The Black Rod

Police in Manitoba have, like James Bond, a licence to kill, according to the latest report from the provincial police watchdog, the IIU (Independent Investigation Unit). That's the shocking conclusion of a mandatory, and seriously slanted, investigation into the police killing of 59-year-old Bradley Singer in his home on Magnus Avenue a year ago. Singer was an innocent man, alone, probably asleep, bothering nobody, when police arrived at his door just before dawn in February 2024. He was diagnosed as suffering from schizophrenia, magnified by extreme paranoia. Police had come with an order to take him to see a doctor who was concerned that Singer's mental health was deteriorating. But, through a series of misjudgements and missteps, about two hours later Singer was dead, peppered with at least six police bullets fired at point blank range. https://blackrod.blogspot.com/2024/02/charge-em-magnus-avenue-shooting-by-cops.html We knew the IIU had something to hide when they...

At the end of the NDP government's first full year in office (November, 2024), the Manitoba Nurses Union surveyed its members to the achievements of the new administration. The results, released last week, were a stinging rebuke to Wab Kinew and his touted reforms of health care in the province. By every measure in the survey, the NDP fizzled, flopped and failed. "Overall, grade the performance of the government in living up to its many promises with respect to improving health care and patient outcomes,"  asked the union. 66 percent of respondents said the NDP either failed-- and things have gotten worse-- or there was "no improvement, with things the same as before." The NDP promised they would hire hundreds of new nurses to open more beds and eliminate the mandatory overtime that was eroding nurse morale. "Grade the effectiveness of the government's staffing initiative on vacancy rates and/or nurse workload in your facility/site/program." 61 per...

The Winnipeg Free Press thought that the recent death of a respected Crown prosecutor was a pefect opportunity to malign and defame him with impunity. They didn't anticipate that the vile effort would damage an innocent victim- one of their own. Katrina Clarke is listed on the FP website as an "investigative reporter." She hasn't made much of a mark at the paper, so when offered a juicy story, it looked irresistable . "... the late prosecutor is linked to five wrongful convictions involving eight men who collectively spent more than 100 years in prison for crimes they did not commit." read the story.  "... the cases have left a trail of various forms of misconduct — undisclosed evidence, a reliance on junk science and secret deals with Crown witnesses. They have also spawned two commissions of inquiry and required payments of millions of dollars in compensation for victims." "Dangerfield was an outlier, a driven prosecutor blinded by tunnel vi...