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Crime

Police seeking public assistance to identify suspect in sexual assault

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Police seeking public assistance to identify suspect in sexual assault

September 10, 2021
from Edmonton Police Service
The Edmonton Police Service is looking for information leading to the identification of a suspect in a sexual assault.

At approximately 6 p.m. on Aug. 27, 2021, at a retail store in the area of Terwillegar Drive and Windermere Boulevard, it was reported to police that a male suspect followed a 15-year-old female into the store, approached her from behind, and lifted her skirt. The male reportedly fled the store and drove away in a white truck.

Sept. 9 update: the suspect has been identified and his photo has been removed from this news release

Police are asking anyone who may have information about the identity of the suspect pictured to call the Edmonton Police Service at 780-423-4567 or #377 from a mobile phone. Anonymous information can also be submitted to Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477 or online at www.p3tips.com/250.

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Crime

Joe Biden pardons son Hunter for any crimes committed in the last 10 years!

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From LifeSiteNews

By Calvin Freiburger

Outgoing President Joe Biden issued a sweeping pardon Sunday evening to his troubled son Hunter for any known or unknown crimes committed over the span of a decade after repeatedly denying he would do so.

For years, the Biden family has been dogged by allegations of personal corruption and influence peddling. During the Obama years, the former vice president infamously boasted that he facilitated the firing of Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, who had been investigating energy company Burisma Holdings (on whose board Hunter served despite lacking experience in the energy industry), by threatening to withhold a billion-dollar loan from the U.S. to Ukraine. Defenders claim that the move was about Shokin not prosecuting corruption aggressively enough, but critics suggest it was about Shokin potentially getting too close to Burisma and, by extension, Hunter.

In the months before the 2020 presidential election, the New York Post released a series of bombshell reports about a laptop belonging to Hunter that was delivered to and abandoned at a Delaware computer repair shop and contained scores of emails and texts detailing the Biden family’s international business activities, which exploited Joe’s political office by offering access to the highest levels of the federal government and the various worldwide connections made through that office. The story was initially maligned as “disinformation” but eventually acknowledged as real long after Biden was safely elected.

Earlier this year, Hunter was convicted on multiple felony counts for tax evasion and illegally purchasing a gun while under the influence of drugs, with sentencing slated for sometime this month. His father rendered sentencing moot over the weekend, however, by formally granting Hunter a “Full and Unconditional Pardon” for federal offenses “which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024.”

The president insisted that he kept his word to “not interfere with the Justice Department’s decision-making,” but maintained that Hunter “was singled out only because he is my son – and that is wrong. There has been an effort to break Hunter – who has been 5 1/2 years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution. In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me – and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough.”

The move, which not only saves Hunter from whatever sentence he might have received but also helps protect the president himself from future convictions against the son leading to legal jeopardy for the father, directly contradicts numerous denials by Biden and White House representatives that Hunter would be pardoned.

In a June ABC News interview, Biden answered “yes” that he would accept the jury verdict and that he had ruled out pardoning his son. “I’m extremely proud of my son Hunter. He has overcome an addiction. He is one of the brightest, most decent men I know. I abide by the jury decision. I will do that, and I will not pardon him,” he said at a press conference a week later. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre repeatedly said “no” to the pardon question, including last month after Donald Trump won his return to the presidency.

As recently as November 26, Senior Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates reiterated Biden’s past denials on the subject, stating, “The president has spoken to this (…) I don’t have anything idea (sic) to add to what he’s said already.”

“Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years?” Trump reacted on Truth Social. “Such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!”

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Addictions

London Police Chief warns parliament about “safer supply” diversion

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London Police Chief Thai Truong testifies to House of Commons Standing Committee on November 26, 2024.

By Adam Zivo

“Vulnerable individuals are being targeted by criminals who exchange these prescriptions for fentanyl, exacerbating addiction and community harm,” said London Police Chief Thai Truong.

Thai Truong, the police chief of London, Ontario, testified in parliament last week that “safer supply” opioids are “obviously” being widely diverted to the black market, leading to greater profits for organized crime. His insights further illustrate that the safer supply diversion crisis is not disinformation, as many harm reduction advocates have speciously claimed.

Truong’s testimony was given to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health, which is in the midst of an extended study into the opioid crisis. While the committee has heard from dozens of witnesses, Truong’s participation was particularly notable, as safer supply was first piloted in London in 2016 and the city has, since then, been a hotbed for opioid diversion.

“While the program is well intentioned, we are seeing concerning outcomes related to the diversion of safe supply medications… these diverted drugs are being resold within our community, trafficked to other jurisdictions, and even used as currency to obtain fentanyl, perpetuating the illegal drug trade,” he said in his opening speech. “Vulnerable individuals are being targeted by criminals who exchange these prescriptions for fentanyl, exacerbating addiction and community harm.”

He later clarified to committee members that these vulnerable individuals include women who are being pressured to obtain safer supply opioids for black market resale.

Safer supply programs are supposed to provide pharmaceutical-grade addictive drugs – mostly 8-mg tablets of hydromorphone, an opioid as potent as heroin – as an alternative to riskier street substances. The programs generally supply these drugs at no cost to recipients, with almost no supervised consumption, and have a strong preference for Dilaudid, a brand of hydromorphone that is manufactured by Purdue Pharma.

Addiction experts and police leaders across Canada have reported that safer supply patients regularly divert their hydromorphone to the black market. A recent study by Dr. Brian Conway, director of Vancouver’s Infectious Disease Centre, for example, showed that a quarter of his safer supply patients diverted all of their hydromorphone, and that another large, but unknown, percentage diverted at least some of their pills.

Truong’s parliamentary testimony, which mostly rehashed information he shared in a press conference last July, further corroborated these concerns.

He noted that in 2019, the city’s police force seized 847 hydromorphone pills, of which only 75 were 8-mg Dilaudids. Seizures increased after access to safer supply expanded in 2020, and, by 2023, exploded to over 30,000 pills (a roughly 3,500 per cent increase), of which roughly half were 8-mg Dilaudids. During this period, the number of annual overdose deaths in the city also increased from 73 to 123 (a 68 per cent increase), he said.

Relatedly, Truong noted that the price of hydromorphone in London – $2-5 a pill – is now much lower than in other parts of the province.

As an increasing number of police departments across Canada have publicly acknowledged that they are seeing skyrocketing hydromorphone seizures, some safer supply advocates have claimed, without evidence, that these pills were mostly stolen from pharmacies, and not diverted by safer supply patients. Truong’s parliamentary testimony dispelled this myth: “These increases cannot be attributed to pharmacy thefts, as London has had only one pharmacy robbery since 2019.”

The police chief declined to answer repeated questions about the efficacy of safer supply, or to opine on whether the experimental program should be replaced with alternative interventions with stronger evidence bases. “I’m not here to criticize the safe supply program, but to address the serious challenges associated with its diversion,” he said, noting his own lack of medical expertise.

The chief emphasized that, while more needs to be done to stop safer supply diversion, the addiction crisis is a “complex issue” that cannot be tackled solely through law enforcement. He advocated for a “holistic” approach that integrates prevention, harm reduction and treatment, and acknowledged the importance of London’s community health and social service partners.

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In response to Truong’s testimony, NDP MP Gord Johns, an avid safer supply advocate, downplayed the importance of the diversion crisis by arguing that “people aren’t dying from a safer supply of drugs; they’re dying from fentanyl.”

While it is true that 81 per cent of overdose deaths in 2024 involved fentanyl, addiction physicians across Canada have repeatedly debunked Johns’ argument as misleading. The dangers of diverted hydromorphone is not that it directly kills users, but rather that it easily hooks individuals into addiction, leading many of them to graduate to deadly fentanyl use.

Johns previously faced criticism when, in a September health committee meeting, he seemingly used parliamentary maneuvers to reduce the speaking time of a grieving father, Greg Sword, whose daughter, Kamilah, died of drug-related causes after she and her friends got hooked on diverted hydromorphone.

There is currently no credible evidence that safer supply works. Most supporting studies simply interview safer supply patients and present their opinions as objective fact, despite significant issues with bias and reliability. Data presented in a 2024 study published in the British Medical Journal, which followed over 5,000 drug users in B.C., showed that safer supply led to no statistically significant mortality reductions once confounding factors were fully filtered out.

An impending update to Canada’s National Opioid Use Disorder Guideline, which was recently presented at a conference  organized by the Canadian Society of Addiction Medicine, determined that the evidence base for safer supply is “essentially low-level.” Similarly, B.C’s top doctor acknowledged earlier this year that safer supply is “not fully evidence-based.”


This article was syndicated in The Bureau, an online media publication that investigates foreign interference, organized crime, and the drug trade.

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