Skip to main content

When Two Winnipegs Collide

How precious is that?

The Mayor (of South Winnipeg) Sam Katz is positively gushy about the Asper Museum for Human Rights in his monthly column in the Winnipeg Sun.

"This truly is one of the greatest visions, projects or events to occur in Winnipeg this century."

That said, how long will it be before Katz decides that $20 million of Winnipeg taxpayers' money isn't enough for this magnificence. What's it going to be? $40 million? $50 mil?

After all, swoons Katz, it's our "opportunity to showcase to the world our dedication as a city, our committment to breeding tolerance and acceptance, and our solidarity for the preservation and education of human rights. It gives Winnipeg the chance to offer hope to the world from right here at home."

Remember, he says, "Winnipeg's reputation as a rich centre for arts and culture, as a spirited community of humanitarianism and as a hub for fast-expanding economic opportunity doesn't always make national headlines."

Right, Sam. And do you know why?

BECAUSE THAT'S NOT WINNIPEG'S REPUTATION.


Winnipeg's reputation throughout the country is as the Murder Capital of Canada, the Gang Capital of Canada, and the Car-theft Capital of Canada. Your failure to understand, or even acknowledge that, demonstrates the extreme disconnect between politicians and the public in this province. To suggest that anyone other than your network of well-to-do neighbours in South Winnipeg values a billionaire's vanity project over public safety is an insult.

Just ask Joan Pawlowski.

She came to Winnipeg to bury her younger brother.

Erin Pawlowski was beaten to death at a bus stop on Selkirk Avenue near Powers. He was coming home from work. He lived one block away from where he was attacked.

Maybe you heard about it, Sam. But you didn't care. Just like you didn't care when Thomas Roy Phillips was murdered in cold blood in broad daylight on Magnus Avenue in front of kids home on spring break.

These attacks happened in a different Winnipeg from yours.

We haven't heard a single word from you. No stirring declarations about "taking back the streets". No special task forces to patrol the area 24/7. Not like when a surgeon's son got killed in the West End. Then it only took you 15 days to create Operation Clean Sweep, use Chief Ewatski as a prop and get your mugs on television playing macho-men.

You declared you were "not going to sit around anymore and do nothing". Well, you did something after the murder on Magnus.You went on vacation. And you had your spokesman blow the citizens of Magnus off with a stirring claim of your commitment to their welfare.

He said YOU HAD A LIST. Yes, a real list of crack houses and sniff houses and booze cans that should be closed down. Sometime, when there's resources and money and... hell, have you folks heard about the Museum for Human Rights?

What do you think Joan Pawlowski is going to tell everyone she knows in B.C. about Winnipeg? Will she talk about some sad museum ?

Or about the street gangs that rampage through the city unimpeded ?

Here's a hint.

See how she described the killers of her brother...

"They're savages," she told a reporter. "I don't know why you don't have vigilantes on the street getting rid of them."

You better listen, Sam.
Because she spoke what everyone in Winnipeg is thinking.
And that's your legacy. You want to talk about human rights? Start with the right to live in a safe neighbourhood.

* The right to walk the streets without fear of being attacked.
* The right to come home after a day's work and not worry about being murdered in the street.
* The right to leave your wife or your mother and not be concerned of a home invasion.
* The right to see your kids play in the front yard without fear of a gang execution down the street.

That's what people will pay for.
That's what the residents of North Winnipeg and the West End and the East End want their property taxes to go for.
Not to see their money handed over to a "uplifting" pet project of millionaires.

You want to talk about "tolerance and acceptance"? How much crime do we have to tolerate? Must we accept street gangs as the price of living in a part of the city that the mayor ignores?

Exactly one year ago we were told that Operation Clean Sweep was to become permanent. In his 2007 State of the City address Sam Katz bragged:

We launched Operation Clean Sweep to crack down on street crime and violence in the areas of our city that need the most attention.We then made Operation Clean Sweep a permanent entity to ensure that it can be deployed anywhere in the city that Crime threatens the safety of our neighbourhoods.

But when, after the latest murder on Magnus, we began asking where the 40 officers of Operation Clean Sweep were, nobody could tell us. It had become permanent, and invisible. Then, last week we learned where they were.

Tuxedo.


What a coincidence. Obviously Tuxedo had become one of "the areas of our city that need the most attention." Who knew? Most residents of Winnipeg pray for a crime problem like Tuxedo's. But obviously, when you have the ear of the mayor, you get police. The rest of the city gets -- a list.

This week we saw one politician try to bridge the chasm between politicians and people in Winnipeg. At the funeral of Erin Pawlowski, New Democrat MP Judy Wacylycia-Leis (Winnipeg North) offered her condolences to Pawlowski's family.

"I don't go to every funeral that comes along, but this one grabbed me -- disturbed me. And I just had to show the family that the community is there for them. Lots of people are outraged by this. And lots of people are going to take a message from Erin's death and try to do something to change our society," she told the Winnipeg Sun.

You might cynically say she's trying to get a jump on the issue of crime ahead of a federal election, but at least Judy had the shame to show her face. Sam Katz has yet to show his on Selkirk Avenue, or Magnus. After all, what's going to say? "What do you expect me to do? I've already given you Crimestat."

You know, Crimestat, a.k.a. a map on the internet showing where crimes happened and a counter showing the crimes add up week by week.

Like the red dot at the corner of Selkirk and Powers.

Popular posts from this blog

The unreported bombshell conspiracy evidence in the Trudeau/SNC-Lavelin scandal

Wow. No, double-wow. A game-changing bombshell lies buried in the supplementary evidence provided to the House of Commons Judiciary Committee by former Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould. It has gone virtually unreported since she submitted the material almost a week ago. As far as we can find, only one journalist-- Andrew Coyne, columnist for the National Post--- has even mentioned it and even then he badly missed what it meant, burying it in paragraph 10 of a 14 paragraph story. The gist of the greatest political scandal in modern Canadian history is well-known by now. It's bigger than Adscam, the revelation 15 years ago that prominent members of the Liberal Party of Canada and the party itself funneled tens of millions of dollars in kickbacks into their own pockets from federal spending in Quebec sponsoring ads promoting Canadian unity. That was just venal politicians and a crooked political party helping themselves to public money. The Trudeau-Snc-Lavalin scandal is

Crips and Bloodz true cultural anchors of Winnipeg's aboriginal gangs

(Bebo tribute page to Aaron Nabess on the right, his handgun-toting friend on the left) At least six murder victims in Winnipeg in the past year are linked to a network of thuglife, gangster rap-styled, mainly aboriginal street gangs calling themselves Crips and Bloods after the major black gangs of L.A. The Black Rod has been monitoring these gangs for several months ever since discovering memorial tributes to victim Josh Prince on numerous pages on Bebo.com, a social networking website like Myspace and Facebook. Josh Prince , a student of Kildonan East Collegiate, was stabbed to death the night of May 26 allegedly while breaking up a fight. His family said at the time he had once been associated with an unidentified gang, but had since broken away. But the devotion to Prince on sites like Watt Street Bloodz and Kingk Notorious Bloodz (King-K-BLOODZ4Life) shows that at the time of his death he was still accepted as one of their own. Our searches of Bebo have turned up another five ga

Manitoba Hydro is on its deathbed. There, we said it.

Manitoba Hydro is on its deathbed. Oh, you won't find anyone official to say it. Yet . Like relatives trying to appear cheery and optimistic around a loved one that's been diagnosed with terminal cancer, the people in power are in the first stage of grief -- denial. The prognosis for Hydro was delivered three weeks ago at hearings before the Public Utilities Board where the utility was seeking punishingly higher rates for customers in Manitoba. It took us this long to read through the hundred-plus pages of transcript, to decipher the coded language of the witnesses, to interpret what they were getting at, and, finally, to understand the terrible conclusion.  We couldn't believe it, just as, we're sure, you can't--- so we did it all again, to get a second opinion, so to speak.  Hydro conceded to the PUB that it undertook a massive expansion program--- involving three (it was once four) new dams and two new major powerlines (one in the United States)---whi

Nahanni Fontaine, the NDP's Christian-bashing, cop-smearing, other star candidate

As the vultures of the press circle over the wounded Liberal Party of Manitoba, one NDP star candidate must be laughing up her sleeve at how her extremist past has escaped the scrutiny of reporters and pundits. Parachuted into a safe NDP seat in Winnipeg's North End, she nonetheless feared a bruising campaign against a well-heeled Liberal opponent.  Ha ha.  Instead, the sleepy newspeeps have turned a blind eye to her years of vitriolic attacks on Christianity, white people, and police. * She's spent years  bashing Christianity  as the root cause of all the problems of native people in Canada. * She's called for  a boycott of white businesses . * And with her  Marxist research partner, she's  smeared city police as intransigent racists . Step up Nahanni Fontaine, running for election in St. John's riding as successor to the retiring Gord Macintosh. While her male counterpart in the NDP's galaxy of stars, Wab Kinew, has responded to the controversy over

Exposing the CBC/WFP double-team smear of a hero cop

Published since 2006 on territory ceded, released, surrendered and yielded up in 1871 to Her Majesty the Queen and successors forever. Exposing the CBC/FP double-team smear of a hero cop Some of the shoddiest journalism in recent times appeared this long August weekend when the CBC and Winnipeg Free Press doubled teamed on a blatant smear of a veteran city police officer. In the latest example of narrative journalism these media outlets spun stories with total disregard for facts that contradicted the central message of the reports which, simplified, is: police are bad and the system is covering up. Let's start with the story on the taxpayer funded CBC by Sarah Petz that can be summed up in the lead. "A February incident where an off-duty Winnipeg officer allegedly knocked a suspect unconscious wasn't reported to the province's police watchdog, and one criminologist says it shows how flawed oversight of law enforcement can be." There you have it. A policeman, not

Winnipeg needs a new police chief - ASAP

When did the magic die? A week ago the Winnipeg police department delivered the bad news---crime in the city is out of control. The picture painted by the numbers (for 2018) was appalling. Robberies up ten percent in  a single year.  (And that was the good news.) Property crimes were up almost 20 percent.  Total crime was 33 percent higher than the five year average. The measure of violent crime in Winnipeg had soared to a rating of 161.  Only four years earlier it stood at 116. That's a 38 percent deterioration in safety. How did it happen? How, when in 2015 the police and Winnipeg's police board announced they had discovered the magic solution to crime? "Smart Policing" they called it.    A team of crime analysts would pore through data to spot crime hot-spots and as soon as they identified a trend (car thefts, muggings, liquor store robberies) they could call in police resources to descend on the problem and nip it. The police