The "F--k Yoga" button had to go before Transit Police would allow Jean Wharf to board a SkyTrain home.
The 21-year-old barista was stopped at Nanaimo Station for fare evasion on a January night. When Wharf returned to the westbound platform after purchasing a ticket, the same officer asked her to remove the anti-yoga pin. She said no, and was yanked by the arm off the train.
"This wasn't about the fare," Wharf told QMI. "This wasn't about the pin. This was about an exercise of power and I'm not going to be anybody's rag doll to throw around."
Wharf found no satisfaction when the Office of the Police Complaints Commissioner rejected her grievance against the officer, as the body found he acted within TransLink policy, which prevents the use of obnoxious behaviour or language on public transit.
Provincial prison guards want the same tools as their federal counterparts and are calling on the government to arm them with pepper spray.
The demand by the union representing B.C. correctional officers was made this week and comes on the heels of a spate of attacks on guards.
"We play for keeps inside the jails, and you've got an overcrowded environment where inmates are vying for resources," said B.C. Government Employment Union spokesman Dean Purdy. "You get clustering, you get gang-type mentality and you get more violence and that just leads to inmate-on-staff violence."
Public Safety Minister and Solicitor General Shirley Bond was not available for comment. Ex-solicitor general Rich Coleman in December agreed to tour North Fraser but was removed from the public safety portfolio in February's cabinet shuffle.
A man stood at the dairy display of a west-side grocery store and casually placed a brick of cheese into his basket - and then another, and another, and another.
In the blink of the eye, the basket was brimming with the orangey gold. Taking his pungent plunder to the vacant household goods isle, he quickly stuffed it into a rolling briefcase. With his stash secure, the man headed back for more. This time, however, a security guard stepped in to stop the bold caper.
Though it was unclear where the loot was bound, artisan cheese shop owner Allison Spurrell of Les Amis du Fromage had her suspicions. Apparently, cheese thievery is part of Vancouver's culture.
"I live in the Downtown Eastside and it's pretty common to see people hocking cheese all over the place," she said. "You used to be able to buy cheese at the American Hotel three or four years ago.
Police investigators are backtracking on the version of events released Thursday morning by Surrey RCMP about one of its officers firing fatal shots to stop a suspect.
"I know there has been some information out there that there may have been an exchange of gunfire but I cannot confirm that. Our investigators have not confirmed that," Saanich police Sgt. Dean Jantzen said.
RCMP contacted Saanich Police to conduct an independent investigation.
At 11 p.m. Wednesday a Surrey Mountie conducting a traffic stop in the 15400 block of 16th Avenue noticed a firearm inside the suspect's vehicle, a white Chrysler 300 sedan, Jantzen confirmed.
Police confirmed Tuesday the woman found dead a day earlier in Burnaby's Warner Loat Park was a sex-trade worker.
Homicide investigators are now speaking to other sex workers along the same stroll 27-year-old Carla Marie Smith was known to frequent to learn if anyone had seen her in her final hours.
"It's an assumption we're taking," said Cpl. Dale Carr. "We want to firm up a time-line about when she was last on the street."
Coroners had yet to confirm how Smith, a woman with several run-ins with the law, died.
Foul play befell an adult found dead Monday in Burnaby at a wooded area near Winston Street and Piper Avenue.
"It's a homicide," declared Cpl. Dale Carr just hours after a passerby walking through a trail found the body lying in bushes.
Carr declined to identify the age or gender of the victim, who investigators believe died a short time before the grisly discovery.
The RCMP spokesman ruled out any connection between the latest body found to a case in North Vancouver where a woman in her 40s was found stuffed inside a garbage bag last Wednesday. He added there were no apparent signs the killing was the work of gangs or organized crime.
Homicide investigators have identified the charred body found in a ditch more than a week ago as Tara Lynn Westgarde, 34, of Surrey, B.C., RCMP said Wednesday.
Westgarde, who was found Nov. 13, was last seen two days earlier by a family member.
Investigators are now turning to the public to piece together the last hours of Westgarde's life.
"We are releasing a photo of the victim along with her description in hopes that someone will be able to provide us information to tighten the timeline from when she was last seen to her discovery," said Integrated Homicide Investigation Team spokesman Cpl. Dale Carr.
An advocacy group is rushing to the defence of a 14-year-old girl accused of recruiting other teens into the sex industry.
Vancouver-based Justice For Girls is demanding RCMP in Chilliwack drop pimping charges against the teen who allegedly recruited at least two other girls into prostitution, and who, police claim, posed as an 18-yearold when posting erotic ads on classifieds website Craigslist.
"By charging this young woman as a pimp, the police are violating a well established consensus [held] in Canada and internationally that teen girls in prostitution are victims of child sexual abuse and therefore should not be treated as criminals," said Justice For Girls spokeswoman Annabel Webb.
Webb asserted adult males, who she believes are responsible for commercial sexual abuse, should face the full force of the law.
The victim in a case of so-called mistaken identity plead for justice Wednesday at the conclusion of a nine-month Delta police investigation that exonerated two Vancouver police officers accused of using excessive force.
East Vancouver man Yao Wei Wu questioned the findings of Delta Chief Const. Jim Cessford who determined Consts. Nicholas Florkow and Bryan London acted within the rule of law when subduing Wu during a domestic violence call that came from a rental suite at the back of the victim's home on Jan. 21.
In the physical confrontation, Wu suffered a broken orbital bone when officers pulled him to the ground.
"Please tell me, from now on, if the police knocks at the door at midnight, should we open the door or not?" Wu asked through a translator. "For justice, and for vindication of myself, I will pursue this in court."
A senior was kidnapped at gunpoint, clubbed and then mugged all in Vancouver's West Side during a brazen robbery in broad daylight, police said.
The male victim, 69, was walking eastbound on the north side of the 2900 block of West Broadway on Aug. 17 around noon when two men approached him with a gun and shoved him into the cab of a newer-model black pickup truck driven by a woman.
The man was taken to the south lane in the 2700 block of West 13th Avenue where his captors used pepper-spray and struck him over the head with a metal pipe. The assailants then pushed the man out the truck and made off with his wallet.
Robbery investigators spent the past week trying to determine the motive behind the apparently random attack before making a public plea for information Monday.
A criminal mastermind must be behind the Thai freighter carrying up to 500 Tamil migrants to the British Columbia shores, according to a human-trafficking expert.
UBC professor Benjamin Perrin said Thursday only a small number of organizations could manage such a sophisticated and large-scale migrant smuggling operation that would be able to collect debts ranging in the tens of thousands of dollars for passage owed by those aboard the MV Sun Sea.
"This is not some sort of humanitarian flotilla run by the Red Cross," said Perrin. "This is likely a criminal enterprise operated by current or former terrorists."
He acknowledged a strong possibility the ship, reportedly carrying men, women and children, is under control of terrorist organization Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which the Sri Lankan government defeated in 2009 after a three decade civil war.
A 12-year-old Nanaimo boy spent Wednesday night behind bars on an armed robbery charge.
On Tuesday, the youth, who's had more than 100 run-ins with police, pulled a replica handgun on a 21-year-old victim and demanded his cellphone and cash.
The victim, who was getting out of his vehicle, fled and called police with a suspect description allowing officers to quickly capture the adolescent and another boy who was with him at the time.
Investigators have yet to determine if the second boy was an accomplice or oblivious to the heist.
Abbotsford was named the murder capital of Canada for the second straight year.
However, it's a dubious distinction they hope to shake this year as increased police efforts have seen the number of murders plunge in 2010.
"We're sitting at one homicide in 2010," said Abbotsford police Const. Ian MacDonald.
That is down from nine last year, which earned them rogue's gallery status as the highest murder rate per 100,000 people in Canada.
The book has yet to close on a family struggling to come to terms with the loss of its little girl.
Clare Shelswell's family celebrated the five-year-old's short-but-inspiring life Wednesday at Abbotsford's Mountain Park Community Church in a funeral service that included uplifting music, poetry and worship, all designed with an eye on the future of the tight-knit religious community.
"We believe there are many more chapters to be written yet in the story of our lives," said a statement issued by the Shelswell family and read by pastor Terry Kaethler. "Although we may see through a glass darkly right now, we believe God will work beauty out of this tragedy. We look to see the chapters of healing emerge from our broken lives."
Foul play didn't cause the death of young woman found Saturday in Pacific Spirit Park, according to police.
"Based on the investigation at the scene, the physical condition of the deceased person along with preliminary findings of the autopsy we can confirm that we are not dealing with a homicide," Sgt. Peter Thiessen told reporters Monday. "The official cause of death is still pending toxicology reports."
The RCMP spokesman added investigators are close to positively identifying the woman as Sukching "Selina" Hui who was last seen at her home in the 7800 block of Knight Street in the afternoon of May 28.
Vancouver police said at the time, Hui was a "shy and reserved person" and her disappearance was "out of character".
Dunbar residents are reeling from a sense of deadly deja vu after a woman's body was discovered at Pacific Spirit Park.
Police swarmed the scene around 8:30 p.m. on Saturday and cordoned off a portion of forest and trail near Camosun Street and 33rd Avenue after the discovery, and removed the body Sunday afternoon.
Sgt. Peter Thiessen urged residents of the area not to draw parallels between the grisly discovery and the murder of Wendy Ladner-Beaudry, who was found dead April 3, 2009 inside the same park just eight blocks south of the current scene.
"The neighbourhood and the community may unduly and prematurely alarm themselves and create concern that may not be valid," the RCMP spokesman said. "We're not making any assumptions at this point and we're ruling nothing out."
Instead of shining a spotlight solely on a prolific sex offender, a Vancouver-based activist is targeting a B.C. Supreme Court Justice who will rule on his fate.
Holly Dignard, has spearheaded a 1000-plus signature petition calling on Justice Austin Cullen to sentence confessed sex tourist Kenneth Klassen to the maximum penalty for 15 counts of sex offences carried out in Cambodia and Colombia.
"When you let the people in charge know that everybody is watching, they're pressured to - ideally - make the right decision," she explained. "We want the maximum sentence of 12 years."
Dignard, founder of Caleb's Hope, a non-government organization focused on micro-enterprise in Northern Uganda, said many fail to fully understand the severity sex crimes have on victims.
The mother of two newborn boys found dead in the span of a year stands accused of slaying them.
Sarah Jee Wah Leung, 24, is charged with two counts of second-degree murder.
She turned herself into police Tuesday after learning of the charges.
Leung's first baby, born April 2, 2009, was found one day after his birth, when he was stuffed inside a plastic bag outside her home in the 2500 block of Charles Street. The body of the second baby, born March 7, may never be recovered from a landfill gravesite, explained Deputy Chief Warren Lemcke.
Vancouver police made a "disturbing" discovery during a raid of an apartment brothel one week ago.
Inside a suite at 909 Burrard St. investigators found a 17-year-old girl working as a prostitute along with two women, age 33 and 34.
"It's disturbing to us that there are juveniles and youths procured into these types of situations," said Vancouver police spokesperson Const. Lindsey Houghton. "And the type of situation being prostitution is especially disturbing."
The teenager, a home-stay student from China, is under Ministry of Children and Family Development care and could be deported.
The mother at the centre of two investigations involving the deaths of her two newborns is currently free.
Vancouver police were convinced the woman's second baby met foul play during an interview March 29.
Investigators learned the child was born in early March but had not been seen since.
Police said the same woman gave birth to the baby who was found inside a plastic bag outside her home in the 2500 block of Charles Street in March 2009. Coroners ruled the first death as suspicious.
"The reality is there are no restrictions on her freedom, her movement, any of her activities just because she's involved in an investigation," explained Const. Jana McGuinness. "She's not charged with anything."
