Police intend to lighten up on cyclists a little, while still focusing on punishing those who burn through red lights.
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A man who was an art dealer in Montreal for many years has been indicted as a war criminal in Hungary for helping deport Jews to death camps during World War II. He was stripped of Canadian citizenship in 1997 and went back to Hungary, where he was arrested. Laszlo Csatary is 98.
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Bill Binns
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Kate
Here’s one list of WWII war criminals remaining.
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Radio-Canada wants to have a new building by 2017. A whole new swath of housing and shops is to be built on the spacious parking lots of Maison Radio-Canada, although it’s confusing to read that they intend to keep the dark tower with its logo, yet also build new digs for the broadcaster. There’s also some concern about the reputation of developers being asked to bid.
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Michael Applebaum has stepped down, claiming innocence of all charges. Quebec is happy about it.
Now council has to pick yet another interim mayor. Radio-Canada names five possible people and tells us which clique supports them.
Quebec has offered to supply an observer at city hall without implying this has to be accepted.
Radio-Canada hosted a discussion on whether having your mayor arrested for fraud might have bad economic fallout.
Applebaum has chosen Marcel Danis to represent him. Danis used to be an MP.
Some thoughts on the Tories losing their best hope for a Montreal MP.
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Someone spritzed pepper spray at Snowdon and stopped two lines till it could be aired out.
Back at 13h23.
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Michel
Man, agent 728 is *really* pissed about that judgement, isn’t she?
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walkerp
Off-duty cops feeling nostalgic for last summer?
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Bert
They put that $*@^& on EVERYTHING!
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Ian
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The MUHC’s deficit will not be as bad as feared at the end of this financial year.
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Deputy mayor Jane Cowell-Poitras – last heard from when Gérald Tremblay stepped down – is holding the fort while Michael Applebaum decides what to do. TVA says they spoke to Applebaum Tuesday morning at his home, but that he said he had legal questions to settle before making any statements. Usual warning for TVA links: video autoplay.
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Bill Binns
I wonder if Applebaum is entitled to the same sweet going away package that Tremblay received (a check for 200K + pension for life).
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walkerp
So I wonder if this all means that they really don’t have anything on Tremblay.
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Kate
I don’t think Tremblay’s downfall was because he was corrupt, but because he was naive and passive about things he should’ve been alert and assertive about.
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walkerp
Well that’s the question isn’t it? I mean how could he have possibly been on top of that heap of utter corruption and not been corrupt himself?
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steph
Why does Applebaum even get to decide if he resigns?
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Ant6n
@steph
Based on what rule should he be made to resign? Guilty until proven innocent? -
Kate
No one is asking to convict him of anything. At this stage, if anyone has enough on them that cops feel they can be charged with fraud, should they be mayor?
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Dave M
If being charged without being convicted is enough to remove someone as mayor, then that essentially gives the cops free reign to appoint whoever they want as mayor, by just making up some trumped up charges (riding a bicycle without reflectors in the pedals?) against the mayor that they don’t like.
Though Applebaum should still resign, at this point. I don’t think the cops have a grudge against him.
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david m
it’s not like it’s one or two charges though, it’s 14, a flamboyant quantity of crimes, with years (decades?) of prison in the offing if old applebaum is convicted. it’s not like a person could fight off that sort of thing and still “run” the city.
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Bill Binns
The Gazette just posted a piece saying Applebaum has quit. We have no mayor…again.
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Dave M
Not true.. Jane Cowell-Poitras is the interim interim mayor.
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No\Deli
Again.
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Kate
Been thinking about this all day and two things occurred to me.
The Charbonneau commission has certainly blurred the rule about people being innocent till proven guilty. Lots of testimony, lots of people implicated, often by multiple witnesses. No, it’s not a classical courtroom and the people named are not being invited to defend themselves, but this isn’t like a court case where a jury has to decide whether someone did a specific crime. In most cases it’s an exercise in elucidating the details and the mechanisms by which corruption took place and became implanted as a way of life. Individual lives and careers are collateral damage when an exercise like this takes place.
In a case like Applebaum’s, once again we have to remember this is not a courtroom and he isn’t being convicted, so the presumption of innocence is neither here nor there. Applebaum was an important guy in a political party that has crumbled under multiple testimonies about its corrupt inner workings. Questions had already been asked about some of Applebaum’s dealings and some of his contacts while in office. The CDN-NDG borough hall was raided at least twice by police, and one of the higher fonctionnaires killed himself after questioning. If, after all this, investigators feel they have enough evidence to bring 14 charges against him, he can’t remain mayor. He hasn’t been convicted, but the weight of the implications is too heavy for him to continue in the role.
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Ian
Exactly. Charging the acting mayor is not something the cops would do lightly – even if they can’t make the charges stick he’s clearly implicated un some un-mayoral activities.
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A major fire in La Petite Patrie damaged several residential buildings and drove a dozen people out of their homes. An investigation is being done into the cause.
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Agent 728 tried to legally block a parody porno flick called 728 agente XXX but a judge said she’s a public figure and she can’t. Woman judge, too.
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steph
I guess it’s like suing newspapers for the editorial cartoons. I wonder how she found out about this flick?
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david m
one wouldn’t immediately assume that a figure of such relatively marginal notoriety would be a subject of pornographic satire. like, one assumes the market to be limited for that sort of thing, i guess production costs much be so low that it’s worth taking a shot at catching a media wave? if that’s the case, why not throw applebaum and a few of the italian mafia stooges too? get these dudes banging each other in increasingly goofy and flamboyant corruption/theft scenarios then bring in old 728 to gleefully brutalizing them for extremely minor infractions, you know, with like her wearing like a strapon and them in handcuffs. #masscatharsis
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walkerp
I don’t think that it is a question of her level of notoriety but rather that an abusive female police officer fits a very specific kind of sexual preference, so there is a solid market for it already.
If she finds this personally upsetting, than it is a start of a fitting punishment.
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A report from the SPVM metro unit says metro crime is down by 30% – but they’re still not talking about which metro stations have the worst crime stats.
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Bill Binns
The bus station at Berri-UQAM is completely out of control. It looks like the set of a George Romero movie. I would be shocked if that was not the #1 hotspot. Followed by the above-ground area around Lionel Groulx, followed by the entire blue line.
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Kate
Bill Binns, have you ever actually taken the blue line?
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Blork
One reason is probably increased patrolling by the Metro cops. I used to see them only occasionally, like a couple of times a month, but now I see pairs of them every single day, almost every time I ride the Metro in fact. (I mostly ride the yellow and green lines during commuting hours.)
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Bill Binns
Yes I have ridden the blue line but not often. It’s the only line where I have ever personally seen any violent behavior (Outremont) and the only one where I have ever seen anyone being arrested (Snowdon). Also, I think it’s the St Michel station that has that long brick pedestrian tunnel to get out to the street that has been full of agressive pannhandlers every time I have been there.
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Jack
Bill I love you but you sound like Stewie in Family Guy. There is no safer and more secure place to be transported from one end of the city to another than by metro.
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walkerp
Looks like the set of a George Romero movie is a nice simile though.
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Bill Binns
@Jack – I agree the metro is safe for the most part. That was just my perception of where the most crime prone areas of the system may be.
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denpanosekai
I’m with Bill on this one. I’ve mostly seen violence and iPod thieves at Georges Vanier and various blue line stops.
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GC
Which is, at best, anecdotal evidence. I haven’t seen ANY violence on the blue line, but I also rarely ride it. I hope the police are operating from some actual statistics.
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Three SPVM police have been suspended for some unspecified interference with justice, in an ongoing RCMP investigation seemingly connected with that unfinished business about BCIA having a contract to do security at police HQ downtown. (I had to search for BCIA on my own site to remind myself what a tentacled monster that story was.) Fabrice de Pierrebourg has the names and more details.
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Ephraim
Suspended? They are corrupt policemen, so what do we do, give them vacation instead of a real punishment. This is why we don’t trust the Montreal Police and we don’t respect them. There is no one to blame but themselves.
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Kate
They are suspended now because the investigation is ongoing.
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Doobious
Nothing substantial will come of this. Some time will pass, some wrists may get slapped and everything will work out hunky dory for all the white people involved. I think we all know that.
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Globe and Mail has background details on the charges against Applebaum, Zajdel and Bisson. Tuesday will see some kind of statement from Applebaum and it seems likely he will step down.
La Presse looks at a mysterious USB key left by Robert Rousseau, the CDN-NDG fonctionnaire who killed himself after questioning by police. Item also says the three men arrested Monday will appear in court October 9. This is going to intersect in an interesting way with the election campaign.
Kristian puts Saulie Zajdel under the microscope on Coolopolis. He also has some comments on Applebaum, noting in passing that he was one of the first to question exceptions that were made in CDN-NDG for certain developers:
“It seems ridiculous in retrospect that not only was Applebaum the borough mayor, but he was also a real estate agent and chief of the zoning committee. From my experience you can only walk by an open box of cookies so many times before grabbing one to munch. [...] So why on earth did Applebaum make such a brazen grab for the mayoralty if he had so much to hide? He likely believes himself not guilty, so whatever the charge he is being slammed with, he’s probably got some other optics, one in which he doesn’t seem guilty.” From this Coolopolis post and one of the more pertinent analyses I’ve seen so far on this story.
A Le Devoir editorialist writes crisply about how a story like this brings shame and cynicism to the city. Bonjour le cynisme indeed, but although he’s hopeful this means more people will come out to vote in November, I’m concerned this whole affair will have the opposite effect. People are getting numbed by the sheer scale and pervasiveness of the corruption – as jeather commented below, she’s just assuming all politicians are bad. If so, why even bother choosing one bad apple over another?
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DCMontreal
The town of Xalapa in Mexico may have a solution to their City Hall rat problem that Montreal should consider. El Candigato Morris is a cat running for mayor! http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/07/morris-the-cat-for-mayor-xalapa-mexico_n_3404004.html
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Bill Binns
If you believe all politicians here are bad you have at least two non-politicians to choose from in the next election. Marcel Côté and Mélanie Joly have never held office. I am pretty distrustful of career politicians, especially at the municipal level.
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David Tighe
How can people be so pretentious to imagine that they can manage a city without any knowledge of the urban context or of public sector management?
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david m
or that the only guy with a remotely consistent platform and place on the ideological spectrum (bergeron) can be lumped in any way in with the rest of these clowns.
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thomas
@David Just because someone has not held public office doesn’t mean they are unaware of how the city works or how it can be improved. Not sure if I agree with all of it, but here are some thoughtful and detailed recommendations by Marcel Côté on how to improve Montreal’s taxation and governance structure.
http://www.ccmm.qc.ca/documents/memoires/2009_2010/10_03_31_summary_governance_taxation.pdf
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Charles Lanteigne
Bad apple. Heheheh.
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It’s amazing that we are still convicting war crimanals 73 years after the end of the war. Every time I hear one of these stories I think “that will be the last one”.