Dumbest of bank robbers in Toronto history

Dumbest of bank robbers in Toronto history
Date: Nov 3, 2005 8:08 AM
PUBLICATION: The Toronto Star
DATE: 2005.11.03
EDITION: MET
SECTION: News
PAGE: A6
BYLINE: Rosie DiManno
SOURCE: Toronto Star
ILLUSTRATION: RICHARD LAUTENS TORONTO STAR Thousands of officers and
theirsupporters rally at Nathan Phillips Square yesterday. The union
appears to be enjoying public support at a time when gun crime is
rampant and citizens are feeling fearful.
WORD COUNT: 1040


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Theatre, sure, but very effective

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He was either the ballsiest or the dumbest of bank robbers in Toronto
history.

Just as thousands of miffed police officers were marching up Bay St.
yesterday toward a mass rally at City Hall, this mook was sticking up a
CIBC branch a short block away, at the corner of Yonge and Queen.

Didn't even make it out the door before the holdup squad arrived,
proving not all T.O. cops were otherwise occupied showing their
solidarity in a contract dispute demo.

Indeed, the suspect was found patiently sitting on a chair, waiting for
bank staff to produce the cash he'd demanded in his note - using a
replica handgun to bolster his robbery bid - when officers with shotguns
descended, responding to the silent alarm triggered by a teller.

"They didn't even have time to give him the dye-pack," a 51 Division
detective who processed the suspect told the Star, in reference to the
squirting device that is designed to ruin scrip obtained in a bank
heist.

"I don't know if he's the stupidest robber we've ever had come through
51 but his name will certainly make our list of all-time dummies. Maybe
he just didn't know that he was trying to rob a bank a block away from a
police demonstration."

Or perhaps he figured they'd all be too busy trying to hold up the city
with their contract demands. More precisely, holding a metaphorical gun
- in the view of some - to the Toronto Police Services Board, which is
tasked with negotiating a new deal for 5,500 uniformed officers and
2,200 civilian employees. Police association members have been without a
contract since last Dec. 31.

The board appears to be losing the public relations war. At least that
was the sense of things down at street level, where the rank and file
unleashed an impressive sight, parading from Queens Quay to Nathan
Phillips Square. It may have been, as one former board member noted
wryly in an off-the-record conversation, little more than "theatre" but
it was also most effective theatre, dramatically making the point that
cops are displeased, they are becoming increasingly defiant - witness
the considerable number who wore their uniforms, provocatively
disobeying an order from Chief Bill Blair - and they're smart enough to
recognize that police are preferred over politicians in the forum of
public opinion.

Rare was the dissenting view expressed by onlookers yesterday, even
among constituencies where one might reasonably assume that cops are not
so dearly loved - an elderly gay couple interviewed by the Star, who
must surely recall bad old days when homosexual clubs were harassed and
raided; a strapping fellow from Jamaica who, in patois, vehemently
disagreed that police practise racial profiling; a homeless woman who
has often been told by cops to move along from her sleeping-rough
corner.

Yet all of these individuals we spoke with expressed support for the
police action and their contract demands.

In terms of optics alone, this isn't a good time for the city, through
the board, to get tough with cops, not when gun crime has become rampant
and citizens are feeling fearful. When trouble knocks, when bullets fly,
Toronto residents don't call the mayor; they call 9-1-1. And cops
answer, not oversight bureaucrats from the police board.

That was a message that those assembled hoped was penetrating the walls
of City Hall, where Mayor David Miller enjoys an unobstructed view of
the square from his office, had he chosen to take a peek through the
window. There was no Miller sighting during the rally and only five
councillors formally aligned themselves with police by participating
from the stage during the speechifying, whence they lobbed all sorts of
blatantly political verbal grenades, about how this mayor is soft on
crime, huggy-fuzzy with gang-bangers, and unsympathetic to the dangers
faced by law enforcement troops.

Unlike a decade or so ago, when cops similarly hoofed it in protest over
police reforms - it was a particularly hostile era between cops and the
board - this conflict is narrowly about money. The police association
accuses the board of trying to stiff them for an additional 42 hours of
unpaid service per year; the quasi-union is equally aggrieved by
attempts to claw back retention pay (or "experience" pay) which was
secured in the last contract to discourage veteran officers from
quitting the force.

The extra hours, resulting from compressed work-week shifts, is damn
near impossible to penetrate for an outsider, with duelling figures
offered up by both sides. Conversely, the retention pay is not as
simple, or mean-spirited, as it appears. The bonuses were originally
extended not to retain the service of officers fleeing the city for less
onerous jurisdictions - which the union alleges will reoccur should the
claw-back attempt succeed - but in order to deal with a large block of
cops who'd been hired in the '70s, under the direction of an arbiter who
ordered the police department to deploy two-officer patrol cars. Hence,
there'd been a huge hiring bump and those cops, as a group, were
approaching their earliest retirement date, with full pension
(configured on an age plus service formula).

The bonuses had been intended, a former police board member tells the
Star, as a short-term correction, so the police department wouldn't be
confronted with a sudden staff depletion. But it's also unrealistic to
think any union would give back financial rewards once obtained.

It is, further, contradictory for this mayor - so respectful of unions
and labour, which championed his candidacy in the last civic election -
to turn ideological tail where police are concerned. There is a gross
inconsistency in all the Screaming Mimi lefties at City Hall abruptly
stressing fiscal responsibility when those with their hands out happen
to be carrying a badge.

If this stalemate isn't resolved in the coming weeks, the disputants
have a date with the arbitrator in January. Clearly, the police
association doesn't want to end up there, stripped of public traction.

Better to put the pressure on down here, in the streets, where all the
world's a stage. And hapless crooks stick up banks at high noon.

Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.