and faster until I'd reached the safety of the public sidewalk - anyone could be walking on the public sidewalk on New Years Day, going to visit their family, say, or any number of their large group of friends. It was only when I reached the sidewalk that I noticed another one of the regulars parked across the street, gazing mournfully toward the cafe through the frosted window of his car. Then I didn't feel so bad. I recognized a piece of the puzzle, community. Today, though, I decided to be happy. But wait! Don't jump to the conclusion that I'm saying happiness is just a choice - that you can just decide and then you are as if we can all skip merrily through life never seeing or feeling the down side - suffering, sickness and death - even when we're up to our eyeballs in it personally. I am definitely not saying that. I don't think it's humanly possible and anyone who says it is should be ... I was going to say shot, but that's not very Christian... how about should be forced to watch a two hour film full of violence and cruelty while eating popcorn and drinking pop...oh, right, most of us already do that on a weekly basis. So when I say happiness is a choice I am not suggesting denial or desensitization. I'm suggesting making the conscious effort to notice and nurture the beautiful, the kind, the peaceful, the just.

January 20, 2004 All morning I've been walking around calling myself names: self-centered, self-absorbed, nasty, lazy, anti-social. And I've been calling other people names: jerks, losers, freaks.... Let's call this piece anger. One thing I've noticed is that angry people are difficult to love. If a seventy-year old man who spends half his time homeless or between homes, whose teeth fall out when he yells, who wears faded suits, a rumpled over-coat and carries a small plastic suitcase that doubles as his briefcase, who blows up at a moments notice, ranting on and on about some damn thing that no one can even understand -it usually has something to do with how your left arm is longer than your right - who deliberately gets himself kicked out of meetings as a matter

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of principle - if such a man, let's say, happened to be in your sphere of influence, what would you do? What if the same seventy-year old man thought, alternately, that you were the greatest editor ever and the worst he had ever seen? What if just when you were used to being the greatest, he decided you were the worst and told you so at the top of his voice in a crowded room? What would you do? I would start to cry. In fact, that's exactly what I did when it happened to me; then I ran to the safety of the bathroom where I sobbed and felt sorry for myself for approximately 15 minutes. I thought of every time I'd helped that old fart move his stuff, all the work I'd put into that paper, how much I had to put with and for what? for what? and I sobbed into a paper towel because nobody loved me. The next morning the same man came to my office and gave me a handwritten note. It was a quote from the Bible, an inspiring quote but very difficult to read due to the seventy-year old hands that had written it. He told me he was going to bring me a quote everyday and I should keep up the good work. Then he smiled and his teeth didn't fall out.

January 21, 2004 All day I couldn't write. I went with my daughter to Habitat for Humanity Restore to buy paint. When I got home I painted our dining room wall deep almost-navy-blue purple. It looks good, I think, but when I sat down in front of my computer beside my purple wall, I couldn't write. Nothing came to mind. I edited other things, I wandered around the house, I lay down for a nap. It wasn't until hours later, after I'd gone to bed for the night, that I thought of something important. That something was: "Do something! Act!" So, I'm writing it down.

January 22, 2004 Anger again. Today I went to the library to find a specific article from the Edmonton Sun. In theory it should have been in one of the June 2002 issues saved to microfiche. So I searched them all, page after page of murder and mayhem, interspersed with cars and computers for sale and the occasional nearly naked woman. I didn't find the article, but what I did find is a source for true despair -the news business. I'm afraid I take the news very seriously. Maybe because it shapes, it twists, it turns and in the end defines our lives for us. So

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who's telling you the news, how they're saying it, choosing it, illustrating it, headlining it are very important things to know. Who are they? What do they talk about over supper? Who do they drink with? What makes them laugh? What makes them cry? What makes them very angry? What do they believe in? If you know these things you know how to read their version of the news. Which brings me to my anger. As I was sitting in the library coffee shop, I saw a shabby man, just outside the window, approach two young, attractive women who were striding with intent down the sidewalk. I assume he asked them for money. I don't believe they looked at him, except for a quick dismissive glance between words. They walked on and the man stood there for a couple of seconds with his hand still partially extended. Then he turned and wandered off down the sidewalk. He was invisible. The group at the table next to me was talking about a plan for development of something or other, and the need to get what's his name on board. It was a serious conversation, not unlike many I've overheard in coffee shops. The thing is I was pre-occupied with the invisible man. My son, Cody, told me about a song he'd written, Two Minutes - Hate. He explained that it was based on the book 1984 by George Orwell. I am ashamed to admit I haven't read it, but from what I understand it's about a very controlled society, a society with clear and enforced class distinctions and very prescribed ways to think. I mention this only because for a split second when Cody was explaining the premise to me, I saw the invisible man on the street, I saw the pages of news about violence and death and I saw the police. At the same time I heard someone say to me in a very loud voice: BE QUIET! If the news is only written by people and for people to whom part of the world is invisible how accurate is that news? How relevant? How dangerous?

January 23, 2004 Today I was thrown off by the headline in this morning's Edmonton Journal: Five floors to death - Teen prisoner dies after plunging down courthouse elevator shaft. The beginning of the article reads: "A 16-year-old killed Thursday in a fall down an elevator shaft at the law courts building fought with courthouse guards earlier this week and had to be subdued with a jolt from a Taser gun, sources say. After a hearing Thursday morning, the youth, handcuffed and shackled and escorted by two guards was leaving courtroom 444 when he plummeted five floors down an elevator used to transport prisoners."

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Later in the article the vice president of the company that maintains the courthouse elevators is quoted as saying: "All we know is that when we came down there, one of the prisoners was in handcuffs and there was a lot of damage to the elevator door.... It's like a plate glass window. If you hit it hard enough, you will go through it." Those words create a picture I couldn't find in any other media source - everyone else was saying the boy had accidentally walked into an open elevator shaft - like the elevator doors opened before the elevator was there and the boy walked in. Two different pictures of the same incident. I'll let you know what they're saying tomorrow.

January 26, 2004 Three days later. All weekend I pushed everything back in my mind to concentrate on life. It was very, very difficult, especially after reading the Saturday paper. It described the kid who died, Kyle Young, and quoted the young offender who was in a near-by holding cell; he said Kyle kept calling out that he was hungry: "I want some food," he yelled over and over again. His pleas were ignored by court security officers. "I want some f-ing food," Young finally shouted. Two security guards went inside Young's cell, the youth said. One grabbed the shackled teen by the back of the neck, pushed him out the cell and pinned him against the wall. "They would push him up against the wall, then sort of pull him back and then push him again," said the youth, who can not be identified because he is also a young offender. The teen said Young didn't appear to be fighting back and kept saying: "All I want is some food, man." The officers walked Young around the corner to where the elevator was, and the witness lost sight of them. He said he could still hear loud banging sounds. "Then I heard a big bang," he said. "I was sitting on a metal seat, and I felt that move." The teen said he stood up and pressed his face to the plastic window of his cell. He said he heard a man yelling, "Oh, my god." Then he heard someone say: "Thank god, I caught you." The teen witness said when the guards came back around the corner one was holding his nose, as if someone had struck him. Someone yelled to call 911. He and several other prisoners were then handcuffed together and taken downstairs to holding cells, says the teen, who was later released.

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Lorena Young (Kyle's mother) was adamant Friday her son, who didn't weigh "120 pounds soaking wet," couldn't have kicked in the doors himself.. The police released a statement today about the elevator at the courthouse. They said there was no discernable damage. None. The elevator was fine. Every media outlet called this contradictory to earlier reports, but the police declined to discuss the matter any further. Holy Shit! That just kills me. Did anyone in the media get to see the elevator doors. Did anyone see the elevator doors except the police? The elevator maintenance people did - they said it was badly damaged - they were afraid when they were removing the body that the door would fall. I am increasingly isolated. By choice. That's the strangest part of it - it's a self-imposed isolation. Somewhere along the line I decided no one understands. Therefore I can't speak to them. It's kind of like a temper tantrum of cosmic proportions. That's the easy answer anyway. The harder answer is that my fellow human beings scare the hell out of me. I just don't know how to take them. They don't make any sense. I can be having this conversation that I think is meaningful, about important things that we all should believe in, and I can get the impression whoever it is I'm talking to agrees with me. It's only later I realize they weren't being completely honest. They actually thought I was a raving lunatic. It's an important distinction. Then again, maybe I'm too sensitive. Isolation is a piece of the puzzle although as I write I hear many voices telling me to stop feeling sorry for myself, my isolation is, at least, my own choice. One of those voices comes from Marcel, legally blind, with some type of cerebral palsy and a childlike intelligence, pushing his shopping cart with his fold-out stool and his stack of papers down the Avenue. Destination Blockbuster Video. He sat outside the exit door selling the paper, not just for the money but also for the contact with people, the sense of purpose and the independence. Unfortunately he would take his money, buy beer, get drunk and end up in all kinds of trouble. I'm sure those actions had something to do with the puzzle piece isolation.

January 27, 2004 Action. I believe in action. In fact it used to be difficult for me not to act. Once on the corner of my street I saw a woman being beaten. She was a thin woman, probably a prostitute, wearing a

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flowered dress. The person who was beating her was a large woman in a wheel chair. This was made possible by the fact that the thin woman was either very high or very drunk. She fell and the large woman started punching her in the head. She staggered to her feet and right into traffic where she fell and lay in the middle of the street. I was waiting at the stop sign for a break in traffic and I watched the whole thing unfold. But could I just watch? No. I couldn't. I had to go get the woman off the street. Then I had to make sure the large woman left her alone. So many people watched me do that and I completely understand why. It's because where I live if you get involved you could be badly hurt. I only learned that over time. After I'd seen people stabbed, beaten, kicked. After I'd seen how much anger can lurk under addiction and mental illness, how much despair, how much self-hatred. I know now someone could hurt me and not even realize until later that they'd done it. That's important to know. Realizing this over time convinced me that unless we care for people at every stage of their life, from the tiniest baby to the most ancient grandmother, unless we do what we can for everyone, no one is safe. It also taught me that, if a safe and healthy society is our goal, enforcement doesn't work - from what I've seen high caliber enforcement only makes the situation worse. Which could explain why me coming to work in Our Voice Distribution was like Edith Bunker suddenly appearing in NYPD Blue. I couldn't lose my motherly ways just because I wasn't at home much any more. Do you have your mitts? You should do up that jacket. OK, here's a dollar...all right two, don't spend it all in one place.... Are you eating properly? Did you get enough sleep? Did you get any sleep? Where are you sleeping now, anyway? Oh, my...I see... Maybe you should take it easy on that drinking for a while. OK, here's a dollar...all right, two...You sold how many papers? No kidding, great job! You want how many more? You have no money left? Ah, I see...OK just this once...do you need a bag? ...and then what happened? No, I mean after the accident/illness/abuse but before the fourth time you were homeless/in jail/in the hospital? Oh my, my goodness, no kidding, no kidding.....really.... Who hit you? Are you sure? Did you swear at them? Oh my...Do you want me to call someone? Well... do you have your mitts? You should do up that jacket... I spent a lot of time crying in those days. Then I toughened up. That's not true, actually. Then I quit Distribution. It was all about Joe, in the end. For some reason I will never

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understand, Joe got to me. Maybe it was because I'd been warned about him - the renegade vendor - wily as a coyote, stubborn as a mule and slippery as a snake. I got a telephone call, shortly after I'd started - a report of a "Joe" sighting. He was out there, and, now, thanks to the caller, I knew where, selling under the influence while under suspension for selling under the influence. It was my job, apparently, to stop him. What? I'm supposed to go down there and catch him in the act? Will he be angry? Will he harm me? After I take his badge what do I do? How about next time, next time for sure, when someone calls I'll be right on it. I'll nab him once and for all, really I will. A few days later when I actually met Joe, after he came to the office to sort out his suspension troubles, I was so pleasantly surprised I believe I never got over it. It was like expecting Charles Manson and meeting Mr. Rogers down on his luck. On the other hand maybe he got to me because I'd never before met anyone so quietly dedicated to two seemingly incompatible goals: the destruction of his physical self and the preservation of his self-respect. He was as dedicated to his addiction as he was to being the best damn vendor that ever existed, in spite of the rules. Unfortunately, one of the only three rules for vendors is: I will not sell under the influence of drugs or alcohol. This rule was created in the early history of the paper to put an end to drunken vendors harassing the public and giving Our Voice a bad name. Given that a large portion of people who live on the street are addicted to one thing or another, it was one of the most difficult rules to enforce. I always liked to approach it from the "spirit of the law" angle, meaning: whatever you do, don't harass the public, be respectful at all times. PLEASE GOD, DO NOT HARASS THE PUBLIC! According to my reading of the spirit of the law, Joe was nowhere near a problem. My reading, unfortunately, was up for interpretation. To complicate matters, Joe rarely told the truth about his activities, unless he was absolutely sure it wasn't going to lead to any negative consequences. This drove some people so crazy they couldn't talk to him without yelling. In my estimation, Joe's lies were, on the 'Lies I Have Encountered in My Lifetime' scale, with one being the whitest and ten being the blackest, somewhere between 0 and 1: almost harmless to everyone but Joe himself. But there are many possible perceptions and opinions and the challenge is to find a livable balance. With Joe there didn't seem to be one. Some in the Our Voice community were dedicated to the no-selling-underthe-influence rule and Joe was dedicated to selling the paper in spite of it. A battle was inevitable. As luck would have it, it was a battle fought mostly underground. Joe was suspended. I, as Distribution Coordinator, was not to sell him any papers. Joe was seen vending on the south side; then

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he was seen vending on the north side. All this was in spite of a more recently minted rule: "Any vendor who sells papers to a suspended vendor - will in like manner be suspended". Obviously, there was a leak somewhere, a gaping hole in the walls of Our Voice security. When I was caught red-handed selling Joe papers right in the Distribution office, I knew my time was up. The crucial moment is frozen in my memory - the office door opening, the Managing Editor sticking his head in just in time to see the unmistakable hand-off, the silence descending upon the room, the words echoing: "Laurence, can I see you in my office?", and the door closing again. Selling papers to Joe was complete insubordination. But, in the end, I had to fire myself because no one else had the heart to do it. At Joe's funeral, two months later, several vendors, during their eulogies, admitted selling papers to Joe themselves. Maybe it was the feeling of sanctuary the church gave them or maybe it was the thought that Joe was somewhere, just out of sight, listening, I'm not sure. But whatever it was, the service brought out a rebellion of honesty, admissions of friendship and loyalty, and, created, for a moment anyway, a very strong sense of community.

January 28, 2004 Today I went to a fatality inquiry - kind of a gloomy thing to do - but I was curious. A 42-year-old man died in the EPS cells two years ago and I wanted to know how and why. So I went to the inquiry. It turns out that the man died of methanol poisoning. That's what the coroner's report said. There were high traces of methanol in his tissue. The coroner himself couldn't be there, due to other engagements, so the chief investigator read to us from the report. Then he called his witnesses - all seven of them from the Edmonton Police Service - five sworn and two contract employees. They told us that, on Oct. 26 2002, according to their records, Marvin was slightly intoxicated, very co-operative, then belligerent and aggressive, then tired, then dead. They told us that Marvin underwent these changes over a period of 15-and-a-half hours, while in police custody in a variety of locations, from an apartment building to the North East Station to the Downtown Division cells. Marvin's mother and sister were at the inquiry. Today was their first contact with the investigator. He hadn't spoken to them before, because, as he explained to the judge, they hadn't called. In fact, when I walked into the courtroom he asked if I was Marvin's family. The two women sat in front of me quietly watching the proceedings. It was only as the morning progressed that I realized they

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knew as little about what had happened to Marvin as I did. When the CBC reporter asked them what methanol was, they shrugged their shoulders and looked confused, exactly the same as I had done three seconds earlier. When the third last constable testified that Marvin was sound asleep and snoring, Marvin's sister turned to me and whispered: "But I thought the other one said he'd responded to her. That was at the same time." I could only nod in agreement. Then I said, "And I thought they said he was friendly and co-operative and then they said he was belligerent and abusive...." We both shook our heads and shrugged. After all the officers had testified, and the investigator had explained that he had two video tapes provided by the EPS - one the testimony of the man who was in the cell with Marvin when he died and one 25 minutes of out-takes of the video surveillance of Marvin's cell - no audio, just the moving pictures. He explained that he didn't feel it was necessary to view the tapes, they were pretty straightforward, he had seen them himself. The judge, on the other hand, thought it might be a good idea to watch them - for the sake of the family and the public. The judge also thought it might be good to hear from the coroner in person - if that could be arranged. Then the investigator told the judge that before court Marvin's sister had raised a couple of concerns with him. One was that the family had never received Marvin's belongings. They'd gone to the station but no one could find Marvin's things. She was hoping the judge could help them with that and she also had a couple of questions about the evidence. So Marvin's sister stood up and addressed the judge. She was wondering about the discrepancies in testimony. The judge listened to her, sympathized, and offered her a copy of the binder full of testimony to read during the lunch break, with the promise that after lunch the court would view the videos and, hopefully, things would become clear. That's when I left. The court recessed for lunch and I went home. I thought maybe I should stay and watch the videos. I thought maybe I should talk to Marvin's sister and Marvin's mother, ask about a possible history of mental illness, ask how he was feeling before the incident, ask if he had any history of abusing solvents - were they aware when the police took Marvin in that day, that he'd ingested methanol, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. I just didn't want to know. Because Marvin was dead. The inquiry was just about over, and there are some silences too deep to penetrate. Other things I remember from the day: the quilted grey-blue coat of Marvin's mother and her pink and white crocheted hat. The look on Marvin's sister's face when she whispered: "Are you from CBC? I don't want my name used. I work for the government." And the look on her face when she walked away from the podium after questioning the judge. Two totally different looks - one afraid, one almost triumphant. Today I finally realized I'm not a journalist.

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I quit. I was an accidental journalist anyway - a sheep in wolves clothing, but for some strange reason - stubborn pride or desire to be what I'm not - I keep forgetting. I keep taking my disguise seriously. I have only one defense. Most of my adult life I was a housewife with a large imagination. Sooner or later, something had to give. Going to work in the inner city, it seems to me, was that something. In order to survive I used two key pieces of Important Advice for the Timid: 'Fake it until you make it' and 'When in doubt - ask questions.' The first came to me from a Doctor of Psychology, herself an introvert of the scientific kind, who was terrified of speaking in public. In essence her advice means: just pretend you are, and soon you will be. In my experience, this is advice that almost works seventy percent of the time. A leopard can't really change it's spots- the best it can do is put good used clothing over most of them, every now and then. The second piece of advice came from a high school math teacher, who, noticing my teenage shyness, had the good will to give me a tip I've used ever since: ask questions. That gets people talking which gives you time to get over your shyness. If you're lucky, once they start talking they won't stop and you'll never have to say a word. This one works really well. It works especially well if you really want to know the answers. The consequences of these two pieces of advice lived out led me to believe I was a journalist. I would ask questions. People would tell me stories. I would ask more questions. People would tell me more stories. Those stories led to questions that could only be answered by phone calls to people in positions of accountability. Those phone calls usually made me angry, which spawned the belief that the stories needed to be told. And, fortune of fortunes, I worked for a street newspaper, so who better to tell them than I? Of course, not being a journalist, I would just have to fake it, in accordance with the "just pretend you are and soon you will be" piece of advice, until I could make it. It's a process that's extremely hard on the nerves, as my children would no doubt confirm.

January 29, 2004 Quitting and grief. The two puzzle pieces at the top of the list today. I'll start with quitting. I have a very hard time quitting. I can't decide if that's because I am ridiculously hopeful or ridiculously stubborn. So when I decide to quit it usually means that I've done

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everything I can possibly think of to accomplish my goal or rectify whatever the situation is I've finally decided to leave. Quitting, even though it might be the sanest option in many circumstances, is always linked at some level to despair. And grief, as far as I have experienced it, is an on-going part of being alive, kind of like a tide that ebbs and flows, sometimes there are miles of beautiful open sand between you and the water and sometimes it's up around your ears. Learning to swim is important. I just read in the Edmonton Sun that Marvin, the Marvin from the fatality inquiry I was telling you about, was an evil man, an abuser of the elderly. The Sun reporter said the fatality inquiry had heard all about him. Apparently, Marvin was accused in 1994 of holding a woman as a sex-slave for 4 weeks. He had also been accused in 1995 of making a woman eat cat food and then vomit. The article also said that Marvin's mother had informed the Sun reporter that a friend of Marvin's had told her Marvin might have been drinking antifreeze. Now that's a whole different picture. Almost like it was some other fatality inquiry. And, to be honest, it makes me wonder why Marvin's mother even went to the inquiry? Why did she and his sister want his clothes? He was a rapist, a sadist, a victimizer and a substance abuser. He was violent and frightening. They, more than any of us, should just be glad he's dead. The information about Marvin's elder abuse came from the Constable who picked him up the night he died, in response to a call from his elderly frantic mother. The same Constable also described Marvin's apartment, which was apparently disgusting, filthy and full of garbage. The information about Marvin's criminal past came from a media spokesperson for the EPS, to illustrate, and I quote; "just how evil some people can be." And Marvin's mother provided the insight into how the heck her son died from methanol poisoning. He may have been drinking anti-freeze. A friend said. I really need to think.

January 30, 2004 I found out today that methanol poisoning usually results in vomiting, diarrhea and acute intestinal pain. It doesn't seem that a person would just lie down and die quietly from it. I also found out when Marvin was first charged in 1994, the judge denied him a psychiatric assessment.

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This morning when I was at the coffee shop there was a teenage girl outside screaming and crying. I didn't really notice her until she came inside to use the pay phone. Her top lip was swollen and bleeding, she was struggling to get the coins into the right slot. Every so often she would break down, then she'd collect herself and try again. When I went over to ask if she needed help, she handed me the phone and said, "ask for Gerald" So I did and Gerald said hello. I handed her the phone and went back to my table. She was talking for awhile, sometimes crying, sometimes yelling about beating someone up, or a fifteen-year-old fucking an eighteen-year-old. When she hung up she came over, sat down and asked for a cigarette. Then she said, "If my boyfriend comes, please, you have to protect me." She told me she was fifteen, she didn't have any family around, no safe place to go, and her boyfriend hit her. While the girl talked and cried, my mind flipped though possible actions: Should I call the police? No. I couldn't trust them. Should I call child welfare? No, I couldn't trust them. Should I take her to my house and go from there? No, I couldn't trust her or her boyfriend. In the end she solved the problem for me - she went to the washroom, then left through the side entrance. I didn't see her again. Is the name of this piece of the puzzle powerlessness, passivity, cynicism or realism? I want to mention that there were several times during the fatality inquiry, listening to the testimony of this officer, then that officer, I could see their side of things. They put up with a lot of shit. They see the worst side of humanity every working day: the brutality, the squalor, the pettiness, the almost unfathomable 'dismembered-bodyin-a-suitcase' side of humanity. That has to affect your outlook on life. And your outlook on life has to affect your actions. So if you step over a body on the floor of a cell to get to another body whose fingerprints you need on record, and you don't notice that the body on the floor looks deathly ill, how could anyone expect otherwise? Especially if the deathly ill body is just one of the many similar bodies you might encounter on any given shift. And if an old lady calls you to come and get her asshole rapist son out of her house because he's trashing the place and you don't really give a shit whether the asshole lives or dies, who could blame you? And if you don't want to know every fuckin' jerk's life story so you can cry yourself to sleep at night while he's out robbing and terrorizing your neighbors who wouldn't say 'Amen' to that. Awhile ago, I overheard a conversation between two young women. They were going over in detail an incident in their home. One of their brothers had beaten another brother quite badly. So badly in

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fact that they'd called the police. When the police came they beat the brother who hadn't been beaten yet. Then they left without laying any charges. You could call that simple justice, I suppose.

January 31, 2004 Revolution. Now there's an interesting piece, even though I'm not sure what it means in this culture. In the old days, revolution meant the rising up of the oppressed masses, the poor, the disenfranchised, the powerless, the overturning of systems with the dream of something better. But capitalism and democracy apparently solved those problems for humanity. No one would need to revolt if they were free and had an equal voice - that's democracy. And certainly no one would need to revolt if their place or status in the economic structure was completely up to them - you're signed up for the race on the day you're born - good luck, and may the best man win- that's capitalism. From where I sit, it doesn't seem to be working.

February 1, 2004 I read yesterday that less than fifty percent of eligible voters use their right. What does that mean about democracy? To be honest, I rarely vote myself. I only started voting after I had been told many times it was important by people who sincerely believed it. They believed it so much, in fact, that before the provincial election in 2000, they organized a whole series of promote-the-vote activities in the inner city. One of those activities was an evening with all the candidates running for office in our constituency. When the politicians arrived, the drop-in was full of people. I know Kathy was there, because I remember several times during the talks she staggered up to whoever was talking and asked what sense it made to keep fining her for public intoxication. She had a ticket for $120, which she produced as proof, that she had no means of paying. It would cost more to put her in jail than to leave her alone. It was a good point, but, unfortunately, inappropriate at the time. The less intoxicated among us encouraged her to sit down and be quiet. Let them speak. They were kind enough to come down here, just let them speak. There were people who had prepared questions in advance for the official question period; the only one I remember was from a single mother living on social assistance. Her question related to how it was possible for her to look after her son, get the upgrading she needed, and survive financially on $700 a month? I'm afraid I don't remember the answer. That was almost four

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years ago after all. If the woman is still on assistance, I'm sure she's still asking the question, because as far as I've noticed nothing's changed. On second thought her rent has no doubt gone up and I know peanut butter's not as cheap as it used to be. So I started to vote. I don't think voting is the name of that piece of the puzzle. That piece, I think, is called voice. Tomorrow I need to get moving. I've been putting it off for too long. The problem is I'm afraid.

February 2, 2004 I'm really struggling here like I'm swimming through wet cement. Today I finally phoned Marilyn Fryingpan. I've been meaning to call everyday for the last month, but everyday I put it off. This morning I couldn't avoid it. I wanted to start sending Randy's story to as many people as possible and I had to know if anything had changed. Had she heard from the police? Had she heard from anyone? She hadn't. So, everything's the same as it was a month ago, except Randy. He's worse. Marilyn's worried about him. He doesn't go out. He rarely comes out of the basement. He doesn't talk to anyone, not even her, anymore. So, I started sending out the story. This is the story:

Other People's Children - the assault on Randy Fryingpan Edmonton Street News (December, 2003) Marilyn Fryingpan Marilyn Fryingpan wants justice for her 17-year-old son, Randy, but so far justice has been hard to find. On October 5, 2002, according to several witnesses, Randy was brutally assaulted by onduty Edmonton Police Service (EPS) officers while several other EPS officers looked on. This is how it happened: Randy and three other teenagers (ages 12 to 16), two boys and a girl, were sitting, with permission, in an inoperable car parked outside a small townhouse in Abbotsfield. It was approximately 3 in the morning. When a neighbor phoned the EPS to complain about the noise, two EPS officers arrived. They were joined, shortly after, by at least another two officers, accompanied by a police dog. Three of the teens were removed from the car, apparently without incident, but in the process of removing Randy, who by all witness accounts was not struggling, the first-arriving officer tasered the boy

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repeatedly: on his back, his abdomen, his neck and his groin. By his mothers count there were twenty-one taser burns on Randy's body. He was punched in the face with the blunt end of a taser gun, breaking his front tooth and filling his mouth with blood. Throughout the assault, Randy was screaming for help and for his mother. While this was happening, the other officers were watching and laughing. The owner of the car, Yvonne Nosky, was awake watching TV at the time. She describes Randy's screams as so "blood-curdling" she thought someone was being murdered. When she looked out her front window she saw the police cars, the police, the dog and the kids, one of them lying on the ground by the car. When she went outside an officer shone a light in her face and asked if it was her car. She said it was and the kids were allowed to sit in it. She was told they might steal it, but she said, "It doesn't even work." She asked the officers to leave the kids alone - if they had wanted them out of the car, she could have gone herself and asked them to leave with no trouble. As she was going back into the house one of the kids called out to her for help. The three who had not been assaulted were released; one returned to Abbottsfield in the morning to tell Marilyn what had happened. Randy was taken downtown, strip-searched, then taken by police to the Edmonton Young Offenders Centre (EYOC). His injuries were so severe that staff at EYOC put him on a 15-minute medical watch, yet it wasn't until 11:30 the next morning that Marilyn, through her own inquiries, found out where he was and it wasn't until 1 o'clock in the afternoon that she was allowed to speak to him - a phone conversation made difficult by Randy's pain and fear. The staff at EYOC told her that her son had been beaten, but they didn't say who had done it. It was another two days before she was allowed to see Randy, and that was in court. When the judge ordered his release, Marilyn took Randy home. It was only then that she realized the full extent of what had happened to her son. Randy's body was covered with taser burns, he had a gash on the back of his head, his front tooth was broken, his face was bruised and swollen, he was unable to move without pain and he was unable to sleep without fear. Today, fourteen months later, Randy's body still bears the scars of the taser. He suffers chronic pain in his back and he still has difficulty sleeping - memories of the incident come back to him in flashes. Three or four nights a week, according to his mother, he wakes with nightmares. The officers involved are still on active duty with the EPS. No one from the Edmonton Police Service, or the Edmonton Police Commission - public bodies with full knowledge of the assault on Randy Fryingpan - has, at any time, offered assistance or support to the family. In fact, quite the contrary. On October 6, 2002, the day after Randy was assaulted, Marilyn Fryingpan filed a formal complaint with the Edmonton Police Service. In it, she outlined what had happened to

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her son, based on the eyewitness accounts of Randy's friends and the limited information she had about Randy's injuries from the staff at EYOC. In the complaint, she said: "This is hurting my family, this is hurting my son and this going to hurt us for the rest of our lives." And she asked for justice - she asked that the officers involved be charged for assaulting her son. Her complaint was assigned by the Chief of Police Bob Wasylyshen, to the EPS Internal Affairs department for investigation. Fourteen months later that investigation has yet to be completed. Police Chief Bob Wasylyshen The EPS officer accused of the assault on Randy Fryingpan is Constable Mike Wasylyshen, son of Edmonton Police Chief Bob Wasylyshen. Several months ago, in an attempt to ensure that the investigation into the complaint against Chief Wasylyshen's son was free from bias, Randy's lawyer, Tom Engel, formally requested that the Chief assign the investigation to a police force other than his own. When the Chief refused, stating that he had handed over all responsibility for the investigation to EPS acting chief Gerry Shimko, allegedly a Wasylyshen family friend, and therefore would have no further involvement with it, Engel took his client's concern to the next level. He filed a complaint against Chief Wasylyshen with the Edmonton Police Commission. The Commission is the publicly appointed body mandated by the Alberta Police Act to, among other things, consider complaints against the Chief of Police. His complaint was grounded in the understanding that the Chief's action in refusing to refer the investigation of his son's misconduct to another jurisdiction was in violation of the Police Act in that it was likely to bring discredit to the reputation of the Edmonton Police Service. The Edmonton Police Commission decided to hold the Fryingpan's complaint in abeyance until after the EPS had completed its investigation into the assault. Acting spokesperson for the Commission, ED Dr. John Acheson, told Edmonton Street News that the Commissioners are intelligent people, and while completely aware of the severity of the complaint against the Chief's son, they felt it was "premature" to address the Fryingpan's concerns. Acheson said that the decision was a judgment call on the part of the Commission, and that it is a judgment the Commission remains comfortable with. Unsatisfied that this response would ensure justice for his client, Engel filed a motion against the Edmonton Police Commission with the Court of Queens Bench. The motion requests that the judge order the Commission to proceed with Fryingpan's complaint against the Chief of Police. Meanwhile, as Chief Wasylyshen prepares for his retirement next year, Marilyn and her son struggle to deal with the emotional reality of both the assault and the official indifference to that assault.

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Although they have moved to a different neighborhood, it is impossible to escape the memories. When asked what he would like to see happen, Randy replies simply: "What my mom said: justice."

Writing this story was a nightmare for me. I couldn't get it out of my mind. I would wake up with a start in the middle of the night, my heart pounding, picturing the car, the officers, the dog and the kids. I kept wondering about the three kids who saw Randy being beaten. What kind of impact did it have on them? I kept picturing Yvonne, the owner of the car, as I had seen her when we spoke, cradling her threeyear-old granddaughter in her arms in the living room of her town house. I was consumed by a slow burning rage. Not just that such a thing happened, but that no one except Tom Engel seemed to care.

February 3, 2004 When I went for coffee today I felt miserable and despairing, lost and alone, defeated might be good word for it. I was worried sick about Randy and I couldn't reach the one person I thought could help him. I didn't know his phone number. I didn't know his friends' phone numbers. I didn't know the name of the place he worked. And none of my leads were getting me anywhere. You would not consider such a time the best time to run into your ex-co-workers, the ones still working where you used to work. The ones who are still a community, still friends, still.... Oh, God help me. Smile, be polite, don't start shaking, don't say anything sarcastic, act like you are completely comfortable with them Invading Your Space... Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. 'How's everything with you? Oh, good, good. How's the wife? Oh good, good.' Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. 'Our Voice steering meeting, you say? The direction of Our Voice? Ah, interesting....right here in my coffee shop... OK, great, great.... Well, good luck with that!' Breathe. Smile. Nod. Breathe. Wave good-bye. Walk home. So that was my afternoon, shot to hell.

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Apparently feeling jealous of people who still work where you used to work, especially if you didn't necessarily want to leave when you did, is common for those suffering through job loss. I looked that up on the Internet. A possible clue, I think, into why I have to resist the temptation to send nasty anonymous e-mails late at night. I have to suppress the primal screams welling up in my chest when I spend too much time in their company. It's too much for this body to bear. I know it's not healthy. It's not well. It's not a sign of letting go or moving on, but some part of me stuck in the past, flattened on the wall like a dead fly.

February 5, 2004 Too many things aren't happening right now. I'm waiting for CBC to let me know if they are going to cover Randy's story. I e-mailed them the article yesterday after hearing they'd aired a program claiming a 23-year-old cover-up of an investigation into the EPS abusing prostitutes. One of the officers being investigated was Edmonton Police Chief Bob Wasylyshen, a sergeant with the tactical unit at the time. It seemed like a good time to remind them of Randy's story. But I have no idea what happens next. Briefly, I was euphoric with hope. Then I realized that hope is a dangerous thing - useful, necessary for action, but dangerous.

February 6, 2004 I feel like screaming. Deep long screams, screams that, perhaps, will never end. Look out. They're tearing down the Locke Apartment building today. CBC radio is covering that event hour-by-hour, gloat-by-gloat, bullshit comment by bullshit comment. I just heard a lady say she knows we need affordable housing, she definitely knows we need decent affordable housing. But she thinks the site of the Locke should be turned into a park...because of stigma attached. Blah! Blah! Blah! OK so I'm angry. I have my reasons.

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Locke(d) Out Our Voice (November, 2001) The Locke Apartment at 11202 94 St. has come under scrutiny through the actions of the Community Action Project (CAP) in Norwood. Residents of the neighborhood have gone public with their concern about discarded needles and condoms, by-products of the drug use and prostitution they believe is tied to the people who live in the Locke. CAP has made several demands of the owners. They want the building cleaned up. The want the building run through the Crime Free Multi-Housing Program (a program offered by the Edmonton City Police). They want a management company hired that has been approved by both the Crime-Free Multi-Housing Program and CAP. And they want a responsible on-site manager. The issue is more complex than it first appears. It encompasses the conflicting needs and interests of a wide range of people. It involves a clash of cultures and world-views, the need for some to feel safe in their neighborhood and the need of others to have a roof, any roof, over their heads. It raises questions about who is socially acceptable and who has the right to make those decisions? And at the most fundamental level it forces us to think about the questions what is community and who is my neighbor? Our Voice visited the building and spoke to both the people who live there and the owner, Wayne Goebel. We enter the building through the back door. By happy coincidence the people in the corner suite are people the photographer has met before, over two months ago when they were living in a tent amidst the rubble of the old Gainers plant - Doug and Ida. Doug calls out to us through the window, inviting us in for coffee. "I'm not supposed to let anyone in the back door," he says, opening it wide. The main floor hall of the Locke is cavernous, dark and shabby, wide with high ceilings. There are sheets of gyproc leaning against the wall and a surprising bustle of activity. It has all the appearance of a village street from another time, with characters of all sorts, men and women going about their business, some working on repairs, some in groups talking. Doug invites us into his suite for coffee and when we tell him we're doing a story on the Locke, he says, "The stuff they're printing about us is a bunch of lies. They say we're dangerous to children. Kids walk by here everyday and nobody bothers them. No one wants to bother them." Doug and Ida moved from their tent in North Edmonton into the Locke two months ago. They like it here. They like the fact that they didn't have to pay a damage deposit and their rent covers all their

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utilities. "It's warm in here," Doug says, "Sometimes too warm." He puts a pot of water on the stove to boil and takes two mugs out of the cupboard. "Sure it's noisy at night, but some people have been evicted. Nobody bothers us. A lot of times it's outside people coming in. The other night there was a guy sleeping in the bathroom. He had his bike in there with him and nobody could get in. I guess he had nowhere else to sleep." The couple tells us how they were evicted from their apartment in the early summer and, not being able to find another place, they bought a tent and set it up in the bush by the old Gainers plant. "You've gotta have somewhere to stay," Doug says. We finish our coffee while Doug and Ida tell us about the fox they trained to eat out of their hand and the cat that came with the suite they're renting now. They laugh about getting married someday soon and ask for copies of the pictures the photographer takes. Back out in the hallway, the activity continues. A small woman is banging on the door of an apartment, swearing loudly. The men standing around pay no attention. We wander about trying to get a sense of this odd little community. Someone tells us the owner, Wayne Goebel, is in the building. Someone else assures us that they're fixing the place up. It's obvious through the open doorways some work is underway. A middle-aged woman, slurring her words a little, motions us into her suite. She says the place is a dump and shows us where water leaks through the ceiling in the closet of the tiny bathroom. She introduces the man sitting at the table as her uncle and proceeds to tell us how she refused to pay her $400 rent. "There's no fuckin' way I'll pay $400 for this dump. I said $300 at the most." They tell us that they ended up here because they couldn't get the money together for the damage deposit on a better place. Almost proudly the uncle shows us the metal bar he keeps by the bed "for protection." This need is somewhat contradicted by the actions of the woman who, quite comfortably, wanders the hallway aggressively confronting anyone she encounters. In fact, it is only a few minutes later, as we talk to a man doing repair work in the hall, that she appears to swear at him for not fixing her door. What feels like a tense situation breaks into laughter when he says something to her in a language we can't understand. It's not even his job, he tells us. He has a job outside. He just does this repair work because he can. He lives here too, and if something needs to be fixed he can fix it. The trouble is people start blaming him for everything that isn't done. He repeats what becomes a common theme among the residents - the repairs are being done, the building isn't that bad, it's too many non-residents coming in. It's

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impossible not to get the feeling that this is a community under siege from outsiders who don't understand. In the suite at the far end of the hall two old men sit side-byside on a bare mattressed bed. Ancient and worn, with the look that can only be achieved by years of drinking, they appear to be waiting for something. They eye us suspiciously, taking turns muttering words that are hard to understand. One tells us that he doesn't like preachers. He likes to decide for himself. Even the conversation, the disruption of us, doesn't disturb the feeling of intense and patient waiting. We learn later that it's check day, the owner has the keys to the mailbox and he's somewhere in the building collecting rent. Even when he does arrive the news is not good. There is no mail for the men today. Just outside the suite where the men wait an elderly woman slips in the front door and makes her way to the stairs. She wears a knit cap and tattered overcoat. As she starts up the stairs, we ask if we can take her picture. Her eyes are direct in her wrinkled, whiskery face. "NO!" she says very loudly, "I told you before - NO!" She turns and continues up the stairs while the men in the hallway laugh, shaking their heads. She is well known in the building for the unkempt state of her apartment and her eccentricity. "She's crazy," we're told. It's then that Wayne Goebel appears, like a small god with a cell-phone who until this moment has only been whispered about. We have been told that he doesn't want to speak to us and initially that seems to be the case, but he relents and the guided tour of the building begins. Goebel is adamant that he is doing the best he can. He compares himself to Money Mart because like them, he serves people no one else will serve. "The government doesn't give a damn about these people. I don't think CAP gives a damn about these people." He shows us a suite he is fixing up and introduces us to tenants on every floor. There are many faces we recognize from the inner city streets. It's hard not to be glad that they're warm and relatively safe. Goebel is a salesman and presents his case with a dogged determination. He has other properties in other parts of the city. The Locke is the lowest of his low rental buildings. He repeats the charge that it's outsiders who are causing the problem, people coming in from the street and the people in the community. He shows us the reinforced locks on the outside doors designed to stop unwanted traffic and explains how the demographic of the neighborhood is changing. "This area used to be mostly rental properties, now it's 65% homeowners. It makes a difference." Whether Goebel knows it or not, his words reflect a process of neighborhood development so common in recent years in North America it's been given it's own name: gentrification. Through this

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process a former low-income neighborhood, with its attendant social problems, becomes attractive to middle-income homebuyers, usually for it's low real estate prices, heritage homes and proximity to the urban core. The resulting influx of middle-income homeowners with concerns about safety and property values changes the community profile. It makes neighborhoods nicer and often safer, but it also prices them out of the range of the people who used to live there. We leave the building through the front door accompanied by Goebel. As we pass the corner window Doug and Ida call out again, telling us to come back for a beer sometime. There is a feeling of having been allowed to visit another world, a world where poverty, addiction and mental illness are simple facts of life and where community is whatever small place, one room or one building, you can find acceptance just the way you are.

All or Nothing? Our Voice, August 2002 Shortly after July 5 2002, when landlord Wayne Goebel was given the largest fine in Alberta's history ($52,000) for breaches of the Public Health Act, he handed all 41 tenants of his building, the Locke Apartment, a 90-day-notice to vacate. Goebel, who has been engaged in a 12-month struggle with both Capital Health Authority and the Community Action Project (CAP) over the condition of his building and the tenants he houses, says he's tired of the "witch hunt" "If I so much as move, they fine me. If a door is left open, they fine me, I don't see any other choice." To complicate matters, in an already tough rental market, Goebel is also considering emptying three other buildings of lowincome tenants, a move that would leave 90 people scrambling to find other places to live. Getting a clear picture of Goebel is a challenge. People who have been evicted from the Locke for non-payment of rent or criminal activity hate him and willingly accuse him of misconduct and illegal activities. The people who haven't been evicted, don't. Even now, when their time in the building is almost over, the tenants who remain have nothing but positive things to say about their landlord. Elizabeth, a young woman living on the second floor, says, "He has such a huge heart. He likes to take care of people." John and Donny say, "He treats us good. We get along." There is a strong belief among the people in the building that

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Goebel was unfairly treated. "The Health Board was coming here regularly before he even had time to fix things. They picked on him a lot. Baseboards, screens, stupid little things, or he would be in the middle of renovating a suite and the Health Board would walk in and condemn it. We think the mayor had a grudge against it." Les, the building manager, who calls Goebel "the best boss I've ever had" thinks some kind of politics were involved but he's not sure why or what kind. "Capital Health has a job to do, but when they condemn empty suites in the middle of renovations... and the police are telling people not to pay their rents...and the judge throws out all the testimony of the tenant witnesses...it seems like a personal thing." The Locke already has the feel of an abandoned building every second door has a Capital Health notice "Unfit for Human Habitation" posted on it. Goebel and Les are working in the yard. Goebel isn't interested in talking to us but says there are people inside who would be happy to tell their stories. We find Mabel Cardinal in her basement suite. Some kind of construction is going on outside her door, but graciously, she invites us in. She's lived in the Locke for four years. Her two small rooms are clean and cozy, yet Mabel seems overwhelmed and pre-occupied. "I have no idea where I'm going," she says, pulling out a photocopied list of places for rent given to her by another tenant. "I need a place that's $300 a month - a lot of these are so expensive, you've got to be rich to move into these places. "Nobody bothered me...I feel at home here at least, in my own room." Her voice trails off. She hasn't begun to look for a new home; she's not looking forward to it. "So many of these places are so far away from here." As we leave, she jokes about the rectangular hole dug into the concrete just outside her door: "Maybe they're planning to bury me here!" On the first floor we meet three men sitting in their room chatting - John, Donny and Leonard. John and Donny share a room and take turns sleeping on the bed. Injured in a roofing accident in '91, Donny had been renting a room from John Toma, another inner city landlord. When he was a day late with his rent, he was evicted and spent three days sleeping in the river valley. This, he believes, led to his hospitalization with pneumonia. When he was released three weeks later he moved into John's room at the Locke. The three men don't know where they're going to go now that they've been given their notice. They can afford $300 a month each and they have a phone number written on a scrap of paper. It's for a house "a beautiful two bedroom with hardwood floors, a washer and dryer

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and a full basement." The house is a couple of blocks away and rents for $800 a month. They figure between the three of them they can afford it - move in this month and maybe next month get the utilities hooked up. But the damage deposit is a problem and they don't know if they'll be accepted. "A lot of places won't rent to natives," John says. "If we don't get it we can always sleep on the river bank. We have a tent." There is an almost unbearable sweetness in talking to these men. They laugh a lot and tell us stories. Like the one about the time Donny was walking home and a police car pulled up across the street. "When the officer got out and called me over I thought, "Shit, what'd I do now." Then he opened the trunk of his car... I thought I'd be looking at a trunk full of stolen property. But he pulled out this cane." Don holds up his fancy aluminum walking cane with a black foam handgrip and an adjustable ice pick on the bottom. "He said to me, 'Get rid of that antique' referring to my old wooden cane, 'and walk around with some class for a change.' That was real nice, so I shook his hand." The men get up to leave. They have things to do and places to go - take their bottles in, pick up a TV, and go talk to the landlord of the house they're hoping to rent. Halfway down the hall we meet John Anthony. A tenant since March, Anthony spent most of last year living at the Herb Jamieson Men's Shelter. "It was crazy there," he says shyly, "Everybody's too rough. I'm not rough." Anthony's roommate joins him at the door of the suite. "This is going to put a lot of people on the street. Everybody in the building is upset about what's going on." Asked where he might go when the 90 days are up, he says he's not sure, but he knows he won't go to the shelter. "It's like a prison, with the staff and the rules. And you're locked out from eight in the morning until five in the afternoon. The building manager walks us out of the building. "This place is the last stop for a lot of these people," he says. "Where are they supposed to go now?" He's not even sure what the future holds for him. He would like to stay on and maintain the building, even if it's empty. "Somebody will need to do that," he says, "We'll see." Just then John, Donny and Leonard return with an old TV in a shopping cart. They carry it into the building, laughing and talking, and the door closes behind them. *********************

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To me the Locke was more than building. It was more than the people who lived there - the impoverished, the addicted, the mentally ill, the physically handicapped - it was a symbol of the terrible powerlessness of poverty. I believe I've heard it all, from every side, the landlord, the tenants, the community, the community leaders, my neighbors, my friends. I have heard it all. Really. What I've never heard is an answer to the question: What gives a small group of people the right to demonize their neighbors, to create such a climate of fear that even if housing was built, no one could move into it, because they were impoverished, addicted, mentally ill, or physically handicapped, and we all know that means - there goes the neighborhood, right down the toilet. I also hear from CBC that there's similar community movement to block the opening of the Women's Dream Centre in Greenfield. The community is afraid that the potential residents women attempting to recover from addictions, wanting to get away from the street and the inner city - will bring trouble to neighbor hood. There will be needles in the playground. There will be addicts behind the dumpster doing things, you know, that children should not be exposed to. I really wonder where they're supposed to go. Oh, right, the river valley, the shelter, the entrance to the bank, the heating vent behind the school, the bus shelter. The bus shelter. That reminds me of the other story in the news: people are apparently sleeping, urinating, and doing other things, which shall remain nameless, in the ETS bus shelter in front of the Stanley Milner library. I wonder why? Maybe we should call the police. Let them deal with the problem. So I feel like screaming. That's my day so far. It's 10:30 in the morning. News from Ruth helped. I got an e-mail from someone who'd seen her, she was looking good. She said she loved me and that I needed to take care of myself. Ruth. Holy Shoot, I think about Ruth so often. She was in Alberta hospital. I knew that. I didn't go visit. I wanted to, I really wanted to, but I imagined walking into the room and seeing her there, everything so antiseptic, so institutional. I imagined her on all kinds of medication, dull and listless, not herself. Jimmy told

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me sometimes she knew where she was, sometimes she didn't. I imagined myself talking to her for awhile, maybe bringing her some smokes, maybe smoking with her. I imagined her asking me to get her out of there, just like she used to ask me to convince her doctor she was not a guinea pig for anti-psychotics. She was not a pincushion. Then I imagined myself driving away from the hospital, down the highway... straight into an on-coming semi. Ruth told me once, after she'd been attacked on the street by another woman: "It was like my soul was spilling out onto the sidewalk." She said in a very Ruth sort of way, wide-eyed, child-like, loud. And she showed me the bruises on her neck where the woman had tried to strangle her. The next minute she was laughing, asking for a smoke, hugging me and on her way out the door. What to do with Ruth? I went to her apartment once when Jimmy was in jail, because he called, worried about her. She wasn't making sense on the phone. He didn't think she had any food. When I arrived she was wandering around the bare apartment in an old nightgown. One of the stove burners was glowing bright red, with no pot in sight. She almost recognized me, but then she became certain I was a childhood friend, there to help with the gardening. Jimmy was right. She didn't have any food, other than half a moldy angel food cake and a large container of salsa. She offered me some cake as she poured herself a mug of salsa. We sat for awhile and she explained her life to me. The early marriage, the abuse, the emotional breakdown, the hospitalization, the difficulty she had figuring out what to do. When I called the Mental Health Crisis line and the nurse came to visit, Ruth didn't appreciate it. She didn't like the hospital. She liked to take care of herself.

February 9, 2004 Today I couldn't stand it any longer so I sent the following message to every Edmonton Police Commissioner: Dear Commissioner: I am writing to you with a very serious concern. That concern is Randy Fryingpan. I am attaching Randy's story as published in the December issue of Edmonton Street News. The role that the Edmonton Police Commission played in the abandonment of Randy and his mother disturbs me a great deal. There was no assistance, no support, no advocacy, and no compassion given to either Randy or his mother. At this point in time, sixteen months later, Randy is a severely traumatized human being. I do not have the resources or the

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contacts to help him, although I am attempting to do so. I'm worried about him. So, what I really need to say is this: if Randy's condition deteriorates further, if nothing is done to support this boy and his family, it is my personal goal to ensure that the apathy of every individual in a position of accountability, who knew Randy's story but did nothing, will become publicly known. I felt it was only fair to warn you. Thank-you for any assistance you may be. Yours truly, Natasha Laurence

February 11, 2004 I've completely lost my way. Nothing is static. Nothing stays still long enough; someone comes along and shakes the table. I hate it when that happens. It looks as if the Edmonton Police Commission is committed to setting up an independent agency to investigate complaints against the police. "We have concluded that the police should not be investigating the police." This is what the Chair of the Commission said after an emergency meeting stemming from the 23-year-old allegations against Chief Bob Wasylyshen. "Changes are needed in the Police Act to take the police out of investigating the police." Apparently, they've been working on a plan for months toward that end. I wish they'd told me instead of consistently saying the exact opposite. At the last Police Commission meeting I attended - in November, 2002 - the Commission tabled the final report of a special committee's examination of the citizen's complaint process. That report declared the process to be more than adequate - they saw no need for the external investigation of citizen complaints. I don't believe they've said anything publicly since then and now this. To be honest, I have a hard time believing it, but that could be because it seems to have come out of nowhere. Can a situation flip that quickly? We shall see. This is relevant because the news totally shook the table, scattering everything and I'm still scrambling to collect the pieces.

February 13, 2004 I'm beginning to see the problem. Maybe I saw it all along I just didn't want to acknowledge how gigantic it was.

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The Edmonton Sun carried an article about Marilyn and Randy yesterday. After he read it, my son, Cody, said: "It's too bad his name is Fryingpan. People will think - Indian - he deserved it." I'm afraid he's right.

February 14, 2004 Something fundamental has changed in me over the last two weeks. Today is the day, a year ago, I left my job with Our Voice, yet it's only in the last couple of weeks that I've accepted it. That part of my life is over. The problem was I thought it was the best job ever invented. Not only did I get to meet and work with very interesting people, I got to write about everything that was wrong with the world and how I thought it could be different. I got to shape the way people saw things by my version of the news. That small bit of power was very hard to let go of, probably because I'd felt voiceless for so long. I can remember, in 1994, standing outside the south side college where I was taking government sponsored computer courses with a group of other single mothers on welfare. We were a semi-rowdy gang, dedicated to survival. During the breaks in training we compared lives, past husbands, present boyfriends, child-care nightmares, food bank tips. Talking and laughing together, we took apart, in theory, the system that had us running from morning to night with not enough fuel to keep us going and no end in sight, and we put it back together in the way we would have preferred it - more merciful. When one of us - a twenty-something-year-old woman with two children under the age of four, was kicked out of the program and cut off assistance because she was late for the third time - we wanted to rebel; we wanted to make it known that we did not approve; we wanted to have her re-instated. In fact, we talked about it a lot, the bravest among us formulating plans to occupy the offices of the social workers, rehearsing what we would say, what we would do - projecting victory the others nodding in frustrated agreement. Of course, in the end, we did nothing. We were too afraid. I guess we figured we had gone about as far down as we ever hoped to go in life and we weren't really interested in discovering new levels of desperation. So we let it go. It being our friend and her children. There was not one among us who was not humiliated by our own poverty or riddled with guilt by the poverty of our children. There was not one among us who did not already know that our lives were not all they should be, that we weren't what you could call the greatest successes in the world. There was also not one among us who had not seen, countless times, the look of judgement in a social workers eyes the look of a teacher determined to shape us into half-decent human

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beings. Those looks take their toll on a person. Dave Johnson died today. I didn't treat Dave well when I knew him. He desperately wanted to be published in Our Voice, but, in my bullshit opinion, his writing was too affected by his mental illness. He was living at the Herb Jamieson Men's Shelter, most of his time, as far as I could tell, dedicated to being a voice for the poor. He left me hand written essays, rants and prayers intertwining in a complex mix of truth and hyperbole. And he left me phone messages, many, many phone messages. Who the hell did I think I was? I didn't publish his writing. There are so many decisions like this I regret. So many times I missed the point entirely. In fact, the longer I was in charge of the paper, the more often it happened. I forgot who I was and where I belonged. The management meetings got to me, I think. I started to see the line from the other side and lost my perspective. I became the enemy. I need to explain that I don't mean 'enemy' personally. It makes sense in many ways, that unless you've been behind the eightball - whatever that means, fucked, I think - unless you've experienced a power and status-free existence, been scum of the earth in most peoples eyes, it's hard to understand what it feels like. Or why those who are can be so hard to get along with. And, unfortunately, if you've had the experience and managed to get past it, you might just as soon erase it from your memory or at least disassociate yourself from it - like after you've lost that 100 pounds, you want everyone you know to burn every picture, every piece of evidence of the person you're not any more - the embarrassing one. In either of these cases, you might find yourself making class distinctions, intelligence distinctions, odor distinctions, sober distinctions, sanity distinctions, until before you realize it you're a them when you used to be an us. Dave tried to remind me of this, but I ignored it. I saw it his eyes - that plea I've seen and felt a thousand times- treat me like a human being, please - listen - stand in my shoes just for a second. But by that time, I'd forgotten who I was and why I was there.

February 21, 2004 I am so confused. On Tuesday, a columnist from the Edmonton Journal, one I'd sent Randy's story to in December, e-mailed to tell me that the hearing for Randy's complaint against the Chief of Police was the next day. She

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said she was hoping to use that event as an argument to get the story past her editors, that she hadn't forgotten. I didn't know what to think. For one thing when I sent her the story I included a mini-lecture about journalistic ethics. I did that because the Journal has known about the situation with the Police Chief, his son and Randy for months. They've never really covered the story, at least not from Randy's perspective, and always buried in the middle of Section B. I couldn't understand it. It didn't seem like journalism to me, but maybe I've watched too many movies. I thought journalists were supposed to ferret out stories, get to the bottom of things, expose the seedy underbelly, alert the public to wrong-doing, you know like knights with shining ball-point pens and rumpled over coats, charging about, asking questions, putting people on the spot. The fact that the Journal was all but ignoring a story like Randy's didn't make any sense from my perspective. I'd been given the veiled explanation that it had something to do with liability and their lawyer's advice, but the rumpled overcoat in me thought: Bullshit! So, I lectured the columnist when I sent her Randy's story. She didn't respond until Tuesday, two months later. As I said, I didn't know what to think. On Thursday, her column entitled "Alberta law places police service in a no-win situation - Chief Wasylyshen and his son unnecessarily put in an awkward position" appeared in the Journal. She described the incident with a couple of errors, one that the police were called because a neighbor thought the car was being vandalized - it was a noise complaint. The other was that there was an altercation when the police arrived - the only altercation was the one inflicted on Randy by Constable Wayslyshen. Then she quoted an EPS lawyer saying the investigation was just about complete, when the last I'd heard it was already finished and in the hands of justice department. Which is true? Who knows? She made the point that the EPS investigating the son of the Chief of Police is an untenable situation, and the best thing would have been if the Chief had immediately handed the complaint against his son to another jurisdiction for investigation. But he didn't. Then she described the complaint against the Chief filed by Randy with the Edmonton Police Commission, which says approximately what she herself said - the situation was untenable and the Chief should have called in outside investigators. At that point, the Edmonton Police Commission should have handed the complaint against the chief to the Solicitor General who could have ordered an external investigation. They didn't, they held it "in abeyance", something the Police Act doesn't even allow. She concluded that, obviously, the problem was with the Alberta Police Act. "Neither the Chief or his son should have been put in this awkward position." I thought they put themselves there but maybe I'm not looking closely enough. And she called for the Police Act to be amended to require external investigation of serious

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misconduct or, as in the case of Constable Wasylyshen, conflict of interest. I took the whole thing very badly: the initial e-mail, the column, the slant of the column. If you said I was crushed, you would be telling the truth. I spent most of the day crying. Maybe I just needed to cry, because the next day it didn't seem so bad. At least the story was out there a little more than it had been the day before, inaccuracies, bias and all, at least it was out there. And the judge had ordered the Police Commission to deal with Randy's complaint. That has to be good, right?

February 26, 2004 The first thing I heard at 6 this morning when I turned on the radio was that the Edmonton Police Commission had dismissed Randy's complaint against Chief Wasylyshen. They decided that the Chief had done nothing wrong in refusing to refer the investigation of his son to an external police force. It was one of his options under the Police Act, after all, so nothing wrong there. They didn't mention the fact that the complaint was actually based on the "likely to bring discredit to the reputation of the force" section of the Police Act. Choosing the option the Chief did, keeping the investigation with his own force wasn't serving the good of the public or the police service. That contravenes the Police Act. For some reason the news didn't bother me as much as I thought it would. That's because of the important message I'd received just yesterday. I was listening to CBC radio yesterday hoping for some update on the Police Commission story. Instead what I got was story about the water situation in Haiti. It's very bad - one out of five children dies before their twelfth birthday due to drinking contaminated water. I was just starting to think about that when I was distracted by the words of the man they were interviewing. What caught my attention was the phrase: "there was an emptiness in me I couldn't fill. Not with drugs, not with relationships, not with buying things or going places..." That caught my attention because at that exact time, having quit journalism, having decided I would retire from the police issue, I was feeling much the same way he described - empty. He went on, though. He described meditating one day, full of his emptiness, or empty of his fullness when Jesus appeared to him. Together they journeyed through the air to another country. The man said he thought he was in Africa because there were so many black people. While they were there, Jesus picked up a child, who, the man said, was obviously sick - her face covered with flies - and said: "I

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want you to help her." The man was puzzled. He wondered if Jesus was telling him to become a foster parent. But Jesus cleared up that misconception when he said: "It's about water. They have no clean water. I want you to help bring clean water to Haiti." That story had such a deep impact on me I had to sit down. It wasn't just that Jesus had told the man exactly what he wanted him to do, it was that, apparently, Jesus cared what happened to children in Haiti. He cared that they didn't have clean water. It was all so matter of fact and obvious. It was a confirmation of the secret thought I've had for quite awhile that someone is pushing me, coaxing me, instructing me, comforting me and always reminding me that love means action. Love means not walking away. And, I guess, that I have a specific job to do. This message helped me immensely. For one thing it gave me the comfort that I was not alone and it freed me, briefly, from fear because if Someone much bigger than me wanted something to happen it would be up to them to make it work somehow. It wasn't all my responsibility. Thank God. And the phrase: "It's about water" seemed so beautifully practical, so concerned with the daily life of little people I could've cried. It made complete sense.

March 2, 2004 I heard on CBC radio last week: "Truth is a fluid, not a solid. Don't bother looking for the truth because you're not going to find it." That was so chillingly impressive to me that I stopped sweeping the floor to write it down. Of course, shortly after that I lost the paper I'd written it on, so my quote is only approximate, and I can't tell you who said it. I know he's a man in the PR business. He trains politicians and other famous people how to answer questions, how to handle interviews, how to deflect trouble. It's a skill he believes everyone should cultivate, although he did say it's better if you don't use it with your significant other, especially if you want him to remain more significant than other.

March 14, 2004 This morning in the Sun there was short article about the Chief of Police. Tomorrow is his last day on the job. The Police Commission is meeting on Wednesday to decide whether or not they will ask for an external investigation of the 23-year-old allegations

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against him. Once he's retired he's beyond the reach of the Police Act, but criminal charges would still be possible. I am beginning to suspect there will be no justice for Randy. The justice department won't charge Constable Wasylyshen. Time will pass. Everyone will forget. And that will be that. To give you some idea how naive I am, when I write this, there's a voice inside me saying: "Surely not! Surely, you're being too cynical. Just you wait, you'll wake up one morning and there it will be, in the Journal, the headline: Constable Wasylyshen charged with assault." Then I'll feel ashamed for having so little faith.

March 17, 2004 Earlier today, I decided when I sat down to write I would begin the assembling of pieces. I thought it would be a good idea, given that I'm two months into the exercise and all I've done is separate and name them. Do I think I can pull the whole thing together at the last minute? Of course not. So, I'd better get started. Powerlessness and anger. Those two go together. Despair and powerlessness. Those two together. Powerlessness and fear. I'm beginning to see a picture emerging. The shape of shadows. I heard on CBC today that the Deputy Chief of Police in Saskatoon has been suspended with pay because he lied to reporters about the investigation into the death of Neil Stonechild - the 17-yearold aboriginal who froze to death on the outskirts of that city fourteen years ago. Fourteen years ago. That kills me. There was a piece on the news tonight about another Edmonton Police Commission decision. Today, at their meeting, they decided there would not be any further investigation into the 23-yearold allegations of EPS officers abusing prostitutes.

March 19, 2004 I went to bed last night wondering: does it matter? Does it matter that a kid I don't even know was beaten in the middle of the night? Shit happens. There's worse stuff out there. Lot's of it. Pick up a paper, you'll see what I mean.

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The real problem, I'm thinking, is the research I did into the media law situation in Edmonton. It came out of my confusion about the role the local media plays in what I think is a terrible miscarriage of justice. I found out that the media lawyer for the Journal, the one who gives them pre-publication advice - sat on the board of the Edmonton Police Foundation with former Police Chief Wasylyshen. Does that matter? I found out that he often does the same kind of media law work for the local CBC. I found out that the Sun's media lawyer is with the same law firm as the Chair of the Edmonton Police Commission, and strangely enough, he's also the lawyer representing Andria Wasylyshen, who is suing A-Channel for $600,000 because they aired Richard Land's story. The lawyer representing Chief Wasylyshen in his law-suit against CBC for airing the program which started the whole 23-yearold allegations scandal is the same lawyer who represented a former Edmonton Police Commissioner in his lawsuit against the Sun for implicating him in the 1999 scandal involving allegations of Hell's Angel infiltration into the Edmonton Police Service. This same lawyer, according to an article in the Sun, wrote lawyer Tom Engel a letter telling him to stop his defamatory comments about the former Chief, or else. I found out that media law is very serious stuff. The lawyers get paid $400 an hour. You can't do anything without a lawyer. Most of the time, you can't even understand what needs to be done without a lawyer. Or at least the lawyer understands - that's what you pay them for, after all. I got caught up in it - the mysterious and intimidating world of lawyers - that's when I started wondering if what happened to Randy mattered? Or Richard? Or Leona? Or Ed? Shit happens, and I'm no lawyer. In other words - I can see that I'm in over my head. Now what? I saw Darlene on the street today I was walking home. I recognized her from half-a-block away, but she didn't seem to recognize me, even after she'd asked us for money. It bothered me so much - the look she had on her face, like she had some reason to feel ashamed. I know the last thing she needs to feel is ashamed. She has a right to be alive. She has a right to survive. Several years ago, Darlene was walking home when two white men in a pick-up truck grabbed her off the street. They took her outside Edmonton, raped her and left her almost naked in a field. It was late fall, in the early hours of the morning. In other words, it was cold. The only thing that saved her, she believes, is that she heard a dog barking in the distance and she walked toward the sound.

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March 21, 2004 I found out yesterday, too, while doing my lawyer research that the media can be called to account for jeopardizing a person's potential for a just trial. Like if the public has already become convinced of a person's guilt because of the media coverage of their situation, it's difficult for that person to have a fair trial in the 'innocent until proven guilty' sense. It seems more and more that the media prefers to report only when something comes to trial - when the whole business is part of public record - that's absolutely safe. This is a tricky one for me. I can understand it from the justice system's point of view, wanting to ensure the foundation of fairness, but some things, like the Watergate scandal for example, would never have come to trial if the media was sitting around waiting for the safety of public record.

March 22, 2004 At approximately eleven-thirty I realized Randy's trial was today. So by the time I got to the courthouse half of the first day of what is potentially a three-day trial was over - Randy had already testified - he was to be cross-examined at two o'clock in the afternoon. But then he, Marilyn and Yvonne were late. The trial was supposed to re-convene at two, but the accused wasn't there. The three of them had bussed home for lunch. So, we waited. And we waited a little more. The judge came in. Both lawyers presented whatever exhibits they had or were willing to present at that time. The exhibits were numbered - one to eight (so far). Randy still wasn't there. It was about two-thirty. The judge decided to adjourn for fifteen minutes. I talked to Tom. I wandered around looking for Randy and Marilyn. I didn't see them. We all went back into the courtroom, and just as the judge was deciding we would adjourn one last time - until 3:30 - and if Randy wasn't there yet, we would try again in the morning, Marilyn w presented whatever exhibits they had or were willing to present at that time. The exhibits were numbered - one to eight (so far). Randy still wasn't there. It was about two-thirty. The judge decided to adjourn for fifteen minutes. I talked to Tom. I wandered around looking for Randy and Marilyn. I didn't see them. We all went back into the courtroom, and just as the judge was deciding we would adjourn one last time - until 3:30 - and if Randy wasn't there yet, we would try again in the morning, Marilyn walked in with Randy shortly behind her. Apparently Yvonne, who has a heart condition, started having chest

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pains as they were coming back to the courthouse; they couldnt leave her behind; she was following slowly and would be there shortly. Tom talked to them outside the courtroom for a few minutes, then Randy took the stand. He was calm. He was quiet. He was nervous, but he did a good job of not showing it. He thought before he answered. He was respectful, thoughtful, honest and, I thought, very brave. In fact, when Randy and Marilyn were late, I kept thinking they went home and Randy decided he wasn't coming back, he couldn't do it - you know what teenagers are like when they've decided they aren't going to do something - and that was that. That's the kind of action I would completely understand. It's the gut feeling I had myself when I remembered the trial. I didn't want to go. I didn't want to see Constable Wasylyshen. I didn't want to focus again on what had happened. I didn't want to think about it. But there was Randy, on the stand, answering the questions.

March 23, 2004 Today all I need to remember, think about, meditate on are the words: God is good. I need to repeat that to myself over and over. Then I need to listen for the things that will remind me how I know it's true. God is good. Each one of my six beautiful children. God is good. Each one of my brothers and sisters. My mother. My father. God is good. Each one of my friends. Every person I've ever worked with or become acquainted with throughout my life, even those of you who annoy the hell out of me. I have your names on a list somewhere. God is good. People are one of my primary proofs that God is good. Because I've seen it in every one of them - the beauty that comes with being human - the complicated, beautiful mystery that people are without even trying. And I've seen them defining their humanity. Making choices that answered, individually, the questions: what does it mean to be human? What are humans like? I've seen myself making those choices. Which is where I have to start repeating again, to stop the panic: God is good. God is good. Because from what I've seen we humans have a lot to answer for - what my mother calls "man's inhumanity to man." If you collected all human suffering and put it in a pile on the living room floor, then subtracted all the suffering stemming from natural causes leaving only the suffering caused by man's inhumanity to man, how big would the remaining pile be? In fact, thinking about it, you would also have to leave with

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the original pile all human suffering not directly attributable to natural disaster but generated indirectly by the loneliness, alienation, rejection and abandonment the suffering humans may experience given their naturally-induced suffering - that would have to go on the 'man's inhumanity to man' pile as well. When you look at the pile, after you've done all your best sorting, you will probably be led to ask the same question I have to ask myself. What ARE humans like? And you might want to ask: why are we like that? And you might become afraid, just like I am, that the problem isn't God, any god, living or dead, the problem is us - humans.

March 24, 2004 Too many lessons at one time. That's what Randy's trial was for me. First of all, I hadn't seen Marilyn, Randy or Yvonne in three months. So, it was good to see them. I hadn't seen Tom since Randy's last court date in early December 2003. So, it was good to see him, too. That was one of my lessons. I am definitely not an objective journalist. I'm like a very quiet cheering section, although I try not to look like it. I don't, for example, give the thumbs-up signal after a particularly good piece of evidence. I don't stand up and applaud as Marilyn steps down from the stand. I don't throw my notebook at the Crown Prosecutor, when she's subtly badgering Yvonne about her car. Yvonne's car is the car the kids were sitting in the night of the assault. It's an '81 Malibu, but the important thing is it doesn't run. It doesn't have a battery. The brakes are gone. The steering column is coming apart because, as Yvonne explained several times, it used to be regular steering, then it was changed to tilt steering and it hasn't been the same since. Yvonne's car is somehow a mystery to the Crown Prosecutor. It's like she can't understand that an older, rundown car could be parked in a complex or that the kids from that complex could like to sit in it. No, it wasn't working. And yes, the kids sat in it. Did have they have permission? Yes. Did they ask permission that night? No. So, they didn't have permission? I need a transcript of the trial. Some of the lines are precious, like when Randy's friend was testifying and the Crown Prosecutor asked him if the police said to him: 'Get out of the car!' And he said, "No, they said: 'GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE CAR!'" It was during this testimony that we discovered there was another taser at the scene that night. Another taser which, strangely enough, has never been mentioned by the police in all their statements. But the kid who'd had it aimed at his head remembered. And he described it to the Court: the red light, (which we found out later is the laser aiming light), the way the officer held it in both hands, arms

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straight out, aimed at his head. Of course, the kid was sitting with a car window between him and the officer at the time, so he wasn't too worried; he was thirteen after all, more than old enough to know when he was safe and when he wasn't. I'm beginning to learn how it works. I'm beginning to learn why trials are important, but also why they don't always work the way they should. For one thing, unless you're very comfortable standing up in a strange, silent room answering detailed questions about some part of your life from many months ago, it's very difficult to get a clear picture from you. None of Randy's witnesses were comfortable. They couldn't relax enough to freely describe the things they'd seen. I could see it happening - that look people get when they've just thought of something, they're thinking 'maybe I should say it', then the moment is passed and the decision not to speak is made by default. Shy people, or people who aren't used to speaking up for themselves, have a difficult time testifying. For another thing, if, as in Randy's case, most of the eyewitnesses were half-drunk at the time they were witnessing with their eyes, it's difficult to get clarity around certain details, like who exactly was in the car? Who was sitting where in the car? What kind of alcohol were you drinking? Were Randy's shoes off or on when he was pulled from the car? Were they on before he entered the car? Did you actually see Randy being tasered? Do you know what being tasered looks like? What color was the flash of light? What did it sound like? What was Randy saying when he was screaming? What did he look like when he was standing, handcuffed, over the car? He was trying to make a run for it, wasn't he? You weren't really close enough to see, were you? How dark was it? How much had you been drinking? How were Randy's arms moving when he was being pulled from the car? How were they moving when he was on the ground, and the police were circled around him? How were the arms of the police moving? I learned that the taser is underestimated, obviously. It seems so small, so almost harmless. So quick, efficient, barely leaves a mark, and the mark it leaves no one seems able or qualified to identify. A sixteen year-old kid's mother counting the swollen bruiseblisters that appear in pairs almost two inches apart all over her son's body, certainly wouldn't be qualified to identify those mysterious wounds as taser burns. How would she know? Has she ever seen a taser burn? According to the trainer of the EPS Officer Safety Unit, the taser's 50,000 volts (in stun mode) work best if they hit a large nerve area, like somewhere in the pelvic triangle or under the arm. The back isn't good. It doesn't hurt enough and the taser is about pain compliance, after all. So, what about the side of the neck? What about the back of the head? What about the groin? Would the 50,000 volts work there?

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According to the trainer of the EPS Officer Safety Unit, the groin would work, there are definitely nerves there, but people don't normally spread their legs for that. Ha Ha. I'm sure she's a nice woman, but the trainer of the EPS Officer Safety Unit really bothers me. There's something about her smugness, her certainty, her crisp hair and uniform, her fresh white smile. There's something about her language, her phraseology, her sci-fi lingo - as an old friend would say. We're talking here about a 16-yearold kid who may have been tasered twenty-one times. She says - 'it would hurt, definitely' when she's asked if the pain is, indeed, similar to putting your hand on a red-hot stove. And then she smiles. She smiles when she explains that the EPS may not be able to say whether or not there was more than one taser at the scene of Randy's arrest. There have been problems with members not signing them out. She smiles when she explains that EPS policy is constantly changing and what was policy when Randy was arrested may not be policy now. She really couldn't say.

March 27, 2004 I should have calmed down by now - it's been four days since the trial - but I haven't. I can't seem to calm down. I can't seem to find the line between myself and the rest of the world. Where does it stop and where do I begin? And, perhaps more to the point, I have no courage. I have developed a small terror at the thought of ever being involved in life beyond the walls of my house. I can't decide if it's a temporary terror, or one I might as well get used to. April 22, 2004 This morning CBC radio did a brief piece about Kyle Young. It's three months today since Young died, and, apparently, the EPS just recently completed their investigation into his death. You'll be relieved to know they've handed their findings over to the Crown Prosecutor. The Crown Prosecutor, in a process that may take months, will go over the file and decide if charges need to be laid. That's all anyone official is saying. Wait and see. As part of the CBC report, Kyle's mother was interviewed by telephone. No one from the EPS had contacted her, so she was surprised to hear from the reporter that their investigation was complete. But she wondered what they found out and when someone was going to tell her. Her sixteen-year-old son, if you recall, died wearing handcuffs and shackles suspended from a structural bracket in a

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courthouse elevator shaft. Witness reports at the time said that shortly before his death, frustrated and angry courthouse guards were shoving him into the wall as they escorted him from a holding cell to the elevator. There were three loud bangs, the last one loud enough to shake the walls, then yelling - "oh my god" and "call 911" and somehow in there, Young fell to his death down the elevator shaft. That's as much as his mother knows. After the EPS came to tell her her son was dead and that they would be investigating that death, they have offered her no further information. Does this matter? Kyle was a young offender after all - a troubled teen. He said fuck. And he smoked pot. He was charged with possession of a dangerous weapon. He was so troublesome that only a week before his death he had to be subdued with a Taser. They wouldn't taser a kid for nothing, would they? I mean, this was one troubled kid. They don't shackle people unless they're actually dangerous, do they? And he was yelling. For food. Where did he think he was, the Hilton? He wanted food. What are you going to do with a kid like that? Is it any wonder he walked into an open elevator shaft while accompanied by courthouse guards? Just let the EPS investigate. Let them do their jobs. Trust the process. Did I hear the EPS say, just after Kyle's death, that they could find no damage to the elevator doors? Did I hear them say that? Wasn't that just shortly after the head of the elevator company said they'd found the doors with extensive damage? Wasn't that just shortly after the Emergency Response supervisor said they had to secure the elevator door so it wouldn't fall on the rescue workers below? Why didn't the EPS investigators find any damage to the doors? Couldn't the Emergency Response supervisor or the elevator maintenance people have pointed it out to them? Does it matter? Did I hear CBC tell me this morning that all eight elevator doors in that section of the building have been replaced. Why? Who knows? So Kyle died three months ago. Some believe, like the man I was talking to in the coffee shop the other day, that it was an accident, it was too bad, maybe he was struggling with the guards...and he fell...the elevator wasn't there. It's too bad, you know...a kid...but kids these days....well, you know. And some, like me, and from what I understand from CBC, Kyle's mother, believe Kyle was assaulted. He was shoved too many times, too forcefully into the elevator doors causing them to buckle behind him. Before the guards knew what was happening, he fell to his death. What's the truth? Will we ever know? And as I was asking earlier, does it matter?

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April 24, 2004 Once, when I was visiting the Distribution Office as Managing Editor, I met a very interesting man, a new vendor, I think, or a random-once-in-awhile-vendor. There was something deeply calm in him - calm, kind and grounded. When I came into the office, he was explaining his bruised and swollen right leg to the Distribution Coordinator. He told us he had been riding the Light Rail Transit (LRT) without a ticket. When he was removed from the train, two Edmonton Transit security guards took him halfway down the station stairs past the view of security cameras. Then they hit him up and down his leg with a little club of some sort. When he collapsed on the stairs, they left him. He lay there for awhile, then got up and limped away. He'd been limping ever since. He told us he was living on a disability pension because a severe beating several years before had left him partially brain damaged. After the beating and before he regained consciousness in the hospital, he'd died briefly and gone to heaven. There he met the ancient Chiefs of his people and Jesus. That's where he learned that skin color doesn't matter and that's also where he learned to forgive. I had a hard time with that. I was so angry. I didn't disbelieve his story for one minute, neither the beating nor the visit in heaven, but it was the beating I was concentrating on. I wanted him to file a complaint. I wanted him to come with me and pinpoint the guards who'd done it, so we could charge them. He laughed at that one, a good laugh, a gentle laugh, a laugh that said I appreciate the sentiment, but I wasn't born yesterday. So, I said, do you mind if I go ahead and try to find them myself? What did they look like? Which station was it? What time of day? What day of the month? I'm going to find them, OK? I'm going to lay a complaint, OK? OK. I couldn't find them. I went to the station with my son at the same time and on the same day and we lurked around waiting for security guards to show up. None did. So we went to the ETS Security Office located somewhere in the bowels of downtown Edmonton. I explained who I was, why I was there and what I needed to know - who was working security on this day at this time at this station. I needed to lay a complaint against them on behalf of a vendor. Unfortunately, it was impossible for the Supervisor to pinpoint who was working where and when because security travels from station to station on shift; they never stay in one place, there are several shifts and several pairs on each shift, it's difficult to know who would be where and when. So I told him what I knew and he said he'd look into it. When nothing came of the complaint, I accepted that as the way things are and I let it go. There was always some new trouble on

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the horizon, some new injustice to take its place in the futility line. That's a dark thought, I know. I'm sorry, but sometimes it's hard to avoid them. I can be walking along the sidewalk, humming, on a beautiful spring day and a dark thought will occur to me, like what's the point? Give up! None of it makes any sense and none of it ever will. There is no hope. I'm almost used to those thoughts. I expect them. I'd almost miss them if they were gone, kind of like that sad absence of focused pain when the boil finally bursts, that emptiness.

May 27, 2004 The violence of love. What have I learned? Think before I speak. Pray before I act. Never stop listening for the voice of the Holy Spirit and until I hear it, wait.

June 19, 2004 Constable Mike Wasylyshen is a human being. I realized that today at Randy's trial. Probably because he was starting to sweat, some of the veneer was wearing off. But then he'd spent most of the day testifying, answering lawyer Tom Engel's many, many questions. Unfortunately none of the local media were there to see it. At first I thought they didn't care, but I was wrong. I found out half way through the day they were all covering a child pornography story in some other courtroom. I'm afraid I don't know much about it, being a one-story kind of person. Fortunately, they were there for most of the first day and managed to catch the beginning of the Constable's testimony, which finished, I might add, with a flourish as the brave constable described the events that led to his tasering of Randy Fryingpan. Dispatched to a high priority call - possible theft of inoperable auto in progress - he and his partner found themselves in the precarious position of having to confront three or four intoxicated aboriginal teenagers. All he knew was what he saw: a car parked in the stall of a low-income housing unit in Abbottsfield, one back window broken out and the steering column in disrepair and the three or four suspects sitting in the brave constable described the events that led to his tasering of Randy Fryingpan. Dispatched to a high priority call - possible theft of inoperable auto in progress - he and his partner found themselves in the precarious position of having to confront three or four intoxicated aboriginal teenagers. All he knew was what he saw: a car parked in the stall of a

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low-income housing unit in Abbottsfield, one back window broken out and the steering column in disrepair and the three or four suspects sitting in judging from the smell of alcohol in the vehicle he was probably passed out - curled up against the driver's side passenger door. When the constable reached over to unlock the door, he noted that Mr. Fryingpan was groggy and having trouble remaining awake long enough to respond to the Constables requests. But by the time the Constable had reached the back passenger side door and opened it to remove Mr. Fryingpan, Mr. Fryingpan had quite remarkably recovered. He pulled the door shut on the officer's arm. He started to yell: GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME! He tried to move to the other side of the car. Constable Wasylyshen's taser seemed to have little effect on Mr. Fryingpan. The more he was tasered, the more he refused to comply, struggling, flailing, waving his arms around. It took the taser and both officers to get Mr. Fryingpan to the ground, a struggle which lead, quite humorously I might add, to the illustrious officer tasering himself on the leg and, consequently, headbutting his partner. At one point in the fracas, Mr. Fryingpan even tried to bite the Constables hand, but luckily he failed. This is what the Constable told us on Monday when the reporters were there, but by that time it was too late in the day for any further questioning and court was adjourned. I have to admit it was a strange way to end for the day. Especially when our heads were full of the testimony of the other witnesses: the girl who'd been in the car the night the police came, the man who had called the police in the first place because he was afraid the kids were going to steal something, and the woman whose house that man was staying at - the house next door to car. According to them, Randy didn't struggle. He didn't have a chance to struggle. According to them the taser makes a very distinctive crackling sound and gives off a blue light. They know this because they saw and heard it many times. They also heard the screaming and the "I'm gonna die" that accompanied the crackling blue light. It hurts my heart, that's the thing I can't seem to explain. When I hear Constable Wasylyshen describing how Randy turned into a perfect gentleman in the police car, a nice young man - or how he said no, no, no when he was asked if he had any injuries to report at the EPS Arrest Processing Unit, all I can see is a traumatized and bloody native kid in the custody of the white men who just made him that way. I almost yelled out in court: "He was a sixteen-year-old kid, you f-ing a--!" when Constable Wasylyshen was explaining why his own alleged head-butting of his partner after he tasered himself, is not really the same as what Randy may have been doing when he was tasered. He was explaining it by describing how non-compliant Randy was, the more he was tasered the more non-compliant he became, some people are like that.

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I forgot where I was for a moment, I started squirming in my chair, my heart beating faster and faster. I wanted to say it so badly I could already hear it echoing in the room. It was beautiful and true and needed to be said, but just as I raised my hand above my head, rising from my chair and opening my mouth, Constable Wasylyshen pausing, then staring at me in the back of the courtroom, I remembered something important. Timing is everything. I clapped my hand over my mouth, pulled my other hand down from the air and took several deep breaths. My heart was pounding, my whole body shaking, I thought for minute I should leave the courtroom. The only thing that stopped me was the realization that my legs would not carry me the distance to the door. At least not with any dignity. So I stayed put. I prayed for calm, control, wisdom, maturity, sanity. And I didn't say anything. This silence in the courtroom on my part was not a form of collusion. Although it could have become one, quite easily, in fact. I noticed as the day wore on and the Constable kept testifying a kind of numbness setting in, not really apathy, not really despair, just a kind of matter of fact way of looking at the situation. That numbness lasted throughout my walk home from the courthouse, through the cooking of supper, the folding of laundry and checking of e-mail. I was quite proud of myself, so rational, so mature, so able to look life straight in the eye and smile. It was somewhere in the mid-evening that it started to wear off. The first thing that popped up like a crocus in the snow was the moment when Constable Wasylsyhen, sitting for a moment after lunch in the public gallery, turned in his chair, looked at me and smiled. That moment struck me because it was the moment I realized that he is a human being, one of my own species, able, in theory, to be understood. That memory, though, quickly led to a whole stream of memories, facts upon facts that didn't add up but overwhelmed: the EPS dispatch tape from the night of the assault, the numerous and contradictory reports filed by the Constable over the past twenty months, the run through of his version of events, I began the process of pulling the whole thing apart in my mind, trying to lay it out so I could see it properly. It's very, very ugly. The thing is I don't know if Constable Wasylyshen knows how ugly it is. It's my impression at least that he doesn't understand the gravity of what he did and is still doing. Would he understand why Yvonne Nosky is smudging and praying in her Abbottsfield townhouse for justice for Randy? Would he understand why Vanessa Bigcharles has to hold back tears when she blames herself for Randy's pain because it was she and her partner who called the police in the first place?

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June 22, 2004 "Waiting is an action - a positive forceful action. Often, waiting is a God-guided action, one with as much power as decision, and more power than urgent ill-timed decision."1 I have to keep reminding myself of this.

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August 13, 2004 I've had the transcript of Randy's trial for about five weeks now. When I picked up my copy I was so excited I rushed right home, found my glasses and read the whole 677 pages in one sitting. Then I put it away. Two days later I took it out and separated it by witnesses, each one paper clipped and named; Randy, Marilyn, Yvonne, fourteenyear-old boy, thirteen-year-old boy, twelve-year-old girl, Vanessa, Tim, Constable Goodkey, Constable Foote, Constable Wasylyshen, Constable Blais... then I read them all, making notes, tables, charts, diagrams - the car here, the van there, Yvonne's house, Vanessa's house, the fence, the police cars. Who was sitting where in the car? Who saw what, over which shoulder, from what side of the car? I drew timelines: which officer was where, when, what time was the dispatch call? What day was the third R2 report filed by Constable Wasylyshen? What was he saying happened? when and how? Then I put it away again. I felt unbelievably sad and I had a headache. Four days ago, I took the whole thing out again. I have been reading it and re-reading it. And all the time wondering how the heck I'm going to write it out. "If you get tasered by this thing, it feels more like getting hit with some baseball bats from all directions, or like having a horse inside you trying to kick it's way out. It's really jolting...It just feels like your muscles are contracting like really - like it feels like heavy thumping, but inside your body." Constable Mike Wasylyshen, testifying at Randy's trial

August 14, 2004 I've been wrestling with this thing endlessly. I fall asleep thinking about it. I wake up thinking about it. I'm almost as a cranky as I was three months ago. But I have an idea. I'm going to go through the transcript and distil it for you. You can attend parts of the trial with me. Are you ready? This part of the trial is spread over four days - March 22 and 23 and June 14 and 18. Honorable Judge J. G. Easton is presiding. Ms. Karen Yacyshyn is representing the Crown. Mr. Tom Engel is representing Randy Lee Fryingpan.

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It's important to remember that Randy is on trail, not the constables. After he was arrested, the police discovered he was under a judge's order to abstain from drinking. This order was the result of a shoplifting charge that was ultimately dismissed. As Gaston pointed out last night, the whole thing has a terrible feel to it - it seems like the wrong person is on trial. It's upside down right from the beginning. The fact that Randy is even going to have his day in court is entirely thanks to Tom Engel's legal strategy, which he describes in his opening statement to the court, and I quote: "Your honor, I expect that you're going to hear during this trial that Randy Fryingpan was socializing with a number of friends, he was drinking, he was under the terms of a Recog that required him to abstain at that time. He, along with a number of friends, got into a vehicle which he had been in before, and it had been disabled for a number of months, inoperable in other words. He passed out in the back seat. There was some noise being caused by some youths in this vehicle, which caused a neighbor, Tim Diserlais, to phone the police to have something done about the noise. Police were dispatched. Sometime after they arrived, the doors were opened. Randy Fryingpan was unresponsive at the time, possibly because he was passed out from consumption of alcohol. In any event he was, without any prior warning assaulted by the police. Use of a taser was involved, blunt force was used, and other force was used, causing him lasting injury. I expect that you're going to hear that during this incident some police officers were laughing at him, and he was being threatened. He was taken to the police lockup because he was found to be in breach of his Recog, and he was strip searched there. He was then taken to EYOC where EYOC refused to admit him until he obtained medical treatment. He was then taken to Sturgeon General Hospital, received medical treatment, and then was returned to EYOC. Eventually he was released on judicial interim release. The position of the applicant Fryingpan on the Charter motion will be that this type of misconduct is the type that would shock the community, and the only remedy that is appropriate to deal with this type of misconduct is a stay of proceedings... The second Charter notice is a notice which relates to an allegation of illegal strip search, and to disclosure issues. The argument that will be advanced on behalf of Fryingpan is that there has not been accidental non-disclosure or simply negligent non-disclosure; there has been deliberate non-disclosure by deliberate omission, and also by deliberately misleading statements in the disclosure materials. Our position is that this violates Section 7 and Section 11 (d), the right to a fair trail, of the Charter. And the appropriate remedy, the only appropriate remedy could be a stay. An adjournment wouldn't deal with

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this type of issue. The appropriate remedy would be a stay, in our submission. 2 We'll start with Marilyn's testimony. I met Marilyn for the first time in late 2003 outside the Edmonton Law Courts building on the first day of Randy's trial. To be honest, I can't remember anything about the trial itself. What happened in the courtroom? I'd have to find my notes, if indeed I made any notes, in order to refresh my memory. Now I sound like the police giving their testimony, later in trial. You'll see what I mean. I was at the trial that day specifically to meet Randy and Marilyn; I wanted to hear their side of the story. So, during the lunch recess I went to talk to them. I discovered Marilyn and I have many things in common. We're both mothers of several children, some of them in their teens. We're familiar with poverty, single parenthood, separation at one time or another from one or more of our children and, I suspect, the feeling of often hovering on the edge of being overwhelmed by life. On the other hand, she's a much better housekeeper than I am, she has a lot more courage and whereas I swear regularly, I don't believe Marilyn ever does. She's a very gentle woman, soft-spoken and quiet with a beautiful smile, but her eyes betray her. She's also very determined, they say as they look at you, in spite, or maybe because of her sadness, to keep going. She wants justice for Randy. This is what Marilyn tells us during her testimony: I am the mother of Randy Fryingpan. On October 5, 2002 my son was out in the neighborhood. I waited up for him all night because he didn't come home. During the night I heard someone crying out for help, saying, 'mom, help, please', but I didn't realize until later it was my son. About 11:30 the next morning, Randy's friend came over and told me what had happened. I was really worried. I went downtown to police headquarters...I told them my son was there. They had told me that they transferred him to the youth gaol. I told them he was injured and I was worried - that I wanted to see him right away. They gave me a phone number where I could reach him. I phoned the youth gaol and they told me they had taken him to the hospital and I couldn't talk to him because he was on 15-minute medical watch - he was having a hard time breathing. They told me to phone back later, maybe I could talk to him when the other shift came in. I went to make a complaint at the police headquarters downtown. They told me to make a statement - I left it there and they said they'd look into it.

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I kept phoning EYOC. They let me talk to him once - the next day. When I talked to him he sounded like he was in a lot of pain. They told me they wouldn't let me see him so I kept phoning to see how he was doing. On Monday we went to court for him and I saw his black eye. The judge ordered he be released and I went to pick him up at EYOC...I took him to my mothers where she had a camera and we took pictures. I wanted someone to believe me what had happened to him. I wanted to show the pictures to the police station. I took photos of all the marks on his body except the one close by his leg, on - almost into his private. They were deep - deep scars and they were kind of bruised. They were marks but - they were bruised too, kind of swollen. It was difficult to count them, because they're double, but there are twentyone. When I heard what had happened to my son and saw the injuries, I felt hurt, helpless - I couldn't be there to help him and him crying to me for help, and I couldn't be there. Since this happened he isn't able to sleep until he gets really tired, that's the only time he'll fall asleep. He seems quiet now, he isn't able to trust anyone. I've been there for him all the time, trying to talk to him, but he's crying...I try to talk to him and be there for him, to support him - I didn't like what happened to him, and that - that still hurts today. Before this happened Randy seemed happy all the time. He always teased around, like he was always in a happy mood. Now he pushes his friends away, he just keeps to himself. Since I picked him up at EYOC, Randy's been having nerve problems - his nerves when he sleeps. I go down and see him and he'll kind of jump up from his sleeping, his body will vibrate. And when I wake him up, he says he had a bad dream. I did quite a bit of work tracking down witnesses but I haven't heard anything from the police.3

Yvonne Nosky is owner of the car; it was sitting in the parking stall just beyond the fence of her small front yard. When the police arrived, she was watching TV in her living room which overlooks the yard. She's a tall woman with long hair hanging in a loose braid down her back. Something about her seems older than her years as if she's carrying an invisible burden impossible to put down. I suspect, from talking to her, that that burden is children, not just her own children and grandchildren, but the children of her people, native children. She's very calm, slightly ironic. It was Yvonne who painted a picture of her neighborhood for me: lots of kids. Lots of kids

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wandering around wearing baggy pants and ball caps. Mostly good kids with not much to do. She described barbecues in her yard that began with her daughter and her daughter's friends and ended with a yard full of neighborhood kids - some she knew and some she didn't. She can't help but worry about them all. And because she'd heard so many stories from them about being slapped around and called names by EPS officers, she can't help but feel a helpless anger toward the police. She doesn't like what happened to Randy. She knows it could have just as easily happened to her daughter and next time might, but she feels powerless to change that reality. This is what Yvonne has to say about what happened on October 5, 2002: I heard a whole lot of screaming - it was like blood curdling screaming - I looked out the window and I seen like four or five police cars out there. So I went out and asked them what was happening and one of the police officers came to the fence and was shining a light in my face, asking is that your car. I said yes, but it's not running. And he said well. And that's about all they said to me, I guess. Then he went back and he did whatever with the kids. I went in to put my shoes on and my coat - it was raining then I walked toward the car and I noticed there was like four or five police cars out there, dogs. Police dogs. There were running shoes all over the place, kids' running shoes laying all over there, kids being handcuffed and standing up against the police cars. I thought there was a lot of force being put on these kids, and - they weren't fighting or anything, the kids you know. They were just getting shoved around I didnt say anything to the police about that; really scared. 4

Randy is five-feet ten inches tall, shorthaired and handsome. It's almost impossible to tell what's going on inside him because he doesn't talk very much, at least when I'm around, and his face, except when he smiles the beautiful gentle smile of his mother, gives very little away. The little I know about Randy I learned from Marilyn, from watching him move through the world, and from what I saw when I took his picture. We were standing in the dining room of the Fryinpan's townhouse, home to Marilyn and her sons. A very amateur photographer, I was trying to line Marilyn and Randy up with the light from the dining room window. This involved the rearranging of furniture, the opening of curtains and the placing of people. When I finally had everything just right, Randy standing behind his mom, I asked them to look toward the window. This was my concession to shyness, an outcome of my personal belief that while having your picture taken is bad, having to look into the camera is worse. In my opinion, it's always best to work up to these things.

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My concession, as it turned out, was unnecessary. When I said, 'OK, now look toward me' there was no hesitation on Randy's part. It seemed to me he had something he needed to say - something he hadn't been able to articulate. From what I heard that something was: I'm stronger than you think, but I'm afraid and I'm angry. Here's what Randy has to say: It was around 11:00. I went to visit a couple of friends of mine who lived in the complex. There was C and O and another girl, but I didn't know her. It was someone's birthday party, so we started drinking. Then I went home and a couple of my friends came over. We decided to go walk around the complex. We walked to my friend K's house and we decided to warm up in her mom's car. We'd done that about four or five times before. We just sit there and hang out. The car's been there for a couple of months because there was no battery, it didn't work, and the tires were flat on it. I don't think it was ever locked. I was staggering when we were walking to the vehicle. I don't remember getting into the car. I saw it, and that's when the blackout occurred. The next thing I remember is being handcuffed. I remember my hands were on the top of the hood, and I spit out my tooth with blood, because it was building up in my mouth, and the cop that was handcuffing me was - well he said if I do that again, he'd beat me up. I remember being put in the police car. I remember three police cars and three police officers in the car with me - the two policemen in front were wearing uniforms and the one in the back didn't have a uniform. They were talking about the incident, what just happened. I was taken downtown. I got strip-searched in a room like a locker...they told me to take off my clothes and turn my earlobes, and they told me to bend down, and then they told me to lift my - my... my sac and they put me in a cell. I wasn't feeling too good. I - I felt beat up. I could hardly walk, and my muscles were giving out on me. I fell asleep in the cell and then a lady came and woke me up. I felt hung over and beat up, and my back hurt and my left eye. Then I went to see the JP. And he told me I was spending the weekend in gaol....And then I got driven to EYOC by a police officer. The staff at EYOC strip-searched me there again - then a lady that was working there she seen the marks...she was wondering what those marks on my back were. I told her I have no idea, and she told the police officer that I have to go see a doctor before I could stay there. So the police officer drove me to a hospital. I don't know where it is though...I was told I had to be on a 15-minute watch...for my head...there was a taser mark on the back of my head...and for my tooth. I was given Tylenol for pain. When I got out I went home with my mom. She took me to the

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doctor because my back was hurting a lot. I had headaches all day and I couldn't sleep. I was always sad, I didn't want to - I didn't laugh, or smile, or nothing. I - I have nightmares of me squirming on the ground, um, getting beat up, and people, but I don't know who the people are. The doctor gave me Tylenol 3 and an antidepressant for sleep. When I got home my mom took photographs. At this point Randy, on the witness stand, goes through the photographs and lists what the pictures represent: The top left shows the broken tooth. And the top right - part of my neck - that shows a taser mark. The bottom left picture is my black eye. The bottom right is a taser mark. Page two, the top left is a scrape and taser mark. The top right is a taser mark. The bottom left is a cut on my pinky finger. The bottom right is a ...a mark, but I don't know what put the mark there though. On page 3, the top left is a taser mark. The top right is a taser mark. The bottom left is a taser mark. Bottom right - those are taser marks. And the last two photographs of my back... these are all taser marks.5 When Mr. Engel asks him if there are any area not shown in the photographs where there were taser marks, Randy says, 'Yes. That's on my left leg, by my penis.'

C, one of the boys in the car with Randy, was 14-years-old when the assault happened. He came to court wearing shackles, transported from the Edmonton Young Offenders Centre. He's tall, thin, and somewhat hyper in his movements as if at any moment he might laugh too loudly or swear in anger. He acts out his testimony with sound effects and hand gestures, blocking his face with his hands and rolling his upper body back and forth, mimicking Randy. His value as a witness is hampered by a couple of things - of all the kids, he and Randy were the most intoxicated when they got into the car. And when the police showed up, C's own sense of selfpreservation took precedence over his concern for others. He had a warrant out for his arrest at the time. He wanted more than anything to get the heck out of there and so, he ran. A man in plain clothes- whose existence has never been admitted to or identity revealed by police brought him back. At some point in there, several people heard the dog unit member recommend sending the dog after him. He gave the police a false name, which was run on the EPS computer at 3:12 am and, after Randy's arrest, he was driven home. When the police arrived I saw, I don't know, cop cars coming

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in; I saw like two for sure, but there was more than that. I saw two pull in, and I'm pretty sure the other one went to the other parking lot. A couple cars came after and then the cops started questioning everyone. One police officer was beside me, and Randy was over there, I don't know, like three or four meters away. I seen Randy down on the ground, and I said, you guys supposed to be doing that or what. And the cop didn't answer me, and I don't know, they - I'm pretty sure I seen a cop kicking Randy. And, uh, they were tasering him too...I saw little flashes of blue light. I couldn't really see Randy on the ground, because the cops were around him and they were just kicking him. I'm pretty sure one cop was laughing. I heard laughter and I'm pretty sure no one would be laughing while being arrested or getting beat up. I think they were having fun beating up Randy.6

O, the other boy who was in the car with Randy, was 13years-old at the time of the incident. The first thing you notice about him is that he's not very tall and it's probably fair to speculate he was no taller two years ago. This is only relevant as an answer to the question: are these kids in the car or dangerous criminals? O looks like a kid to me. But then I'm not a police officer in the middle of the night in Abbottsfield. And I don't have years of crime fighting experience behind me. O gives the impression he wants to testify. He wants to talk about what happened to his friend. And he, like C, seems compelled to act out what he saw. The cops pulled up, told us to get out, and Randy was passed out in the back. And then the cop, was like 'get - get on the ground'. There was like a puddle, right. It was raining. And they were like 'get on the ground' and I was like 'no'. And then he's like 'get the fuck on the ground', and then I just got on the ground in the puddle. C tried running and then the cop's like, 'oh, just send the dog on him' and then C just stopped and he, the cop, went and grabbed him. I was on the other side of the car. Randy was still in the back seat, he was passed out, like he was really passed out and they just pulled him out. He was going like this to his arm - trying to take his arm away from them and they just pulled him out and ... started tasering him... about five or six were circled around him. And then I never really seen anything after that, but I seen them taser him. I seen the taser. When they told me to get out of the car, the taser was like pointed at my head. And when the taser was being fired it was like a little blue neon light. Every time Randy was tasered he just basically screamed. They tasered him a couple of times in the back and then he ended up by the fence. Then they were all in a circle and after that I couldn't see anything. I couldn't really see them touch him but I

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seen them like move their hands when they were all around in a circle, back and forth like this like they're hitting him. When he was being handcuffed over the hood of a car I think his pants were down. I think they tasered him there too, by his leg. They took him to the cop car, and I think they tasered him one more time again when he was up by the cop car, standing up I know he was tasered because I heard screaming and I heard the taser, and I seen it. Randy didn't try to make a run for it, he ended up by the fence because he just started moving more because they were tasering him. I was upset because of what happened to him.7 H, who was 12 years old in October 2002, is the mystery girl. For one thing, the police do not acknowledge she was there - in the car, even though they ran her name on the computer at 3: 13 am and everyone one else, including her, is certain she was there - in the car. The detective with EPS Internal Affairs discounted her as a witness because when he asked her, almost two years later, about the time she tried to steal a car, she had no recollection. For another thing, none of the people she was hanging around with that night knew her last name, she didnt live in the complex, she was just visiting for a few days. So, it took awhile to track her down. H is at that awkward age for girls. The age when youre never sure how to hold your body, not confident with your changing shape, not yet settled into your femininity. She looks to the side when she's answering questions as if she wants to believe she's in some other room - a room where people aren't looking at her and no one really cares what she's saying. When I got out of the car there was three cops on the side of the car that I was on and there was like two or three on the other side. They were handcuffing us and I just looked over my shoulder and those cops were just beating up somebody. They were like blocking him, and he was just screaming, then he started shaking. They leaned him like a little bit on the car, and they just - he - they just like they were going close to him and they were just holding him back, and he just started shaking and he was just screaming. It sounded like someone was killing him or something. He was just shaking real fast...he was like leaning back on the car and he just started shaking all of a sudden. I only looked for a couple of seconds, because I thought they were going to do something, so I just sat - just standed there for awhile, because they just - they were just hitting everybody for nothing. They had a taser pointing on me and O. I know it was pointing on us because the little red light was shining on it. They said if we run they're going to tase us. I saw little red lights getting pointed at everybody. I didn't see a police dog there, but I know they asked C if he

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wanted to go in the car with it.8

Vanessa Bigcharles lives in the townhouse directly to the right of the parking space the car was sitting in when the police came. Thin with long hair pulled tightly back from her face, she appears worried, tired, sad and at the same time very, very alert. She holds her back arrow-straight, she gives precise answers, she desperately wants things to be right. Vanessa was interviewed by Detective Topp from EPS Internal Affairs on December 23rd, 2003, a year and two months after Marilyn's complaint. She doesn't understand why it took a year for the police to contact her - she still lives at the same residence -the residence from which the phone call to the police was made. She has a message machine, if anybody had called, she would have called them back. When she was interviewed by the detective, according to her, she told him there was a lot of force used but he didn't write it down. He wrote the statement, she read it quickly and then, because he was in a hurry, he left. There was noise outside...car doors slamming...just a couple of times...Tim and I both went and looked. It was just some kids in the car about ten feet away from our front door. The windows were all fogged up, so we couldn't really see how many. There was just talking really loud, loud talking, laughing. I went outside and I asked them to leave, I told them that I had kids that were sleeping, and I was trying to sleep. I told them if they didn't leave I was going to phone the police. Nobody responded to me, so I didn't know whether anybody heard what I was saying. I just went back in the house and Tim phoned the police. Then my baby woke up and I went upstairs.When I came back downstairs to make a bottle for my baby, the police had shown up. I was watching from my side door - ten feet away from the car. I only saw two police cars. One, and then one right after. They were just asking them to get out of the car and no one was responding at first. Then they opened the doors and I remember a girl and two other boys that left the car...it's just the one gentleman that was still in the car. I remember when they got out of the car there was another gentleman there that said one of the kids is taking off and he went after him. He's the only one I saw without a uniform on. And then I went upstairs to tend to my baby. I was feeding my baby and I heard screaming - I remember hearing the crackle of the taser, and somebody screaming leave me alone, I believe it was the boy, and I went and looked out the window. The first thing I saw is him being tasered... The police were telling him get out, yelling get -telling him

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get out and then the taser was used, and then they were forcing him out of the car. They tried getting him up, and he was struggling with them. They got him up, they tasered him another time, one more time. And then I tended to my baby so I don't remember anything after that except a lot of screaming and police officers telling him he's to calm down. That's all I remember up until I looked out the window again. And then I just saw them put him against the police car with his stomach on the police car and his head down on the police car and his pants falling down. He was screaming," I'm going to die, I'm going to die"... And that' s all I can remember. I regretted calling the police because I was causing Randy Fryingpan pain. Like he was in lots of pain, he was getting hurt. It just didn't -didn't seem right.9

Tim Diserlais was spending the night at Vanessa's on October 5, 2002, visiting his son. He's a small man, high energy, feisty. He knows what he knows. He saw what he saw. He's so strangely determined that there was no girl in the car it's as if he's been arguing that point with an unknown someone and that argument is continuing in the courtroom. Interestingly, he, of all the civilian witnesses, was the only one to be interviewed by EPS Internal Affairs shortly after the incident. His statement was taken in November, 2002. Of all Randy's witnesses, he had the most comprehensive view, from start to finish, unaffected by either alcohol, fear or babies who needed tending to. There were doors opening and closing while I was trying to sleep. My van's parked right there, so I thought they were trying to steal my van. Then I look out the window, they're in the car next to my van and I just called the cops because I thought they were trying to steal the car. I've got tools and stuff in there for work, in my van, so I didn't want none of that going missing, so I called the cops. I looked out the one window and seen them get into the car, and then that was it, I just called the cops...The windows were all fogged up. I couldn't see how many people were in there. I couldn't see what they were doing. All I know is that they woke me up in the middle of the night, it sounded like they were trying to steal something - if you hear rattling, you know what they're trying to do - so I just called the cops. I was standing at my front door when the cops got there. The door was wide open. I could see the front end of my van, and I could see the car. Cop pulled up. I'd say one, two, three, four cars...three I know for sure...one of them, I do believe, parked in the front of the house. With bushes, and back of my van, I couldn't see. They - I can say six officers for sure I seen out there - they went to the drivers door first - then to the back doors...because they

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sort of stood at the one door so they couldn't open it. So one of them just sort of stood right there and opened the door - grabbed one out, and then did the exact same thing on the other side. That's when I see the blue light, and a big crack and like screaming - in pain. I could see just the top of his head, that was it. Before he got tasered he was just moving his head back and forth - that was it, to see, to look around. And they dragged him out, put him on the ground, because he wouldn't put his hands behind his back or anything. He jumped up, waved his arms around or whatever, tried to brush the cops off because he was in pain. Next thing you know, I seen this one cop over his head, hit him in the back of the head. He fell down, and that's when I didn't see anything else, but I heard the taser lots - every time he pretty much tried to do something, get up or something, they'd just hit him with it...it was more than six times I'm thinking...from the first taser shot to the last one would have been about ten minutes. He was screaming through the whole thing. From the first time they hit him with the taser right till they put the cuffs on him, like he was going to die because he was in so much pain. Three of them had him on the ground, and three were just standing there watching the other ones on - on the side of the van...because they had them all lined up on the side of the van. He jumped up, they picked him up, took him over to the cop car - he had the cuffs on him, pants down to his ankles over the hood of the car, and that was it. I closed the door and went inside. One of the kids, after he said sorry to the lady that owned the car, he tried sneaking off. And then...I think it was a ride-along or something, because he wasn't in uniform...he went chasing after him. One cop said, " don't worry about him, we'll just send the dog after him and let the dog deal with him"...then the ride-along or whatever came back with the kid. The dog came right in front of my house and then they took him back. They were all males. I knew that for sure, because I was standing there watching -Yeah, they were males. They were all males, because when they got out of the car they all had short hair and baseball caps on.10

Now for the police testimony: Constable Michael Foote stands in the witness box like a soldier at ease, his hands clasped behind his back, his feet a foot apart, his eyes straight ahead. He's very determined in his ignorance. He's been a member of the Edmonton Police Service for fourteen completed years, sir, and on October 5th of 2002, he was working out of Support Division, Canine Unit, a Unit he's been with for seven years. He begins his testimony by claiming he is unaware of Randy

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Fryingpan's allegations of excessive use of force. He says he's just hearing about it now in court. Nobody has mentioned it to him, not even the other officers who've been sitting with him the anteroom outside the courtroom. He's under the impression he's in court for a breach of something. He's surprised he's even in court. He doesn't understand why he's there... On the other hand, he did provide a statement dated November 23, 2003, and he was contacted by Sergeant Triplett of the EPS taser division to ask his involvement in the situation and, now that Mr. Engel mentions it, he had heard there was a complaint put in, but he didn't know to what extent, or what it was, no sir. It turns out, after some wrangling with Mr. Engel, that he recalls Detective Topp calling him and asking him to provide the November 23 statement mentioned above. Apparently the detective, a year after the actual incident, wanted to know what Constable Foote had done that night. Although the detective didn't outline the specific allegations or offer to interview the constable, he did ask if Constable Foote remembered an incident that happened and the constable said: "vaguely, yes." The totality of his recollection is: The call came in, theft of auto in progress, at Abbottsfield Road. Me, being with the Canine Unit, I respond to all those type of situations like that. I pulled up to the area, up into the driveway there off of Abbottsfield Road into the parking area, into the condo complexes there. I got out of my vehicle, and there were numerous cars already on scene. I looked around, I saw that everything was under control. There was no one struggling or screaming or yelling or anything at that time, so I jumped back in my car and I left. He didn't count how many police vehicles were there - they were all over the area, the parking lot was blocked off, and even though he wouldn't like to guess how many cars were there, it was probably more than three, not counting his own vehicle. He can't honestly remember if his dog got out of the car, although he would dictate if his dog was deployed and, according to police records, there was no other dog unit at the scene. Also according to police records, Constable Foote was dispatched at ten minutes to three, the kids were in custody at three minutes past three and Constable Foote was available for another call at thirteen minutes after three. Nevertheless, according to him, it took him those twenty-three minutes to drive up, notice no one was screaming and drive away.11

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Constable Pierre Blais is young with wavy black hair and the body of a wrestler. The main thrust of his testimony could be summed up in four of his own words: that was not me. On the 5th of October, 2002, he was working with his partner, Constable Ryan Sparreboom. Ten months later, in August 2003, Detective Topp of EPS Internal Affairs contacted him about a complaint that had been made by the mother of Randy Fryingpan. Because Constable Blais had no recollection of that night in particular and although he knew Constable Wasylyshen was the prime suspect of the complaint, he asked Constable Wasylyshen what it involved, and Constable Wasylyshen refreshed his memory. That event, for Constable Blais, was a non-event. According to him, he didn't do any investigative portions while at the scene, it was just another regular call and nothing about it stood out in his mind. As the Constable explains: "...it was quite some time after that date the request was made upon me to provide some information. So I spoke to Constable Wasylyshen just to refresh my memory in regards to what happened that night. Like he wasn't telling me what he was doing there, he was just telling me what the situation of the call was...and that's when I recalled from memory what my observation were." In his memorandum, written August 19, 2003, on the same day but not on the same computer as Constable Sparreboom's statement, he says: "I was working with Constable Sparreboom on this night, and recall upon our arrival at the location, there were several youths that were just standing around a vehicle parked out front of the address. Constable Wasylyshen was already on scene and had one person in custody. That person, identity unknown to me, was already in the back of Constable Wasylyshen's police vehicle. At no time did I observe any type of struggle or assault by anyone. Upon my arrival, it appeared that everything was in control and there wasn't any need for further police involvement." That's his recollection. He did not transport anyone, he did not speak to anyone, nor did he go speak to a complainant - yeah, he was basically just a bystander at that call. He did speak with Constable Sparreboom prior to writing the information for Detective Topp, but that was "just in regards to, uh, what he saw that night is what I saw." Apparently, Detective Topp failed to mention to the Constable that when preparing his memorandum he shouldn't really discuss it with the other people first. Subsequently, as a result of Constable Wasylyshen contacting him and indicating that there was a disclosure request, Constable Blais prepared a Police Member Witness Form, dated November 19th, 2003. He refreshed his memory for that particular document from his Internal Affairs document. Although Constable Wasylyshen, in his statement of October 7th, 2002, writes: "Upon arrival, assisted by Constable Blais and

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Sparreboom, we arrested all individuals for tampering with auto", Constable Blais reconfirms that he didn't make any arrest that night, no. From his recollection that's inaccurate. He did not partake in that, no. And although Constable Normand's statement of October 15th, 2003, states, in part: "When we had at least four patrol members on scene we simultaneously opened the car's doors and arrested the subjects for possession of stolen property. All of the detainees were cooperating with the exception of a male that Constable Wasylyshen was trying to handcuff...by either placing my subject in the back of my patrol vehicle, or having a second member take custody of the body, I went over to assist Constable Wasylyshen. Now with the assistance of an additional member, we were able to lift the accused from the ground, lean him against the vehicle and successfully handcuff the subject." - and although, as we understand things, the officers who attended the scene were Wasylyshen, Normand, Blais, Sparreboom, and Foote - and Foote has told us that he arrived later, after everybody was in custody, Constable Blais says: "That was not me. I wasn't there. When I arrived there were several youths standing around a vehicle, and I didn't see any struggle, and there was a subject in Constable Wasylyshen's back seat of his police vehicle. I did not arrest anybody, I did not take anyone out of the vehicle. That wasn't me." He then suggests that perhaps some other officers, who hadn't booked off on that particular call, were there to assist, he doesn't know, but it was not him. Booked off, which he elaborates on, is booked off on the EPS mobile workstation - saying that an officer is on a particular call and when they've arrived. According to Constable Blais, it happens all the time that officers don't book off - he's done it himself several times. He would say he saw, definitely, more than three officers at the scene that night, not including himself, his partner or Constable Wasylyshen, whom he did not see. He also recalls seeing a couple of cars driving by on Abbottsfield Road. According to Constable Blais, typically, a call of theft-of-auto-in-progress attracts a lot of officers just in case theres a police pursuit with that vehicle, but for him to say who was there in Abbottsfield that night, he couldnt say. Earlier in his testimony he tells us that he doesnt recall doing any CPIC checks that night, but during cross-examination by Ms. Yacyshyn this exchange takes place: Ms. Y: Would it surprise you if I told you that you did actually run th some CPIC queries that night on October 5 ? Const. B: Yes it would. Ms. Y: That according to CPIC, you had run three names that evening, one at 3:12 in the morning, one at 3:13 and one at 3:14. You don't recall

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any of that? Const. B: I don't recall running any names, no. Were those names queried from our mobile workstation? Ms. Y: According to the information I have, you were Reg. Number 1900 and the CPIC queries come back to that reg. number...Now does that mean that you ran those queries, or is it possible that somebody else could have run those queries under your reg number? Const. B: It's very possible someone could have used the police computer in my car to run those names. This mystery is explored a little longer by Ms. Yacyshyn and again in re-examination by Mr. Engel. Through these explorations it becomes clear that while the mobile workstation in Constable Blais and Sparreboom's vehicle was logged on under Constable Blais and used to run the names of H, O, and C, an unknown officer must have done it. It was not Constable Blais.12

And last but not least, Constable Mike Wasylyshen. In this case I'm giving you sections of the actual transcript. Pretend it's a movie. Tom Engel - six-foot tall, partially balding, partially dark-haired lawyer, glasses, moustache, and dark blue suit is questioning the Constable - five-foot eleven, one hundred-eighty pounds, completely bald, wearing his full working uniform, including his taser and what looks like a bullet-proof vest. The Constable tells us he's been an officer with the EPS for five years. As the officer in charge of the Fryingpan matter, he was responsible for responding to disclosure requests - if Randy's lawyer wanted any information from the EPS about what had happened that evening, he had to go through Constable Wasylyshen. At least this was the case until the complaint became an Internal Affairs matter. Unfortunately, as far as the Constable can recall, he didn't hear about the Fryingpan complaint until a year after it was filed. He thinks, although he has no recollection, that he was notified in November of 2003. Although he doesn't remember how he was notified, he thinks Detective Kobi sent him an e-mail. And then he thinks Detective Topp took over the file, and then he believes Detective Houle. But he's not sure when the e-mail from Detective Kobi reached him. But let's just listen, patiently, to his testimony: In that e-mail did [Detective Kobi] outline the allegations? In the e-mail, no, he did not, no.

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So are you saying then that the allegations were only outlined to you about three or four months ago; did I get that right? The allegations were outlined to me when I actually attended Internal Affairs, and I apologize, I don't know what date that was when I was read the summary of the complaint. The e-mail strictly said Detective Kobi, Internal Affairs, to the effect of have to meet with you over some matters. So when you met with Detective Kobi I never did meet with Detective Kobi. Sorry, you met, and a summary was read to you? By Detective Topp. Okay. And as I understand it Detective Topp, who had taken over this file, according to his notes... Have some water, please? According to his notes, he received the file May 27th of 2003. So, it would have been sometime after that? Yeah, obviously would have been after that. ... Okay, go ahead and now tell us about what you saw and did upon arrival at the scene. Arrived at the scene, it was 3:00 am October 5. I was working with Constable Normand. I don't recall who was driving or anything. We pulled up behind this vehicle parked outside Abbottsfield Road, which notably had what appeared to be about four occupants in the vehicle. And as previously specified, I thought on the dispatch call, the rear vent window was broken out. And as I walked up, I could see that the ignition was damaged on its left side of the column, and there was - before I opened any doors or anything, when I approached I noted that there was four males in the vehicle, two in the front and two in the back. So I approached from the driver's side of the car and Constable Normand approached from the passenger side. I opened the front door and identified myself as a police officer, and asked the male occupant in the front driver's seat, to exit the vehicle, which he did

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cooperatively. I placed him in cuffs and turned him over to near the area of my patrol unit, which was parked probably, maybe, ten, twenty feet behind this car, very close. Constable Normand dealt with the passenger in the front and back of the passenger side of the vehicle, and I didn't really pay much attention to what he was doing. I went to get in the back door there where Mr. Fryingpan was sitting in the rear passenger seat of the driver's side of the vehicle, but the door was locked, the rear door was locked, so I had to kind of poke my head over the driver's seat. Immediately I noticed that Mr. Fryingpan was under some sort of intoxication. At that point of course I didn't know exactly what. Appeared to be kind of in a groggy sleep, kind of crunched into the corner of the back of the car there. When I identified myself he didn't say nothing, just kind of rustled and turned over. I reached around from the drivers side, unlocked the back door and made my way around to the back door of the car, where I opened it, identified myself as a police officer and told him he was under arrest at that point and took hold of his arm. At that point, Mr. Fryingpan became I'd say kind of slightly awoken and started to scream at me, told me to fuck off, pushed my arm away with his left arm, batted it away and pulled the door closed on me. So, I reopened the door, pulled my taser out of my holster and took hold of Mr. Fryingpan's left arm again. And with the taser in stun mode, so there was no dart deployment, went to make contact probably somewhere - it would be somewhere under Mr. Fryingpan's left arm, somewhere in there. Of course, this all happens a lot quicker than I'm saying it, but deployed the taser, but was only able to get approximately a twosecond burst out of it, because Mr. Fryingpan again batted my hand away and - and kind of pushed me back away from him. I repeated that same response one more time, to no success of mine as Mr. Fryingpan again pushed me away and batted my hand away, moving the taser from contact with his body. And then he slid over to the passenger side of - the rear passenger side - of the car now, because I'm on the driver's side. So at that point I backed up a little bit, instructed him to get out of the car. He started yelling at me, fuck off, leave me alone, that sort of thing, and exited the vehicle very quickly and violently, yelling and screaming at me to fuck off and leave him alone. So when he exited the vehicle I was able to take hold of one of his arms and Constable Normand joined me at that time. We were able to force Mr. Fryingpan to the ground, on the grass next to the car. At that point while I was holding Mr. Fryingpan down, I believe I had hold of his - I think it was his left arm again, and I deployed the taser one more time into Mr. Fryingpan's back to demand some compliance from him. Compliance that I got was that Mr. Fryingpan tried to bite my hand that was now up on his shoulder. I released him, deployed the taser again, which was unsuccessful, because with the wiggling and whatnot the contact with the taser is

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immediately broken and is renders itself pretty useless. I remember trying to taser Mr. Fryingpan one more time on the ground, but I ended up tasering myself, an uh, coming up and head butting Constable Normand, who kind of stumbled back too. And at one point Mr. Fryingpan was able to stand up and try to run away. So at that point I grabbed Mr. Fryingpan with my left hand, because my right hand is still obstructed by a taser in my hand, hit Mr. Fryingpan with the heel of my palm and possibly the butt of the taser, where I'm not sure. Somewhere - be somewhere on his - left side of his face or cheek area. At that point, Constable Normand got back up. We grabbed Mr. Fryingpan, both again, forced him against the hood of the police car, because now we've wrestled our way from the suspect vehicle to our police car. And we were able to hold him down on the hood of the police car, but Mr. Fryingpan would not give up his hands in attempts to - for us to handcuff him, and he began to spit on the hood of our car, and uh, screaming obscenities at us and whatnot and flailing his arms. I went to taser Mr. Fyringpan again, probably in the lower back area, and of course contact was broken again, only allowing me to get a - probably a two-second cycle through on the taser, um, because Mr. Fryingpan's moving. And you know how a taser works; obviously if it's not touching you it's not working. Um, he continued to struggle. I tasered him one more time, which I think I finally was able to make a good contact holding him against the car, enabling him to be temporarily immobilized while Constable Normand and I handcuffed him. And then after the ordeal, Mr. Fryingpan became extremely cooperative. ... Constable Wasylyshen, how many officers were involved in opening the doors of the car? Uh, to my recollection, Constable Normand and I. Could you be wrong about that? I don't believe so, no. Okay, how many officers were involved in arresting the four individuals and dealing with them? Uh, to my recollection arresting them, Constable Normand and I. And could you be wrong about that? Not to my recollection, no, I - no.

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Would you please look at your R2 report of October 7, 2002, please? Yeah. Paragraph 2: Upon arrival, assisted by Constable Blais and Sparreboom, we arrested all individuals for tampering with auto. Is that what you wrote? That's what I wrote. Is that wrong? It's - it's not wrong, it's, uh - I think you have to understand when you're dispatched to a call, first of all what happens is dispatch will ask for a car for a certain event, in this case this incident. He'll dispatch probably, to an incident like this, a couple of cars. And in this case, I believe, from the event chronology, our car, Constable Normand and I, and Constable Sparreboom and Blais's car, and I believe Constable Foote was dispatched also. Um, those cars are called for assistance, and I think being assisted by them I'm meaning that they were on the call, is I think probably what you're referring to. .... Did you review the statement given by Constable Normand, the R2 of October 15, 2003? ... Yes, I did. ... Okay. Look at Paragraph 2. We arrived on scene and quickly found the vehicle in question. The windows were fogged up, and I recall at least three people in the vehicle. In addition to the three people inside of the vehicle, we could see that the left side of the steering column had been damaged. When we had at least four patrol members on scene, we simultaneously opened the car's doors and arrested the subjects for possession of stolen property. M-hm. That's what he wrote. Apparently.

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Is he right or wrong? I don't know. About four I don't know how many members were on scene. What I have testified to is that Constable Normand and I opened - I opened the driver's door, Constable Normand opened the passenger's door. Together, me and Constable Normand, arrested the four individuals. Well, was he right or wrong when he says we had at least four patrol members on the scene? I can't answer that. I don't know who was on the scene. I don't know who was parked out on the road. I'm telling you when I pulled up, from my recollection, I went to the driver's side door and opened it. I arrested the driver - well, wasn't driving, but in the driver's seat. Subsequently, I arrested Randy Fryingpan in the back seat. Constable Normand arrested the other two males that were in the vehicle. Whether there was two others, because I'm assuming he's adding two to our two, whether there was two on the scene or not, I - I couldn't tell you. I don't - I - not from my recollection there wasn't. And we've heard from Constable Blais who says that he showed up after everybody had been arrested...and he says that he recalls at least five or six police officers being there when he and his partner got there, and he doesn't see you there, okay, and he says that one was Foote, one was Normand. He says that he may be wrong about that, but he recalls that there were at least three officers there other than himself and his partner. No, not to my recollection...that I arrived first on scene with Constable Normand, we arrested the individuals. I was probably already dealing with Mr. Fryingpan by the time anybody else showed up. Now, in total, I guess there probably would have been five, but that's not at the beginning of the incident. That's Constable Foote likely driving up , seeing that everything's okay, and leaving; that's Constable Spareboom and Blais likely doing the same thing; and me and Constable Normand. Did Constable Foote have his dog out of the vehicle? I don't recall if he had his dog out or not. Look at Paragraph 10 of your R2 of November 3rd, 2003... the one that starts: I cannot, after numerous attempts, get a hold of Constable Foote. I do recall, though, that his involvement was limited, as he stood with

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his leashed canine at the scene. I know he briefly dealt with another individual from alleged stolen vehicle who took off running in handcuffs, but was later released after CPIC checks revealed negative on the car, revealed not to be stolen. That's what you wrote, right? Yeah, I hadn't reviewed that R2. So your recollection is that My recollection is still the same. I don't recall. Okay, and you recall him pursuing the individual? I don't, I said. Oh, you don't? I believe I said that in the beginning. I said I don't recall him having his dog out, I don't recall him pursuing an individual. But you did on November 3rd? That's possible, yeah. But you're asking me if I recall; I don't. Well, look, I mean you didn't write this down having no recollection of it. That's the recollection you had at the time you wrote this R2, right? Yes, seven months ago. .... Now, Constable you said that you opened the vehicle door and you told Mr. Fryingpan that he was under arrest, then you took hold of his left arm? That's correct. Okay. I - originally, like I told you, I had spoken, well, at him I guess, because he was apparently passed out to some degree, spoke to him through the driver's side door at the driver's seat position, because the back door was locked behind which he was sitting. Now, be fair to say that when you got in the front seat and turned around and started dealing with Fryingpan - this is how it worked;

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right? You immediately noticed that he was extremely intoxicated by his slurred speech? That's correct. You also noted in trying to deal with him that he was groggy and kept falling asleep while you spoke to him, which further showed his level of intoxication to you? That's correct. Now, you wouldn't be surprised, would you, that Mr. Fryingpan would have no comprehension of what's going on, given this level of intoxication? When I was talking to him, he - I don't think he really knew at that point what was going on, no. And he gave no coherent response to what you were saying to him. Is that fair? That's fair, yeah, he did not. .... What did you tell Fryingpan he was under arrest for? At that point, I told them they were under arrest for possession of stolen property and slash, tampering with auto. You told Fryingpan this? Yes, I did. Now according to your report to Topp, November 17, 2003, you say that you told him that he was under arrest for being in a stolen car. Is that what you told him? I don't recall the exact wordage I used. There's no such offence as being in a stolen car; right? Well, there is joyriding, and it still is possession of stolen property. I suppose my wordage is not correct, but But you knew that in order to charge or arrest somebody for that, you'd have to have reasonable and probable grounds to believe that they

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knew that they were in a stolen car, right? I think at a scene, for many reasons, it's not unreasonable for me to arrest people for being in a car that I believed to be stolen at that point. Well, let's look at you notebook entries, okay? You write on Page 145: "Was arrested for being in an auto with steering column punched." Is that right? That's correct. Then you write on the next page at the top: "Was arrested, intox in public." Intoxicated in public? That was later, that was in the back seat of the car after we had ascertained that the vehicle was not stolen. What inquiries did you conduct to determine whether the vehicle was stolen before you decided to place Mr. Fryingpan under arrest for being in possession of stolen property? Sorry, what inquiries did I make before I did, or - or - before I arrested him? Right. Well, the inquiries was simply I had the - the dispatched information that there was these four youths in this car, that the car may have appeared stolen, there was a vent window punched out, and the ignition was damaged. And my recollection of the information was that somebody may be tampering with the steering column. I think that, as a police officer, right there that gives me the grounds to arrest him. I would hope it does. It doesn't leave a lot of time for investigation. It would have if he was cooperative. The other three people in the car, I had no trouble explaining to, and they said kind of - we don't know whose car this is, and we're not trying to steal it, and then after that it was kind of apparent. But when we went to deal with Mr. Fryingpan, that changed. When you approached the vehicle and looked inside, from what you could see, it was just four kids sitting in a car; right? It looked to me like it was attempted to be stolen. Okay, but what were those kids doing in the car when you approached it, other than just sitting there?

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Not much else than sitting there when I got there. Did they have any tools in their hands? Not that I observed when I first walked up. Did you ask any of the kids, well, what are you guys doing? I believe I did later, yeah.

Now can you describe in a little more detail how you tasered yourself? It was at the point where Constable Normand and I had taken Mr. Fryingpan to the ground. It was at that point when we had him held on the ground, and we had a pretty firm hold on him and we were attempting to handcuff him at that - or Constable Normand was, when that was when Randy Fryingpan tried to bite my hand, because it was on his shoulder at that point. He reached back like this and tried to bite it. That was when I took my hand off and went to taser him again - and I'm guessing; like I said, this all takes place in a minute - in the lower back area, but missed. And I was kneeling in a puddle of water, it went straight up my leg into me. And the reason I recall that is, well, first of all you would recall if you've been tasered; and second of all, I think for sure I head butted Constable Normand, knocking him back off of Randy Fryingpan, which is at the point when Randy Fryingpan got up to run away. So that's how and when I did taser myself. -and this was an involuntary response on your part. You didn't mean to head butt Normand? No, I did not. It was a result of an involuntary response from being tasered? Yes, it was. And so to somebody else it might look like you were deliberately head butting Normand, but you know it was because of the taser; you didn't intend that? Yes. And you were aware when you were tasering Fryingpan that the flailing of the arms and this sort of thing could well have been involuntary muscle responses from the taser?

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No. There's difference between movement to avoid the control of the taser and then almost being - being assaultive. When Mr. Fryingpan exited the vehicle, and I'm moving back a touch here in the incident, Mr. Fryingpan exited as if he wanted to fight. He was aggressive, and he was violent, and he was intoxicated. So when he came out of the car like that, and he's - and like I've noted in my report here and stuff, coming out yelling fuck you, leave me alone and things like that, that's not being resistive, that's being assaultive. Now, I'm going to get to your question here; I just have to explain that part. Now, yes, I'm aware of the involuntary muscle contractions and stuff when being tasered, and it might appear to somebody else, as you put it, that they're flailing around because of that. But between the taserings there's no compliance, and that's the difference. Because I have used the taser, it has been effective before when I tasered people. Because one time and they go, oh, and I don't want any more of that, and it ends. That's when it ends. That's not up to me, though, that is up to the subject. Between those taserings Mr. Fryingpan had the opportunity to try and bite my hand, to be hitting my hand away every time, and to be flailing around; and then after we wrestle him to get up and try and run away; and then spitting on my car hood. So in fact - in fact there is no time - there's been times, yes, in the past not with Mr. Fryingpan, but with other people, when somebody's tasered you know they can't give you their hand because of involuntary muscle contractions. But between taserings - and maybe once out of all these taserings was Mr. Fryingpan tasered for near a full cycle. Between these taserings I never had any compliance, and that is not because of the taser anymore, that's because he's being resistive. When you tasered yourself, the taser itself - the contact points on the taser - did not have contact with your person; is that correct? I don't believe they did. You know, it may have even hit my knee, but I think it went into the puddle. And did you get the - it's a five-second cycle; right? That's correct. Did you get the full five seconds? No, I didn't, because I was fortunately in control of the taser. I was able to pull it away. And would you expect there to be any marks on Fryingpan's body if you only got him for two seconds through clothes?

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Yes, I would...when they give us our one jolt - like they give us one to two seconds in taser training. I know for a fact a member in my squad was tasered probably eight months ago now and still has marks from it. And that's from a one-second jolt. Because it's amperage and voltage going into the skin, and skin is very, very sensitive. And it burns, right? Very quickly, yes. So you knew that when you were doing this to Fryingpan that you'd be causing burns to his body? Yes, that's one of the effects of the taser. You knew that these scars for the burns could be on him indefinitely? Oh, no, they do go away, but they do last for awhile. Would it surprise you if I told you that Mr. Fryingpan still has the scars from those burns? No, it wouldn't. Like I told you, I said I know a member myself who's eight months and still has what appears to be little scars, yeah. .... When did you first find out that the data port information in the taser revealed eight cycles of the taser? Not until I asked to see a copy after Constable Goodkey pulled copies of the data port information and I don't know exactly when that would have been. Did you receive this information about what the data port material revealed before you prepared the November 17th report to Detective Topp? No, I saw this long after. All right, and in any of your reports including that extremely detailed report to Detective Topp, did you reveal that you accidentally tasered yourself and head butted Normand? No, I didn't. And you see from Exhibit 25, that's Normand's report, that he doesn't

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mention anything about it? That's correct. Can you explain why this does not appear in any of your investigative reports, and why you didn't tell Topp? Well, it didn't - I'll start with this charge, the breach of undertaking here, and then I'll get to why it wasn't explained to Mr. Topp. First of all, for the breach of undertaking, I likely probably wouldn't even have had an R2 report to go with it. I think you've had breaches before and you can agree there's usually just the arrest booking that go with them. Usually Well, let me ask it this way. Can you explain why, when after all of these reports are done and after all of the requests for will-says, Yeah. Why you never mentioned it in any of your reports? The initial report, like I was getting to Not the initial one, just when Well, that's -considering all of them. -that isn't part of my report, so I'll THE COURT: Let him answer. Okay.

Sorry, sir. It's not mentioned in the first one because it didn't form any part of the charge having to do with the breach of undertaking that we originally charged Randy with. It didn't appear in any of the initial reports with this file, because it really had no bearing on anything at that point. At that point, like I said, I didn't know that - I knew this was going to trial probably July 2003. I wasn't even aware of an Internal Affairs investigation until well after that, and at that point it just didn't seem important to mention any documents. So anything up until probably meeting with Detective Topp, you can probably understand why I didn't put it in that report, because it really had no bearing on the case, or the

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use of force or anything. When it became a complaint is when I began to consider it, but I had not seen this document prior to making my report to Detective Topp. You're referring to the data port entry? To the data port to the taser here, which apparently says that there was eight - depressed eight times during this thing. Um, I never let Detective Topp know. I was confident enough with the fact that - first of all, I didn't know it was eight times, I thought it was six. That's first of all. I didn't think the extra one would be an issue, because like I said, I hadn't seen the data port from the taser. I would start trying account for more, and I haven't accounted for the other one. I'm not trying to say I would have accounted for it, I'm saying I haven't seen this, and still I can only account for seven not eight, by memory. It didn't seem important to me to mention that I had tasered myself, because at that point all I knew, and all you knew, and all Mr. Topp knew was that the taser was depressed six times. That's all anybody knew. It didn't seem it didn't seem like it would have mattered for me to enter it, that, oh, by the way, I got a buzz from the taser during the arrest. Now that I've seen this, I can account Being the data port information? Being the data port information, I can attest to seven now, and I can't attest to eight. So that's - I couldn't tell you. It really didn't make up part of much of anything having to do with this trial. Be a good time to adjourn. THE COURT: We will take a break for lunch now.

I'd say Amen to that. Madam Clerk, could you show the witness, please, Exhibit 'B' for Identification? You'll recognize this, I expect, if you just flip through it, as taken from EPS policy. It looks like -you don't have to identify it for sure, but you'll recognize as being in the form of EPS policy? Yes, yes, it does. Okay. And if you look at the Introduction and Authority, this something that appears to be signed by your father, the Chief of Police? Ex-Chief.

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Ex-Chief. I mean at the time obviously Chief. Okay. And you're familiar with that Introduction and Authority? Not really, no, I'm not. Are you familiar with this advice given by the Chief at that time right at the last paragraph: "All members are responsible and accountable for adhering to Edmonton Police Service policy and procedure"? Uh, yes, I'm aware of that. And does this look familiar to you at all, this Introduction and Authority? No, it does not. I've never read it before. I thought all police officers were supposed to read it. You don't remember seeing it? No, I don't. .... You recognize that it was your duty to be familiar with EPS policy on the use of force? Yes, I do. ... Let's look at Page 1 of the Use of Force Policy...were you familiar with this definition as being the definition of use of force as of October of 2002? This is right under - the second paragraph under the heading General. "The Edmonton Police Service defines force as any physical control or power exerted on any resisting person." Yes, I'm familiar with that. And you were at the time you were dealing Fryingpan? Yes, I was, yeah. And you were aware, if you go to Page 3, of (i), the bottom left hand column there: Whenever a member uses force, 1) that member shall notify the immediate supervisor of all the details involved as soon as possible

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thereafter. The supervisor shall immediately notify the platoon commander, who shall notify the duty officer. Details thereof shall be included in the reports normally submitted in respect of the whole matter, except where there are unusual circumstances present, in which case the report submitted shall contain only a reference to the effect that force had been used, with the details thereof being the subject of a Control Tactics Report Form to the Chief's attention. You were familiar with that policy? That one I wasn't too familiar with, but I kind of see where they're going with it. I wasn't familiar with it word by word, but ... Well, let me ask you about this on page 5, were you familiar with this policy on the right-hand side, the second full paragraph: Members are reminded that they are responsible for accurately documenting, in either their notebook or occurrence report, the events that lead up to and result from the application of force. This includes the elements of the incident that led the investigating member to reasonably believe that the application of force was necessary, and the proper use of terminology and descriptors as found in the Use of Force Model. You were familiar with that policy? Like I said, no, I hadn't actually read it, but I was aware that our reports had to outline why force was used. ... And would you agree with me that in terms of reporting on use - first of all, you agree that you had a duty to report all use of force? That's correct. And you had a duty to accurately describe it? And the reason why it was used? That's correct. And you had a duty to accurately describe all injuries resulting from it? That's correct. And as member in charge of the file, you had a duty to obtain reports from all other members who were present at the time about the use of force? That's incorrect.

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Incorrect? Are you asking if I need police witnesses to back up by police - my use of force? I'll show you a photocopy of some material here...and I'll ask you this: Were you familiar with the EPS policy, maybe not word by word, but familiar with the EPS policy as to the required contents of reports and notebooks at the time you were involved in this investigation? I'd have to go over it, but generally, yes. Okay. And maybe this'll help you in terms of what you're familiar with. Take you to Page 7 of Part 7, Reports and Forms...Right at the top of the left-hand column, - Police Member Witness Forms: This form will be used by all members who have any involvement with a case file and are not submitting a follow-up report. Members using the form need not summarize the case before noting their involvement. Were you familiar with that? I wasn't familiar that we had to use the Police Member Witness Form. It's been generally accepted that we can use an R2 in its place. ... A follow-up report is an R2; right? Yeah, and technically a Police Witness is a follow-up. Okay, so what it's saying here, what you understand, was that if there was no R2 report from a member involved, then they had to at least submit a Police Member Witness Statement Form? No, that's not my understanding. We get - we - we have Witness Police Member Statement Forms for policemen who witness something. Right. In this case, the case is a breach of undertaking, and I - I'm not on trial here, so I didn't get statements against my use of force, so I don't know what relevance this has to the breach. Okay. Do you know what I'm saying? Like all the appropriate paperwork was

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put in place for the breach as per policy - to support the breach charge. Now, this reporting that you've brought up here doesn't directly have anything to do with the use of force. In fact I don't really even see anything to do with use of force in this part that you've provided me. ... Let's keep looking through this package and I think you'll see a Police Member Witness Form. Okay, yeah. Okay, look at the top. You were familiar with this type of form at the time you were involved with the investigation? Yeah. It says: "This form is to be used by all members who have any involvement with the case and are not submitting a follow-up report." Okay. So you knew that they had to do this, they had to submit reports if they had any involvement with the case? If they had any involvement with the case, but I guess involvement is the question I have. I mean when I testified that myself and Constable Normand were present during that, that's my involvement. That doesn't involve anybody else. All right, what about, for example, officers who were running names of the people in the car at the scene; would you expect We don't do that. We don't get a member follow-up saying I came to an incident and I ran a name. We just don't, I apologize. Now, the form says - the form does say who have any involvement, but this is not this is our internal document and it's interpretation can be pretty wide across the board, so Okay, well let's see how wide this would be interpreted. Let's look at Prisoners and Escorts, which is Part 9, Chapter E. Okay. Now, first of all we see on Page 1, paragraph 1(a): Members shall thoroughly acquaint themselves with the legal powers, requirements, and limitations mentioned in Part 1, Chapter C, and act

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in strict accordance with them when arresting and confining a citizen. And then (b): Further the following are general instructions regarding the arrest and confinement of accused persons. Are you familiar with this type of language? Well, I'm becoming familiar with actual policy. I'm sure I have it generalized in a manner of sense, but I'd have to read through it here. Now, let's go to Page 3, Arrest Approval Responsibility. Okay. Now this refers to the Arrest Approval Report process, right? It includes that? Yes. It says here: Supervisors approving arrest must be clearly identified in pertinent documentation. They are generally responsible for determining the necessity and propriety of incarceration, and specifically for the following duties. And then we go to (3): Ascertaining the need for medical attention by: a) Viewing the prisoner closely for injuries. b) Asking the arresting member and the prisoner about visible injuries, complaints of injuries or illness, and anything observably irregular in the prisoner's demeanor or behavior. c) Arranging for medical attention if circumstances so indicate, resolving all doubts in favor of prisoner well being. d) Ensuring that young persons under the influence of liquor or drugs are medically examined prior to escort to Arrest Processing Unit. Okay. You were familiar with those policies? Yes, I was. ... And who transported Fryingpan to the Arrest Processing Unit? Constable Normand and I. So you were responsible for his well-being?

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That's correct. About halfway down the page it says illness/injury/medication, and what's typed in there is no medical history; correct? And that's typed in by you, right, no medical history? No, that's not. Unfortunately these Arrest Appro examined prior to escort to Arrest Processing Unit. Okay. You were familiar with those policies? Yes, I was. ... And who transported Fryingpan to the Arrest Processing Unit? Constable Normand and I. So you were responsible for his well-being? That's correct. About halfway down the page it says illness/injury/medication, and what's typed in there is no medical history; correct? And that's typed in by you, right, no medical history? No, that's not. Unfortunately these Arrest Appro put it this way. Yeah. With injury you're supposed to note there any injuries on the accused; correct? That's correct. And you noted none, which was incorrect; right? I didn't write no medical history, is what I'm telling you. Okay, but you're supposed to write down Well, I'm telling you there's a pop-up window which doesn't appear on the page.

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Okay. It can't be put onto a page. Do you - do you see what I'm saying? All right, well, is there another pop-up window that says bruises, lacerations, broken bones, broken teeth? Yeah, when you click onto injury/illness/medication, inside it goes into there. Okay. Each one of these parts of this arrest booking you can go into. Unfortunately, you can't really print them off, so ... Well, let me ask you this: Are you saying that you did enter into the computer the injuries that Mr. Fryingpan had? I can't recall if I did or not, if I had, it would have been the little bruises that he had on his left cheek. Because that's the only injury that I could observe, and it's the only one he told me about. And you agree that you were obligated to enter that? Yes, I do. And the only way we can find out whether you did, is make some inquiry of the EPS as to whether it's in the computer? I'd have to check if it's - if it's, like I said, in that pop-up window thing. I'd have to ... Well, let's look above here, that line, you see - the category for teeth? And it says "crooked"? Yeah. Where would that come from? I don't know just thought his teeth were kind of crooked, I guess, that evening. So you saw his teeth.

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Yes, I did see his teeth. Did you see his broken tooth? No, I did not see a broken tooth. I told you that already. I never knew of a broken tooth until it came up later in our talks. Okay, well, Mr. Fryingpan, you open your mouth, please, show your upper tooth...Do you see that broken tooth from where you are? Yeah. It's pretty obvious; right? Yes, very obvious, yeah. So are you saying that that tooth was not broken when you looked in his mouth? That's what I'm saying. I'm saying I never knew of a broken tooth. The first I heard of it was a year after the incident. Okay. Now, is this a pop-up window, "crooked", or did you type that in there, the word "crooked"? That's - it's just a blank you fill in. ... All right. Now, he was strip-searched by Normand, according to this. That could be, yeah. Well, take a look at it. Okay. And you know what a strip search is? Yes, I do. Remove all clothing? That's correct. front, back, sides; right?

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That's correct, yeah. Bend over, spread your buttocks, look at the anus area? Lift you scrotum? Yeah. And run you fingers through your hair? Yeah, open your mouth, move your tongue around. Look inside closely, right, for anything that might be hidden? Yes, that's correct. And show the palms of your hands? That's correct. Show the bottoms of your feet? That's correct. Got it all? Yeah, yeah, thank you. So obviously if Fryingpan had taser marks all over his body, Normand would have to see that, right - if he did a strip search? He may have...It's hard to say exactly how quick burn marks will pop up too. I'm not a medical doctor. I couldn't tell you how long they pop up. I know that, you know, like a black eye or something too, it's likely to probably swell up and blacken more the next day than it is initially, so I can't answer that about the burn marks. I mean I know they show up later as red marks. Would it be fair to say it was Normand's duty to report to you if he observed any injuries? Yes, yes, it would, yeah...but on a side - no, not a side note, but these prisoners, not it policy, but as a matter of personal liability, are asked every time by Arrest Processing Unit people whether or not they have any injury or anything to report. They have the opportunity themselves, not only the investigating member. They stand up at the window with

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me, asking them the same questions that are in policy here; have you had anything to drink, do you have any injury, do you have an illness, do you need any medication, is there anything we need to know about. In this particular case, and I witnessed it, no, no, no, and no. ... Do you remember the boy who was in the driver's seat? I don't remember him. But do you remember there was a boy who was in the driver's seat? Yes, yes, I do...a teenager, yeah. All right and do you remember the girl that was in the car? There was no female in the car. No female? No, it was all males in the car, yeah. So H was not in the car? I don't know any of the names of the other witnesses. There was no female in the car. What we heard from Constable Blais, well, actually we didn't hear it from Constable Blais, but it was the subject of an admission that somebody using Blais's password on his mobile work station in the vehicle, queried a number of names by CPIC and it would have been at the scene when this was happening. Okay. And one of them was H. Okay. Are you saying that despite that, there was no girl in the car? Oh, I'm not saying there wasn't a female around there that somebody might have run, which is not uncommon, but there was no female in the car, no...There was four males. Okay. And we know one of the to be C.

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That may be, yeah. One is Randy Fryingpan. That I know, yeah. And one is O? Okay. And who would the fourth be? You'd have no idea? No, I don't know. Like I said I didn't deal with the other people. I removed the driver and placed him under arrest, went back for Randy. The incident broke out. I got back in the car, I ran or Constable Normand ran - I couldn't tell you - a couple of names. I - I - you know, and I don't know what - where the girl came from. Okay, well, we understand according to the admission of fact that you or somebody using your password from the mobile work station which could be your partner or any other police officer that happened to use it in your car; right? Yeah, that's right. Somebody using your password ran Randy Fryingpan's name. Yes, could have. And no other name. Okay, yeah, that could be. And then somebody using Blais's password ran three names, one of which we understand was an alias used by a person at the scene, Could be. to avoid a warrant. Oh, okay, damn it. Okay. And another one is O, and then there's H. Okay. ...

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So, that's our understanding, there's four people in the car, and only four names were run, and one is H. No, there were four males in the car. That, I know. I know a difference between - unless he was dressed like a man. Well, all right, a 12-year-old. You could Twelve-year-old? Yeah, a twelve-year-old girl. Okay. You could have mistaken a twelve-year-old girl who was dressed in jeans or something like that for a boy; right? Not likely. Not likely? No. But possible? Well, I don't know how to answer that. I dealt with four - we dealt with four males and that's that.13

And that's that. That certainly is that. There are two further half-days scheduled for Randy's trial in November. Constables Normand and Sparreboom will testify. The Crown and the defense will be prepare written submissions and the judge, after considering the evidence and those submissions will make his decision. And that will be that. It's not that I don't trust Judge Easton to make a good, solid

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decision. I do. He's been fair, thorough, dedicated to hearing all the evidence, respectful to all the witnesses. He will review everything and prepare a written decision which I believe, from what I've seen, will be a fair, strong decision. But I also believe no one will hear much about that decision. It will get one-day semi-moderate media coverage, no one will really understand the coverage and the story will sink out of sight forever. That's my theory.

Twenty-one times. That haunts me. There are twenty-one taser burns on Randy's body. Twenty-one pairs of burns. I have double and triple-checked that number, asking Marilyn if she's sure: "Twentyone, that's a lot. Are you sure it's not ten times by two, like it would take two scars to equal one taser burn. Are there still twenty-one?" She's certain. It seems like an important fact. Twenty-one means there was definitely more than one taser and more than one Constable torturing Randy with electric shock. Twenty-one five-second shocks is a lot of voltage going into one young body. I also know this could be easily verified. The scars are still there. Anyone, preferably a doctor with some knowledge of burns, could count them officially if Randy was willing.

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September 20, 2004 I bet you thought I forgot, didn't you? I bet you thought: 'she's so wrapped up in Randy's trial and what happened to Randy that she completely forgot she has a job to do. She forgot she was putting a puzzle together. This is all very interesting about Randy but what about the big picture?' Well, you're absolutely right - sort of. I did get caught up in what happened to Randy. I don't think there's been a day in the last ten months that I haven't thought about it in one way or another. I know there have been whole days when I've thought of nothing else. Sure, I can talk about other things, "relate" to some of my fellow human beings in a friendly, interested way. I can function enough to run a household that includes three children, a man, a dog, a cat and five gold fish. But internally a large part of me is maintaining a vigil. On some small altar inside myself, there's a picture of Randy and Marilyn beside a candle burning. And even when I'm busy doing other things, some part of me is sitting by that altar praying. That's just the way it is. The Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, the best dictionary I own, defines obsession as a persistent disturbing preoccupation with an often unreasonable idea or feeling. Am I obsessed? Good question. It's a question I have often asked myself, but even now, I have great difficulty facing the answer. My pre-occupation is definitely persistent. It's definitely disturbing. It includes ideas and feelings. The only remaining question is, is it unreasonable? Is it unreasonable to hope that there could be justice for Randy? Or is it already much too late? Is it true that justice delayed is justice denied? What type of present event would mean anything? Aren't the lessons already learned? Isn't the damage already done? The last time I saw her, Marilyn told me that Randy was tired. He hopes to move on. I can completely understand that. So what am I doing? Maybe it's time to blow out the candle, take down the altar and put the picture of Randy and Marilyn into my file of sad memories. And get on with my life. It seems unreasonable at this point to keep hoping. If I do, I believe I could quite accurately be defined as obsessed. As for the big picture, the one you thought I forgot about putting the puzzle together - I didn't really forget. I just quit talking about it. As my father used to say it's better to be silent and thought a fool, than to speak and be proven one. Unfortunately my persistent preoccupation with Randy and my inability to talk about the big picture are linked in the same way a house fire is linked to the inability to finish renovating the kitchen. It's difficult to ignore, impossible to get past and requires some focused attention in its own right. Its circumstances shape my reality in ways I hope are not permanent but until time proves healing, I can't be sure. It was a noble goal, I think, to attempt to figure things out. But I have to admit the complexities are beyond me. The interplay

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between myself and the world, for example. How much of my trouble is simply specific to my personality - an inability to live with suffering, an excessive sensitivity to injustice and unrealistic expectations of life? These, unfortunately, are questions I could only answer for myself. My peace, should I accomplish it, would not be your peace. My peace, should I accomplish it, would change nothing greater than myself, and right now, to be honest, that doesn't seem like enough. I do appreciate you taking this journey with me. It was better to have you along than to travel alone. I'm sorry it hasn't ended on a more positive note, but perhaps we will meet again some day under happier circumstances. But what about Randy, you might reasonably ask, what will happen with Randy? I wish I could help you with that but I don't know the answer. Peace, Natasha

November 8, 2004 I'm back. I guess I wasn't telling the truth. I was acting as if I was just going to go on with my life... But here it is almost six weeks later and I spend all my days, from the time I wake up until the time I go to bed, plotting and praying and plotting and praying in the desperate deadly hope that I will be able to publish this book myself by this time next week. I want this book published. I want this book published NOW. I have an ISBN number, a printer, a modest marketing campaign. And a secret list of hiding-place options for myself and my family, just in case. Because, in spite of being a somewhat rational human being, I don't feel safe. There are police everywhere. I see them in coffee shops and on the street. I saw a dog unit cruiser drive by the other day - the first time I'd ever seen one. I only recognized it because I heard the dog barking in the back. Seeing it reminded me of Tom Engel's question to Constable Foote about the amount of damage a police dog can do to a human being, should it be allowed. I don't know why these things scare me. I live in a free country, don't I? I'm a Canadian citizen, right, not a third world refugee? Still, the less people who know what I look like, the better I feel.

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The simplest thing would be to do what I said I was going to do. Go on with my life. Forget about it. Get a job. Put the book on the shelf and think about something else for a change. The only thing that stops me from choosing that option is the threat of overwhelming despair. I'm not sure how to assimilate the knowledge that I have failed to accomplish one simple act of justice. I imagine myself aging rapidly, my shoulders stooping more each day, my hair greying before my eyes. I picture myself becoming gradually invisible, thinning to nothing, because it seems to me if I don't publish this book, there will be no justice for Randy. And I don't have the money to do it. I don't have any money. None. Not only that, no one I know has money. So, as far as I can see, I can't publish the book. I have it all mixed together. Randy and the book. Is the book for Randy? Or is Randy for the book? Is it personal? Is it political? Is it spiritual? Is it existential? Is it psychological - as in a psychological problem? Mine, for example? Why does it matter so much? It shouldn't be the end of the world for me whether the book gets published or not, whether Randy gets justice or not. I'm giving Randy's story more meaning than it actually has. I'm giving my story more meaning than it actually has. I'm imposing meaning on a series of events. I'm drawing conclusions from them about life, about human nature, about the questionable state of the present and the apparent hopelessness of the future. Did I hear someone invite me to dinner? The problem is the events are real. I'm real. Randy's real. Mike Wasylyshen is real. You're real. So what the heck is going on here?

November 9, 2004 Today I was thinking about discrepancies in justice. For example, when a 'service-user' came into the agency where I used to work and threatened the staff with a knife, the agency called the police who promptly charged him for that offence. When, in another incident, a staff member was physically confronted on the street by a 'service-user', the police were called and he was charged. If I remember correctly, he spent quite a bit of time in the Remand Centre as a result of his actions. I seem to recall one of those 'service-users' was already permanently disabled from a beating he'd received at the hands of Remand Centre guards several years earlier. The night before he came into the agency with a knife, I'd seen

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him climbing up one of the dirt banks near the river valley with some kind of blanket. I assumed he was looking for a place to sleep. On the other hand, when the police assaulted Ed, the homeless man, leaving bruises on his back, I called the police and no one was charged. When the police broke Leona's nose, she called the police and no one was charged. And when five police officers participated in the beating of Randy Fryingpan, his mother called the police and asked specifically that those officers be charged for that offence. No one has been charged. There's some kind of justice discrepancy there. It reminds me of a Flannery O'Connor line: "Does it seem right to you, lady, that one is punished a heap and another ain't punished at all?"14 I have a suspicion that if five native teenagers beat the son of the Chief of Police leaving him permanently injured, those teenagers would be very rapidly hunted down and charged for that offence, but that's just a suspicion. I also suspect if such an act of violence had taken place quite a few people would be quite angry about it. I suspect we'd all begin to think we had reason to be worried about our safety around native teenagers. Tomorrow is the second last day of Randy's trial. Constables Sparreboom and Normand are going to testify. It should be over by noon. I reallyf Police leaving him permanently injured, those teenagers would be very rapidly hunted down and charged for that offence, but that's just a suspicion. I also suspect if such an act of violence had taken place quite a few people would be quite angry about it. I suspect we'd all begin to think we had reason to be worried about our safety around native teenagers. Tomorrow is the second last day of Randy's trial. Constables Sparreboom and Normand are going to testify. It should be over by noon. I reallyI have an unerring sense of direction and an uncanny subconscious memory for details. How could I possibly go wrong? Their townhouse has completely disappeared. Vanished. I thought when I didn't find it in the afternoon, I would do better in the evening. But I was wrong. So I brought my Christmas tree and my note home and decided I had to go to the trial. I couldn't just not show up, no note, no message, nothing. I know no one goes to Randy's trial anymore except Randy, Marilyn and me. I like to think it helps a little to have me there, but I really hate going. I hate the powerless feeling. I hate the silence. I hate having to smile when I feel like crying. I don't like listening to the police. Plus I know it always takes me at least a week to recover, to regain my psychosocial equilbrium, such as it is. I know there is nothing I can do to help except write this book - this book that may never be published, never read. I know I'm

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useless to them. I have no platform from which to yell. I've sent Randy's story to people all across the country and it didn't raise even a ripple of response. I'm as powerless as I ever was.

November 10, 2004 How it all fits together: No more running away. I'm going to sit at this computer until the puzzle is fully assembled. I have all the dark pieces on one side of the table: pain, powerlessness, violence, dishonesty, oppression, lack of voice, racism, depression, despair. All that darkness is overwhelming. Which is why, I believe, I'm always running away, quitting, hiding in the closet, yelling from the basement, throwing rocks from behind my six-foot fence. I didn't go to Randy's trial today. I walked downtown to the library. I checked my e-mail for signs of life. I drank a coffee in the company of strangers, then I walked past the courthouse and on down the street, home. I feel terrible about that. I'm praying for them, though, all the time behind my thinking. Does that matter? Is that anything? Is that an action? Pieces of light. That's what I need. Where did I put the pieces of light? Are they so few and far between I hardly notice them? Concentrate, concentrate, concentrate. Trees. Trees come to mind. The past spring and fall I spent a lot time helping Gaston in his tree business "Native transplants Alberta trees for Albertans." I learned to differentiate between a white spruce, a black spruce and a balsam fir. I know which is a jack pine, which is a lodgepole pine and which is a tamarack. I love little birch trees, I would plant birch trees everywhere if people would let me. I'm surrounded by trees at this very moment. Our dining room is full of little spruce trees waiting to be dressed up for Christmas. Those trees are all about survival - financial survival. Well, that piece of light was very quickly absorbed into the darkness, I must say. From the beauty of trees to the chill of poverty and the need to survive in under 50 seconds. Shoot! We are living the way we are - poor - because I stubbornly left my job, I stubbornly insisted that I continue my "work", I stubbornly insisted that life should not be all about the money. My whole family is suffering from that stubbornness. Does that mean I care more about other people's children than I do my own? I should have looked for and found an actual job months ago.

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It's irresponsible to keep working on this book while my house falls down around me. I've been told some books take years to write. Years? Years? I can't wait years. What love says. The puzzle. God help me. Ah! A piece of light.

January 8, 2005 Sometime last spring, somewhere in the boreal forest, I started painting again. My favorite painting from that time is of a storm blowing in over the trees in layers of grey, white and blue. The sun, facing off with the storm, touches the tops of the trees with light. I liked that painting so much I gave it a caption, a quote from a native Chief, spoken to the governor of Pennsylvania in 1796, and posted it over my computer. Now, anytime I want, I can look up at the sun on the sky and the trees and read: "We love quiet; we suffer the mouse to play; when the woods are rustled by the wind, we fear not." 'We suffer the mouse to play.' I love that line. 'We fear not' has a certain ring to it, too.

January 19, 2005 I'm feeling a little embarrassed. In spite of my reassuring words, I've come to the conclusion I must actually be afraid of the police. Two days ago I was ready to pack my bags and get the heck out of this city. I was deliberating it all in my head: We've moved so often in the past 10 years. This house is the longest and the best - three years and counting - we're putting down little roots. I can already hear the screaming when I tell my kids. I can hear my own screaming. I don't want to move. I don't want to disrupt my whole life and the lives of my children because I'm afraid of the police. On the other hand, think about it. What ARE they capable of? I know they can inflict violence on a screaming fellow human being for no apparent reason and not even think twice. I know they can lie without blinking; they can sustain a lie for a very long period of time. I

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know people believe them. I know they protect each other. It kills me how much they protect each other. I could see a strange nobility in their loyalty if what they were being true to wasn't so...I was going to say evil...but that seems like a harsh thing to say about a fellow human being. I just don't know what else to call it. But look at my daughter, with friends, finally, and room she can call her own, a community she knows: the school, the church, the grocery store, the coffee shop, her big sister only four blocks away. How could I ask her to move? I have to get a grip. I've been stuck in this thing way too long.

January 20, 2005 For the past ten days, the fatality inquiry into the death of Kyle Young has been going on, a backdrop to my brooding. Six months ago, the justice department decided there would be no charges laid in connection with his death - the force the guards used to restrain him was, in their estimation, reasonable force. Their estimation was based on the findings of the EPS investigation completed three months earlier. The last loose end relating to Kyle's death is this fatality inquiry, required by law when someone dies in the care or custody of the government. Fatality inquiries are not intended to place blame. They are intended to a) reassure the public of the government's transparency, and b) pinpoint systemic flaws that may or may not be corrected. Inquiry judges make recommendations. It's interesting to note that, also according to Alberta law, none of the findings of a fatality inquiry may be used later in a civil suit, should the dead person's relatives want to sue the government or anyone else for that matter. I considered going to the inquiry, but quickly realized this would involve ten full days at the courthouse, in the courtroom, listening, listening, and listening some more. These days you'd have to pay me quite a bit to get me to do that. Instead, I decided be who I actually am, a citizen troubled by what I've heard about Kyle Young's death, wanting to know what happened and counting on the media for my information. Everyday I've been listening to CBC radio reporting from the inquiry and reading the articles in the Edmonton Journal and Sun. With three days still left in this section of the inquiry, this is some of what I've learned. First of all, Kyle wasn't tasered two days before he died, contrary to earlier reports. He did, according to two courthouse guards, a man and a woman, fight with and threaten them, which resulted not in

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his tasering, but in handcuffs and the warning of pepper spray. It also led to the combination of handcuffs and shackles he was wearing the day he died. I learned that he suffered from several disorders: oppositional defiance disorder, attention deficit disorder and hyperactivity disorder, and that he required medication for those disorders. It does not appear that he was getting that medication while he was in custody. His mother called Edmonton Young Offenders Centre (EYOC) to tell them about it and to offer to bring it over for him, but they declined her offer. I learned that when he doesn't take his medication his behavior changes, he becomes erratic and potentially hard to handle.

headlines and pull-quotes15 an elegy for Kyle January 13 Teen 'aggressive' before fatal fall, officer testifies "He didn't seem to want to focus on anything at all. He seemed very agitated, very angry."

January 18 'He was totally out of my grasp' Guard (6-foot-two, 265 lbs) says he held Kyle Young by the neck just before teen fell down elevator shaft recounts teen's last moments. Testifies wrong he did nothing

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in restraining 16-year-old 'I performed my duties well.' "Who would have thought that a 10-inch door would give way? I never thought in my wildest dreams that 50 pounds (of pressure) would knock the door off its tracks." January 19 Guard (6-foot-four, 240 lbs) could see Kyle Young's face as teen fell to his death shackled and handcuffed 16-year-old 'pushed' into elevator door Teen 'out of control,' guard tells inquiry was

"I just wanted to hold him into the door and have another talk with him." January 20 Questions unanswered

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at fatality inquiry

January 22 Guards physically abused teenager lawyer claims family will use inquiry's five-month break to cope with what they've heard. "For me it's been an emotional roller coaster I'm up, I'm down I'm in, I'm out I'm mad, I'm angry, I'm sad. And I don't know where to go." mother of Kyle Young

January 31, 2005 I'm not sure where the story ends. It was supposed to end with me, by some miraculous means, publishing the book in Edmonton. You'd be reading it a month from now, in Castledowns or Strathcona, realizing it wasn't just my story, it was your story, your city, your responsibility and that realization would ensure justice. Because I know what happened to Marilyn and Randy didn't happen in a vacumn. It happened in a great silence punctuated only by the odd stifled scream. Does this mean my city is worse than other cities? I doubt it. It must be the same everywhere. People do what they need to do to get by. When the Edmonton Police Commissioners decided not to order an outside investigation into Marilyn and Randy's complaint against the son of the Chief, what was motivating them? Was it some combination of peer pressure and fear? Many individual instincts for selfpreservation acting as one? Was it some type of class loyalty? And when the local media gave Randy's story so little coverage as to render it meaningless, what was motivating them? Fear of law-suits? The risk of alienating important local contacts? An

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inability to believe aboriginal teenagers could tell the truth? An unwillingness to believe police officers could lie? Maybe the farther away the problem is the easier it is to see, our view unobstructed by our own shadows. Torture, in another city, is more obviously torture, corruption more obviously corruption. On Friday at 2 o'clock in Courtroom 443, the judge will deliver Randy's decision. Where did the time go? I'm going to be there even if it kills me. Which it won't.

February 4, 2005 See, it didn't. I just arrived home from the courthouse and I'm still breathing.

February 5, 2005 This always happens after I go to court - brain freeze, a traffic jam in my head backed up half-way down my spine. It's too many things to be hit with at one time. First of all, on my way through the courthouse to the courtroom, I saw two of the guards involved in the Kyle Young inquiry. I recognized them from their pictures in the paper. They are both big men but that's not what struck me - it was how everything seemed so normal. One was standing at the security desk chatting and laughing with his co-workers, one was strolling on the second floor balcony, every so often looking over the glass barrier to the lobby below. What did I expect? A hushed silence? A sobriety? A sense of shame? As I rode the elevator to the fourth floor I was thinking about loyalty among co-workers, the all-for-one-and-one-for-all that keeps the work-world humming along: you cover my back, I'll cover yours; I know what it's like to be you, the things you have to put up with, the shit you have to take. If we don't look after each other no one else will. It can become a sickness in any organization, everything devolving to the lowest common denominator - how difficult our lives are, how misunderstood we are - as if we didn't chose our place in the

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world for real reasons, as if we couldn't remember why we were there. Then there was talking to Marilyn. She thanked me for the Christmas tree. She forgave me for not going to the last days of Randy's trial. She was happy to see me - that was a relief. She told me Randy had had to quit the job he'd held for three months because the back pain never went away. He was still having nightmares and headaches. As for herself, she felt sad and anxious most of the time. On the whole, they didn't go out much. Randy wasn't at the courthouse, he was on his way by bus, he was certain he wouldn't win, he really didn't want to be there, he was running a couple of errands, he was on his way by bus...... So we waited, sitting in the quiet courtroom, whispering conversation back and forth. That's when I found out that recently one of Randy's friends had been hurt by the police. Marilyn didn't know all the details, just that it involved two police dogs and quite a bit of blood and the friend was in EYOC; she'd given the friend Tom's phone number. After fifteen minutes of waiting the judge decided, with Marilyn's consent, to begin without the presence of the accused. He gave both counsel a copy of the 27-page decision and said something like: "The appropriate and only decision I can reach in this case is to grant a judicial stay." Then court was adjourned and it took us a couple of seconds to realize that that meant Randy had won. In the last pages of the document the judge explains: "I question the reasons given by Cst. Normand as this was a young person for which the only charge was a breach, was it necessary to arrest this person? Was it not conceivable that he be released under a Promise to Appear? Could he not have been taken to his parents? The other young persons were taken or sent home. The mere fact that the accused was taken and lodged in the EPS cells resulted in a strip search. The reasons for the search were not related to the arrest and was unnecessary...the explanation given by Cst. Normand is not accepted by me and I find the strip search to be a significant intrusion into the security of a person and a breach of the accused rights under sections 7 and 8 of the Charter. I find the rousting of the accused out of the vehicle in question by the use of the Taser was excessive. The accused either passed out or asleep did not pose a great risk to the officer in question and the Taser was used for the purpose of facilitating the movement of this young person out of the vehicle in question. Immediately thereafter and within 66 seconds of the first deploy of the Taser the accused is Tasered repeatedly and up to an additional 5 times. I find that there is neither time to give any kind of warning at all in that time period. That, in my conclusion, is abuse of use of force and cruel and unusual treatment. I'm satisfied that any resistance, arm swinging or the like was as a result of direct application of the Taser and involuntary or voluntary actions to avoid the impact of the Taser. Had any

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investigations with witnesses that were within 10 to 12 feet of the car been undertaken, the officers may well have determined that at best this was a case of trespass or at worst merely a breach of a noise by-law. "The treatment of the accused by the application of the Taser and the use of the fist or butt end of the Taser gun to the body of the accused driving him to the ground causing a broken tooth clearly indicated to me an excessive use of force and a clear violation of the Charter rights of this accused. I do not accept at any time there was resistance to the degree necessitating the use of the Taser weapon, nor was there any concern at any time for officer safety. Three other police officers standing by and observing show no cause for concern, did not render assistance and made no notes or had any other memory of any specific event. The witnesses other than the officers appeared disgusted by the obvious overuse of force. There is no evidence before me that any of the required warnings under the Young Offenders Act were given nor any procedural safeguards as provided under the legislation dealing with young offenders. The young persons in the car ranged from 14 to 16 years of age. There were at least five officers at the scene of the arrest. This was not a take-down of a violent drug related gang. This was a group of young people hanging out in an unlocked inoperable car on private property. The car had not been broken into. The young people assumed they had permission to be in the car. It cannot be concluded or inferred that the young people sitting in this car were posing a great threat to the harm of the investigating officers. Rather than conduct an investigation, they used tactics, certainly against the accused, that were excessive. The scene was clearly under control and the deployment of the Taser was absolutely unnecessary. Accordingly I am of the opinion that the rights gauranteed by our Charter have been violated with respect to the strip search and the excessive force delineated above. Having already determined that there are flagrant breaches of the Charter, under sections 7, 8, and 12. ... I find that the breaches of the Charter suffered by the accused clearly propel this case into being one of the clearest of cases...Accordingly the only remaining appropriate remedy is to order a judicial stay of proceedings, which I now order." It's a good decision. The judge doesn't mince his words. He says what Marilyn and Randy have been saying all along: Randy was badly abused, his body and his rights as a Canadian human being, by the police. The trouble is we knew it wasn't justice, even though Randy had won. It was nothing like justice. As Marilyn asked, when we were walking from the courthouse to Tom's office, what about the police? The EPS has never responded to her complaint, filed twentyeight months ago. Does it seem ungrateful and unforgiving to want the officers

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charged for what they did to Randy? Does it seem harsh? Somewhere in the tunnel between the courthouse and the office, Marilyn mentioned forgiveness to me. She was wondering how to accomplish it, because in spite of her reading of the Bible she was having trouble forgiving the police. I have to admit, I wasn't much help. I struggle with forgiveness myself. It's a tough one. Maybe some sign of justice would help, I suggested, maybe an apology, some sense of regret even. In the absence of those things...I don't know...forgiveness is a tough one. But, Marilyn said, maybe they have their reasons, things going on in their lives, things we don't know about, things they just took out on Randy... Maybe they do. I love Marilyn for saying that, for trying to understand, for struggling to forgive. I keep forgetting.

February 7, 2005 I feel like I must have missed something. The judge's decision was some type of victory for Randy. A cause to celebrate. That's the impression I'm getting anyway. As if we should be grateful. And I don't know what my problem is, because I don't feel grateful. It seems upside down to me. All crooked. I was cleaning out my sent e-mail this morning and I came across a letter I'd written to the Director of EYOC many months ago. I was hoping I could encourage him to find the resources to help Marilyn and Randy. I was thinking good quality counselling to deal with Post Traumatic Stress. I was thinking top-notch physio-therapy for Randy's chronic back pain. I hoping some kind of testing for what Marilyn fears might be brain damage. The Director referred me to Alberta Social Services, a narrow path leading to a locked door, and suggested I tell the Fryinpans about the EPS public complaint process. I responded that if EYOC took its commitment to the health and well-being of the youth in its care seriously, he would file a complaint himself on behalf of the institution. Someone on staff sent Randy to the hospital. Someone on staff performed the fifteen-minute medical watch. Someone checked regularly to see if Randy was breathing.

February 7, 2005

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Why is it more important that several EPS officers seem to have targeted a journalist and the Chair of the Edmonton Police Commission than that several officers tortured an aboriginal teenager? Why is one worthy of pages and pages of media coverage and the other just half-a-page? These days the local media is full of the latest EPS scandal: in November a number of officers alledgedly targeted a local journalist and the Chair of the Edmonton Police Commission in an attempt to catch one or both drinking and driving. Apparently the officers were angry about the amount of criticism they'd been subjected to and they hoped to exact some type of revenge on their critics. The situation is devolving so badly the Chief announced today he's not feeling very well and he's taking a medical leave of indeterminate length. Although it looks like this scandal might be the one that pushs the issue of police accountability in Alberta over the edge of change, I don't want to talk about it. It's like some other world. It's like a fight breaking out in the court of the king. Should the peasants care who wins? I wouldn't mind laughing a little more than I do. I really should get out more. I'm convinced I'm suffering from some form of trauma response. It's as if I'd watched someone being beaten over and over again. And as they were being beaten, I watched person after person turn away and go back into their homes, closing their curtains and turning up their TVs to drown out the screaming. That's what it feels like anyway. Sometimes anger is a necessary and healthy emotion. I've been told that people angry enough to defend themselves make the best recovery from torture-induced Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It must be important to know that when push comes to shove, you won't go down without a fight.

February 11, 2005 Time turns everything into a story. That kills me. It's so true. What's written is written. What happened, happened. What happens next only time will tell. As for myself, I'm going to stop talking for awhile. I'm going to say my prayers. I'm going to force myself to hope. I'm going to concentrate on peace and forgiveness. At the same time, though, I'm going to work to publish this book, because as Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "Peace is not the absence of conflict, but the presence of justice." I'd say "Amen" to that.

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May 10, 2005 Alberta Government News Release Edmonton - Edmonton Police Service announced May 10 that charges would not be laid against a police constable 1, relating to allegations he used excessive force. This follows advice from prosecutors in the Calgary Crown Prosecutor's Office that the evidence reviewed would not support a reasonable likelihood of conviction. The following is a statement from Calgary Chief Crown Prosecutor Gordon Wong on the opinion. "Our Crown Prosecutors take their responsibility to provide opinions on charges extremely seriously and recognize that there is heightened public scrutiny when allegations are made against a police officer. Two senior Crown Prosecutors independently reviewed this case and found insufficient evidence to recommend charges. After my own review, I agreed with their assessment. The prosecutors considered the fact that a judge granted a youth2 a judicial stay on charges related to this incident, citing excessive use of force. Two factors led the Crown to conclude that charges should not be laid, in spite of the judge's conclusion. First, the Crown must meet a much higher standard when prosecuting a criminal charge. It must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that an offence occurred. A judge, when considering a judicial stay on a Charter violation, only needs to be satisfied on a balance of probabilities. The Crown Prosecutors who reviewed this file were not satisfied that they could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that excessive force was used. Second and most importantly, there are obvious inconsistencies in the evidence given by several witnesses at the youth's trial. It is important to note that the youth could not recall the incident itself, including the use of the taser and most of the struggle with the police. The Crown concluded that there was credible evidence that the officer was concerned about his safety in making an arrest. The officer was responding, along with one other officer, to what he believed to be an auto theft at 3 a.m., finding four youths in a vehicle in a dark area. When he attempted to remove one of the youths from the vehicle, a prolonged struggle occurred. Other officers did not arrive on scene until after the incident was over. Evidence indicates the youth was intoxicated and resisted the officer's efforts to arrest him. Some witnesses agreed that there was a prolonged struggle between the officer and the youth. During this struggle the officer attempted to use his taser several times. None of the
1 2 read Mike Wasylyshen read Randy Fryingpan

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witnesses were able to determine how many of those attempts were successful as none testified to witnessing the entire incident. While the officer admits to firing the taser seven times, he testified that because of the struggle, not all of the taser bursts connected with the youth. In addition, he testified that because of the youth's resistance, most of the bursts were of short duration (one or two seconds) until he was finally able to subdue the youth with a fivesecond burst. Regardless of who the suspect is, prosecutors are not hesitant to recommend charges be laid when there is a reasonable likelihood of conviction. Our office has recommended charges against police officers in three other cases where taser use was involved.

June 6, 2005 Novice climber stuck on Everest agrees to give up Daily Telegraph - Kathmandu16 A novice mountaineer, described by her own team member as "the most pathetic climber ever," has begun descending Mount Everest after five days of refusing to leave the highest slopes of the mountain.

June 10, 2005 Wherever you are make sure you have trees and water a bath will do a potted palm but better is a rooted springing from the ground pouring from the sky flood of green and liquid life. A fire is nice to remind you of eternity burning at the center of your soul. Just a candle sometimes

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or two logs held in by iron. A bonfire is better, piled high into the night, burning up the darkness. Be careful of the wind.

When in doubt write a poem, that's my motto. Here's another one:

I was raking my front lawn. It was a beautiful fall day. The sky was blue. The trees were orange. My neighbor, a tall man with a thin face, called over the fence, "How are you doing?" "I'm trying to be happy in the now," I said, as I pulled the dead leaves closer with my rake. He scratched his thin face with a long boney finger. "And how's that going?" "Well, there are moments," I said, leaning on my rake for a minute, feeling the sun setting fire to my hair. "There are moments when I can do it, but then a shadow, a cloud, the sound of a siren in the distance... I feel an earthquake in Sumatra and a missible being launched over the world. I see a hole and we're all falling in..." He raised his eyebrows touching his forehead lightly with the gravest of hands. "I see," he said, "that's interesting. Perhaps if you raked a little faster maybe try singing." He stared at me for a minute.

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"Or you could pray." Then he smiled one of those smiles that takes everything into account and still manages to find the balance, waved once and disappeared into his house.

June 13, 2005 Chief blasts his officers17 Discriminatory e-mail against aboriginals adds to list of EPS scandals Edmonton's acting police chief has ordered yet another investigation into the conduct of some officers, this time in relation to an internal e-mail that made racist comments about aboriginals. "An e-mail was recently brought to my attention where the author advanced his theory on how aboriginals should be treated by the police," acting Chief Daryl da Costa says in a June 9 communiqu, obtained by The Journal, that was sent to all Edmonton Police Service members. "The e-mail was racist, discriminatory, disgusting and offensive and I have had to direct yet another investigation into the actions of our members. "Be advised that the EPS has zero tolerance for this type of conduct." DaCosta underscores "zero tolerance" in his statement, which represents the toughest public condemnation by an Edmonton police chief of misconduct in recent memory and may signal a move toward increased discipline in a police force plagued by scandal. The e-mail, intended as a joke, contains 10 rules for how to treat an aboriginal. It was distributed only amoung some officers in the downtown division, where one officer was suspended with pay in March for allegedly assaulting inner city residents. A clearly angry and frustrated da Costa says that while he is impressed with the dedication and calibre of most members, "I am still faced with having to deal with a very small minority that just doesn't seem to get it. I am dismayed at how 'mindlessly' these members get themselves into trouble." Da Costa tells his officers that if they hold these racist views, "please consider other career options as you are making all of us look bad." He further warns that "anybody involved in this newest matter can expect to be contacted by an Internal Affairs investigator in the very near future." First-time offenders, he says, will receive an automatic official warning on their record for three years. A second offence will immediately be directed to a disciplinary hearing.

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But internal affairs investigators may face a wall of silence when they begin their inquiries. The Journal has learned that several officers attending a meeting of the Edmonton Police Association last week wore T-shirts emblazoned with a red-circle around a rat, crossed by a 45-degree angle line. "It was the sign for 'ro rats', which mean nobody is supposed to rat out another member in an investigtion," said one person who saw the T-shirt and spoke with the officer who wore it at the meeting. "This just shows the culture that exists within the Edmonton Police Service."...

June 15, 2005 Native role sought in cop probe Leader demands e-mail be made public18 An Alberta native leader is demanding Edmonton police make public the text of a racist e-mail that was circulated amoung downtown officers. But not even Solicitor General Harvey Cenaiko, the province's top cop, has seen a copy of it. Jason Goodstriker, Alberta regional chief for the Assembly of First Nations, said natives deserve to know what police are saying about them. "I want to address the concerns of my people living in the city of Edmonton who may be suffering from the effects of systemic racism in the Edmonton Police Service," said Goodstriker. And, he added, natives should be involved as police ask questions about the officers who circulated the e-mail. "We need to have involvement from our (First Nations) communities into this inquiry so we can have more confidence in the outcomes." Cenaiko said yesterday he hasn't himself seen a copy of the email, but was prepared to say it is not a hate crime. However, Cenaiko said, he's "very disheartened, because we've gone through this...years and years ago." He rejected calls to have native representatives involved in the police inquiry, noting that under the Police Act, no outside organization can play a part in an internal investigation. Nor, he said, would the Solicitor General's department itself seek to play a role. "We don' t get involved in operational matters," Cenaiko said. And while even the city's acting police chief said there are internal investigations that should have civilian oversight, the solicitor general said that won't happen.

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Only Edmontonians are making such calls, Cenaiko said. "If certain members and certain civil rights organizations don't think that the legislation goes far enough, I beg to differ," he said. "We have to represent all Albertans and not just Edmontonians." He added, "There are issues that the Edmonton Police Commission has been dealing with that are a little different than any other municipality in the province."

August 14, 2005 It's been one year and seven months since I began writing with intent. Trapped in my clumsy metaphor - the puzzle - I struggled, month after month, to figure it all out. It may not have been wise, but it seemed necessary. When I started working with Our Voice I thought I understood the world. I thought there were good guys and bad guys. I thought we were the good guys. Actually, to be more accurate, I thought there were good guys and not-so-good guys, and, mostly, all the bad guys were in the movies. Now I just don't know. I've seen some powerful goodness where I'd expected bad and some powerful badness where I'd expected good. Most of the time, though, it's been all mixed together and almost impossible to sort out.

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November 4, 2005 Because I am afraid there is no God, I multiply my prayers. It does not get better, it gets worse. The darkness deepens. The silence grows. I take my medication. I beg for signs. I try not to notice the slipping down of people around me. I fight memories. I deny my failures. I am angry, but it doesn't matter. I can't keep going, but I do.

November 23, 2005 e-mail to the Edmonton Journal: It was interesting to read Paula Simons comments on the residential school compensation package (Finally, closure on a thorny issue.) I was especially encouraged by the closing lines: "as long as native leaders and the government are bogged down on the residential school issue, they are not focusing enough attention on today's social crises, and the plight of today's aboriginal children. If we can finally resolve and heal old wounds, perhaps we can move forward with the pressing task of tackling todays problems, on reserves and in cities. Starting now." I could not agree more. And in keeping with that sentiment I would like to remind Edmontonians that there is a whole community of aboriginal children and adults who need to see present-day justice. I am referring to the Abbottsfield community which witnessed Randy Fryingpan being assaulted by EPS officers. This same community also witnessed the consequent apathy and white-washing of that assault, the demonizing of Randy as an excuse for that assault, and the subsequent dismissal of that assault as a crime worthy of charges. What message can this community of aboriginals take from these events? Is it a message of healing and friendship? Is it a message of justice no matter what your race or social standing? Or is it the same message once given in residential schools: your pain, your stories, and your voice are not welcome here.? I agree with Paula. We need to move forward with the pressing task of tackling today's problems. Starting now.

November 27, 2005 E-mail to the Journal: It is sadly ironic that the Journal chose to edit my letter

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regarding aboriginal justice and Randy Fryingpan in a way that so chillingly illustrated my point. The physical, pictorial, and verbal evidence consistently given by the Fryingpans is that Randy was tasered 21 times, not 6 as reported by the EPS. By inserting the phrase "6 times in 66 seconds" into my letter, the Journal effectively used my voice to perpetuate the very injustice I was writing against. I would not willingly have done the Fryingpans such a disservice; I would not willingly have made a statement that so severely contradicts their own. I trust, in the interest of journalistic integrity and accuracy of voice, the Journal will print this clarification. Thank you, Natasha Laurence

December 30, 2005 Nope.

May 19, 2006 Here I sit, trying to gave a ... care about what's happening in the world. It's hard. Spring is here. I'm looking for work. The Oilers are winning and it's impossible to ignore - honking, yelling, pissing on the street and all. I gave in to peer pressure yesterday and leaned on my horn at the corner of 104 Ave. and 105 St. I really wanted to be part of the crowd. For the past four days I've been waiting for someone other than me to write a letter to Journal about a late-breaking fact in the 'norats' T-Shirt story. Do you remember last June when several EPS officers wore shirts with a 'no rats' logo to the Edmonton Police Association meeting? That was about the time the racist e-mail was distributed by officers in the down town division. Well, it turns out, according to the Journal that one of the 'no rats' officers was, at the time, under investigation for four separate allegations of assault against inner city residents. That's interesting, isn't it? He and several of his friends wore no rats T-Shirts to an Edmonton Police Association meeting while he was under investigation by the Edmonton Police

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Service. What could it possibly mean? Last week the Chief of Police decided it meant nothing. Responding to a complaint from the Criminal Trial Lawyers Association about the incident, the Chief explained that the T-Shirts had been created for some type of baseball game. It must have been some kind of freaky coincidence that they popped up in a group like that at the EPA meeting - unless the game followed the meeting, but it doesn't sound like it did. According to the Journal, the no-rats officer was ultimately cleared of all four assault allegations due to lack of evidence. Surprising? Not really. Anyway, I've been waiting for someone to write a letter of protest to Journal. I think it calls for a letter of protest. Several letters of protest would be even better. I would write one myself, in fact I did, but I didnt send it - it seems to me that I talk too much about this issue. I risk being labelled a fanatic. So I honked my horn when the Oilers won - yahoo - and threw away my letter, while waiting for someone else to write. It is not my problem. It is not my problem. My fourth grand-daughter was born on April 27. Her dad was there, but because he didn't want to cut the umbilical cord, I was given the honor. She's a beautiful baby, just like all my grandchildren. She reminds me of something. I think its hope.

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1 Melody Beattie, The Language of Letting Go, Hazelden Meditation Series 2 R v RLFryingpan, page 7-9 3 Ibid, pg. 127 -158 4 Ibid, pg. 107 - 126 5 Ibid, pg. 44 - 106 6 Ibid, pg. 159 - 191 7 Ibid, pg. 212 - 260 8 Ibid, pg. 300 -331 9 Ibid, pg. 371 - 392 10 Ibid, pg. 331 - 370 11 Ibid, pg. 394 - 411 12 Ibid, pg. 394 - 411 13 Ibid, pg. 412 - 442, 480 - 676 14 Flannery OConnor, A Good Man is Hard to Find 15 Edmonton Journal, 2005 16 Edmonton Journal, June 5, 2005 17 Edmonton Journal, June 13, 2005 18 Edmonton Journal, June 15, 2005