Angry in the Great White North

From the Toronto Sun:

Jodie Wheatle, once a rising high school basketball star, was arrested at the crowded Yorkdale mall on Nov. 5 allegedly with a loaded, stolen gun that had its serial number scratched off.

The 20-year-old was released two days later on bail and now faces a second-degree murder charge in connection with last Thursday's slaying of used car salesman Sepehr "Danny" Fatulahzadeh-Rabti at a North York dealership.

Fatulahzadeh-Rabti was killed after two men stormed into Genniva Motors, on Steeles Ave. W. near Hwy. 400, reportedly angry that a leased vehicle had been repossessed.

Friends and family of the victim said he tried to calm the pair down. But a fight ensued and as Fatulahzadeh-Rabti followed them out of the lot, someone pulled a gun from a car and Fatulahzadeh-Rabti was fatally shot in the head and chest.

Fatulahzadeh-Rabti followed them out, worried that in their rage these men would damage the vehicles on display in the lot.

Ontario Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory called the decision to release someone facing such serious charges on bail "absolutely ludicrous."

"If (Wheatle) had been in jail ... he wouldn't have been charged with murder," said Tory, who pressed Attorney General Michael Bryant about the case in the legislature yesterday. "I think the justice system let (the victim's) family down, first and foremost, but it also let all Ontarians down."

A spokesman for Bryant said the Crown opposed Wheatle's release but a justice of the peace set him free anyway.

Canadians are not protected by our justice system, but are treated with contempt by most of the people sitting on the bench and the government that put them there.

This should come as no surpise. When the Liberal government treats us and our money with contempt, does it come as any surprise that the people who are appointed as judges, in our system that lacks oversight for those appointments, share the government's attitudes?

In this particular case, a justice of the peace might have been appointed by the provincial government and not the federal government -- I can't be certain. But at the end of the day, the message is clear -- the citizens of this country are sheep, their well-being is not the primary concern, and they are expected to accept their lot with quiet resignation.

Why do you think our Supreme Court Chief Justice seems to think it is perfectly fine for judges to do whatever they think is right "even in the face of clearly enacted laws or hostile public opinion"?

Hostile public opinion? In Canada? Some letters written to an editor. A blogger posting an angry article.

You want hostile? Jodie Wheatle is hostile. Danny Fatulahzadeh-Rabti learned what hostile really means just before he died. I don't think Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin knows just how hostile a "difference in opinion" can really be.

Maybe Canadians need to become more hostile.

We can own guns, but under the most severe restrictions, and the federal Liberal government is spending billions on a registry to make sure they know which law-abiding citizens have guns, and force them to jump through even more bureaucratic hoops to continue to own them.

Meanwhile, Wheatle and his crew wander about malls filled with children with large calibre hand-guns stuffed in their pants, loaded and ready to fire at a moment's notice.

He probably uses that inane sideways grip. The one that causes the hot ejected bullet casing to jump at the face of the person using the gun, instead of up and away to the side if the gun is held in the proper upright grip.

Do you think Wheatle was going to register his gun? Do you think he had the form just about all filled out and ready to go, but then realized that the gun he had picked up from the street dealer had the serial number scratched off and so he couldn't finish the paperwork?

The fact is that animals like Wheatle know that the likelihood is that in any situation, they are the only ones packing. They know that the car dealership doesn't have a gun on the premises. They know that most convenience store owners and cabbies and pedestrians leaving bank machines don't have guns handy. They know that if they burst into an affluent middle-class home, that Dad has nothing more dangerous than a hockey stick with which to protect his family and his property.

That knowledge emboldens them.

Do you think that if Wheatle and more of his kind got shot and killed while committing their crimes, and if the police and citizens who killed them were let off with a hearty handshake, that Wheatle's surviving friends would think twice before committing their crimes?

Because we all know now that the courts are not going to protect us. We're just hostile enough to warrant notice.