How can things change if we won't learn?

Another blog by sicntired Sometimes things become so frustrating you just want to shout.Fine for you or me but if you are the chief of the police force in the largest city in the west it behooves you to use common sense.Unfortunately,Jim Chiu likes to shoot from the lip.He's been on this "chronic offender" bandwagon again and it drives me crazy.If the chief was a student of Canadian law,or even of the local police force he would know that we have been down this road already.Of course that would require a little due diligence and that's in very short supply today.We have just seen the first case of trial by press.Tony Nguyen punched Michael Levy in the head and was sentenced to 20 months in prison.As he was entering the elevator,pursued by a camera crew,he laughed at the fact the press was all over him.The press decided he was laughing at the sentence and ran with the story till it was unrecognisable.The whole lunatic fringe went along for the ride and Wally Oppal decided it would be a good move to appeal the sentence.Score one for hysteria.The court,battered unmercifully for years now over being soft on crime finally buckled and sent him to jail.The comments made by Levy's mother said it all."Those people,they come here and they take everything."She had a whole lot more racist banter and the cameras ate it up.Score two for hysteria and racism.This is a dangerous precedent.We now have the lunatic fringe running the court system.I guess Chiu is just being an opportunist.He doesn't like the fact that addicts are being treated like human beings and he has to clean up the mess.I feel for the poor guy.It must be annoying having to chase criminals all day long.Seriously,these are addicts. knows it but he doesn't feel it's prudent to say it.Better to use the anonymous"chronic offender"like he's not kicking someone when their already down.Addicts are a problem.Have been for a long time now .If the chief looked up the habitual criminal act he would see that this whole concept was tried in the last century and was turfed as being cruel and unusual punishment.It is true that something has to be done about drug addiction.For 100 years now we have been using prison as the dumping ground for the broken people that have turned to heroin.Now we have a crack epidemic as well.Sending addicts to prison is going to help them is Chiu's claim.This is blatant B.S.and Chiu knows it.He just doesn't know what else to do.I'm a nobody that has spent 40 years as a drug addict and am as addicted today as I have been for the duration.Prison did nothing but embitter me and make me far more dangerous than I should or would have been under any other circumstances.I suppose Chiu would blame the heroin.That is B.S.as well.Addicts have a big hole in their soul.If you can't,won't or refuse to fix the hole.Don't expect the addict to change.I've heard a whole lot of talk about treatment and if there was any treatment that was effective the problem would certainly have been reduced by now.The simple truth is there is no effective treatment for the vast majority of hard core addicts.Treatment has to be available and it should be worked on and tinkered to try to find something that works.No-one expects or wants younger addicts to be given up on .It's the older,"Chronic offenders",and other long term addicts that must be put on a maintenance program like NAOMI.I'm sure Chiu knows this as well as I do .He just doesn't have the courage to say so.Police don't make policy.I understand that completely.I just don't think the kind of disingenuous pap that Chiu has chosen to toss around is going to help anyone.