Reeve urges province to get tough on crime

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This article was published 25/11/2011 (5448 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

At least one municipal official made full use of his opportunity to grill members of Premier Greg Selinger’s cabinet during Thursday’s Association of Manitoba Municipalities bear pit session.

“(Justice Minister) Andrew Swan, you have to do more about crime control,” said RM of Albert Reeve Tom Campbell. “Maybe you should put crime control back in the hands of the public. Let us look after those jails and quit telling it to the armchair pacifists. The other day, they were talking about a person sitting in their armchair while there was a break-and-enter, a home invasion. The person more or less said, ‘Boys, help yourself.’ I’ll tell you what. You want a lead on how not to be a pacifist, come out to Tom Campbell’s house. I dare them to break and enter there.”

Campbell continued by adding sentencing for crimes has been too lenient.

“The judges, when there’s a double murder, a triple murder, the judges put them in jail for five years,” Campbell said. “A farmer gets jailed six months for selling his own grain. Tell me where the justice is there. I call it the Manitoba injustice system because that’s what it is. We have to stop being pacifists.

“We send our boys over to Afghanistan to die and they are fellow Manitobans. We sit back at home, where we have a war on crime and we don’t do nothing about it. Maybe some of those Manitoba judges should serve a little time with those victims and maybe then (criminals would) get more time in jail.”

Swan said that “Manitobans are entitled to be safe in their homes and safe on their streets.”

“When violent crime affects people, it doesn’t just affect them. It affects their families and all of us,” Swan said. “The judges, whether they are federally appointed or provincially appointed, can only apply the law. And I can tell you the law that’s gotten more Manitobans upset over the past decade is the Youth Criminal Justice Act. Most kids, whether they are in the west end of Winnipeg or in your communities, most kids are good kids. Some mess up and some are truly out of control for whatever reason that may be.”

Swan added the provincial government had concerns the law wouldn’t allow judges to control youth that are endangering the public.

“We are pleased the federal government agreed to change the Youth Criminal Justice Act to allow youth everyone can see isn’t a high risk to be dealt with one way while youths who are a real risk to re-offend again or are out of control, that judges can manage them.”