| Walter H. Schneider Based on a story from from the Edmonton Sun that
tells about one small skirmish in our war of social destruction, I have tried to put the
details of the circumstances into perspective:
Theater of War: The Family Home
Outcome of Action: One Family Destroyed
Participants in the "Action":
Warring Parties: The Parents
UN "Peace Action Force": The Police
Prisoner-of-War Camp: (Normally) Jails and Detainment
Centres - in this case no prisoners were taken. There were only casualties.
Civilians: The Children
Displaced Persons (DPs): The Children
Concentration Camp for DPs: The Foster Home
Casualty Figures:
Combat Forces: 1 Dead Parent, 1 Wounded Parent
Civilians: 1 Dead Child, 5 Displaced Children
There are other participants that are all part of the "action", just as in
any other war. Some of these were involved already and will remain involved. Others will
come into play later.
"Supporting" Cast:
Minister of Propaganda and Public Education: Secretary of State
Status of Women; Minister of Women's Issues; Special Interest Groups
Education System: Education System
The Media: The Press, Radio and TV
Bureaucracy: Justice; Law Enforcement; Corrections Services; Family and Social Services; Child Protective Services;
Education; Maintenance Enforcement; Children's Aid Societies; Battered Women's Shelter; Salvation Army, etc.
UN Assembly Legislative Assemblies
Combat Dressing Centre: Hospital Emergency Room
The International Criminal Court: Criminal and Divorce Courts
Foreign Aid: Social Assistance
Service Providers: Service Industry (for hospitals, jails, prisons, courts, orphanages, therapists, foster homes, etc. ) Mediation, Counselling,
Day Care Centres, Lawyers, Judges, Police Staff, Foster Care Providers, Private Maintenance Enforcement Agencies,
etc.
Industry and Commerce: The more fighting there is, the more money can be made. The more destruction there is,
the more families will break apart, the more separate households will
be created, the more goods can be sold by and to the service providers
and families.
The Government: Tax Revenue Organizations, collecting
taxes to garner the funding for the war; Social Services, establishing and
applying the "Rules of War"
All Families: All Families, supplying: soldiers for the War, funds to keep it going,
Some Families make a living from family violence
Peace in the family is "not in the best interest of the economy."
War in the family is "not in the best interest of any family
member." The choice is ours!
Battle Report from the Front:
(There are no copy-right restrictions on any of the above -- WHS
<
>)
The Edmonton Sun Tuesday, March 24, 1998
(The Edmonton Sun can be accessed at http://www.canoe.ca/EdmontonSun/home.html)
[TOP STORY]
Anger on the reserve
TSUU T'INA RESERVE -- Tribal leaders appealed for calm last night amid simmering anger
after a woman and her son were shot dead by an RCMP officer on this reserve southwest of
Calgary. "Emotions are running high. We hope that everyone will remain calm,"
said band spokesman Peter Manywounds.
Connie Jacobs, 33, and her nine-year-old son, Ty, died during a standoff with RCMP
Sunday night.
The Edmonton Sun Tuesday, March 24, 1998
Anger on the reserve
Leaders appeal for calm after RCMP officer kills mom and son during standoff
By KELLY HARRIS and IAN WILSON-
Sun Media
TSUU T'INA RESERVE -- Tribal leaders appealed for calm last night amid simmering anger
after a woman and her son were shot dead by an RCMP officer on this reserve southwest of
Calgary.
"Emotions are running high. We hope that everyone will remain calm," said
band spokesman Peter Manywounds.
Connie Jacobs, 33, and her nine-year-old son, Ty, died during a standoff with RCMP
Sunday night.
Jacobs reportedly fired first - opening up on Const. Dave Voller who was trying to
enforce an order to seize her six children. Voller returned fire with a
shotgun. Jacobs and her son were both killed. The shotgun was loaded with SSG
shells, a heavy buckshot load of 12 pellets that spread across a wide area.
The RCMP said Voller was acting in self-defence. But many people on the reserve
sharply criticized the police action - saying there didn't have to be bloodshed.
"This could have been resolved," said Beatrice Onespot, a cousin of Connie
Jacobs.
"It's useless to go in there with a bunch of guns against a woman and a bunch of
little ones," she said.
"(Ty) was friendly and for him to get killed by a bunch of adults that should've
used their brains instead of their guns - it's a sad situation."
Earlier Sunday, Jacobs' husband Hardy was taken from the home to hospital with a deep
gash above his eye, at 3 p.m. following a domestic dispute.
RCMP say a Tsuu T'ina Family and Social Services worker and tribal police officer Tammy
Dodginghorse arrived at Jacobs' home on the reserve at 6 p.m. to seize the children. The
pair called Okotoks RCMP for backup - normal procedure - when Jacobs refused to release
the children.
Voller arrived on the scene around 7:30 p.m. and was shot at by Jacobs. He
returned fire with a RCMP-issue shotgun, killing the pair.
Police discovered the bodies just outside the house after a four-hour standoff that
followed the shooting.
"You're faced with a situation that you have milliseconds to make a life-or-death
decision," said RCMP Cpl. Mike O'Rielly, adding he is not aware of another time an
Okotoks RCMP officer has used lethal force.
Jacobs was warned three times to drop her rifle, police said. Voller fired from a
range of 10 to 15 metres and he couldn't see the boy because of darkness and heavy snow,
said O'Rielly.
The RCMP's major crime units from Edmonton and Calgary will conduct an internal
inquiry. The province and the Tsuu T'ina tribal administration are also holding inquiries.
-------------------------------------
The Edmonton Sun Tuesday, March 24, 1998
CHRONOLOGY OF A TRAGEDY
3 p.m. Sunday: Connie Jacobs' husband Hardy is taken from the home to hospital
following a domestic dispute, suffering from a deep gash above his eye.
6 p.m.: A Tsuu T'ina Family and Social Services worker and tribal police officer Tammy
Dodginghorse arrive at Jacobs' home to apprehend six children. The pair call Okotoks RCMP
for backup when Jacobs refuses to release the children - normal procedure for the tribal
police.
7:30 p.m.: RCMP Const. Dave Voller arrives at the house and is shot at by Jacobs. He
returns fire with an RCMP-issue shotgun loaded with heavy buckshot, starting a standoff
outside the home as police try unsuccessfully to contact Jacobs.
11:10 p.m.: Officers with the RCMP Emergency Response Team move in on the house and
discover the bodies of Connie and nine-year-old son Ty outside. The five remaining
children are found safe and taken to a foster home they had been in before.
-------------------------------------
The Edmonton Sun Tuesday, March 24, 1998
Friends say victim was 'good person'
By SUN MEDIA
TSUU T'INA RESERVE -- Connie Jacobs was a good mother and an upstanding citizen when
she wasn't drinking, say friends and neighbors.
"She wasn't a woman who had too many enemies," said Beatrice Onespot, a
relative. "She had a lot of friends on the reserve, she was well-educated and
well-spoken."
 Ty Jacobs, 9 -- one of the casualties
Jacobs (Ty's mother) had been married for more than a decade to her husband Hardy, said
Onespot, 50.
She said violence was out of character for Jacobs. "I still can't believe that
Connie pointed a gun at anyone," said Onespot.
Her son, Ty, was in Grade 3 at the Chula school on the reserve. "He was a happy
little boy," she said. Jacobs has a teenaged daughter. Two of the children in the
home Sunday night were the daughter's children, said Onespot.
Hardy was in seclusion last night and is taking the deaths hard, said a relative who
didn't want to be named.
He wasn't at the home at the time of the shooting because he had been taken to hospital
after being involved in a dispute with Connie earlier Sunday.
The Jacobs lived on welfare in a rundown house on the reserve, said Onespot. They had
no phone.
Connie Jacobs' friend Vera Starlight sobbed when she learned of the shooting.
"This is really awful, it just hurts me so much," Starlight said.
Drinking and fighting were common for the couple, she said. "When she wasn't
drinking she was the nicest person. She's a good mother."
Added one woman who didn't want her name used: "She was a mother, she was a good
person. Even if she did shoot a couple of rounds they should've left her alone."
There were unconfirmed reports that Jacobs was two months pregnant.
---------------------------------
Copyright © 1998, Canoe Limited Partnership.
All rights reserved.
A final note: The native population in Canada comprises a
disproportionate number of the inmates in prison and the case load of social services
agencies. That is of great concern to Native Aid societies, and it should be,
because Canadian Natives are the one group in our society that suffers the most
devastation on account of the social engineering that is being undertaken here in efforts
to establish a multicultural society which will have an ambivalent nature and no more
national identity. However, Canadian government and social service agencies are hard
at work to extrapolate the social aberrations in the Native society to all of
Canadians. That serves two purposes, intentionally or not. It takes attention
away from the Native population and the harm that is coming to it. At the same time,
the averaging of the "casualty" figures over all of the Canadian population
provides justification for a never-ending and increasingly onerous stream of legislative
changes that paint all Canadian men in a bad light.
The information collected by Statistics Canada does provide the capability to identify
and address social ills where they happen. Unfortunately, StatCan doesn't publish
such information. It is not politically correct to do so. It is implied by
some of the powers that if that were done it would discriminate against ethnic
minorities. It's an asinine way of looking at our social problems, but that's the
philosophy has become firmly entrenched over the last thirty years or so. Will that
direction change? No doubt, just as surely that we can safely say that it will rain
after a long drought, except that we know no more when it will rain when we
are in the middle of a drought than we know when our social engineers will apply common
sense again in their ostensible efforts to build a better society. In the mean-time
we all suffer, either directly through the social devastation that is happening or by
funding remedial measures that ineffectually attempt to place Band Aids where they are
needed most. It makes some people feel good, but it doesn't provide much help to
anyone.
--Walter H. Schneider
|
