Chief Brian Mullan says the police department plans to use the Civil Remedies Act as a weapon to move against trouble spots across the city. Police now have an officer specializing in applications of the legislation. He promised to use it against booze cans selling illegal alcohol, marijuana grow operations and prostitution.
Mullan said this is the first time the conspiracy section of the Remedies for Organized Crime and Other Unlawful Activities Act (Civil Remedies Act) has been applied in a seizure.
Ontario Attorney General Michael Bryant came to Hamilton yesterday to stand in front of the old Sandbar and promise a safe community.
"This crack house of horrors is out of business."
Ontario Attorney General Michael Bryant, right, with police Chief Brian Mullan, centre, and Hamilton Police Services Board Chair Bernie Morelli, announces the seizure of the tavern.
The property manager of the King Street East building was not available for comment yesterday. The building's owner, Ruth Ricca, was quoted after a homicide in the building in 2003 that she had nothing to do with how the building was run. She was not available for comment.
The Sandbar closed in 1999 when the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario revoked its licence, charging that drugs were sold, stolen property was fenced and violence was common. There have been two murders in the apartments upstairs since. In 2001, Jackie McLean, 35, was beaten to death in an unoccupied apartment. Two years later Jim McAllister was stabbed to death there.
The province and police are invoking rarely used powers to implement the five-year old Civil Remedies Act. Under this legislation, the court can take over private property suspected of housing criminal activity.
Mullan -- whose own office window faces the backside of a building he calls "a blight" across a parking lot -- says police have answered calls to the site almost every day for years and have spent millions of dollars in policing this one address. In the past 10 years, two crack-cocaine related murders, numerous stabbings and illegal drug trafficking have all taken place inside.
Three weeks ago, police armed with search warrants for each of the five apartments arrested a number of people on charges involving crack cocaine and seized closed circuit video equipment which had been used to monitor the entrance and the stairs leading to the apartments.
Police now have to show the extent of criminal activity within and that means boxes and boxes of incident reports had to be submitted. A hearing will be held in about a month to determine whether the seizure will be made permanent. At that hearing police will have to demonstrate that "criminal enterprise was being undertaken at the location with the knowledge of the landlord."
Mullan said the ministry was prepared to move ahead some months ago but decided to hold off until the trial of McLean's killer finished a few weeks ago. If the final hearing is successful, use of the conspiracy section of the legislation will become "a benchmark case that will be precedent-setting and will allow other police services to take advantage of the legislation in this way, in partnership with the ministry."
Area residents breathed a sigh of relief as they watched lock smiths and city workers board up the den of hell. A police officer will guard the boarded up building 24 hours a day until the courts allow the province to sell it.
Since being created five years ago, the Civil Remedies Act has been used to seize half a dozen properties in Hamilton and more than 100 in Ontario. The province has accumulated more than $2.2 million from the sale of these properties.
Civil asset forfeiture, as used in the Sandbar case, focuses solely on the connection between property and unlawful activity whereas criminal asset forfeiture permits forfeiture of assets obtained by or used in the commission of an offence following conviction of an individual.
Later,
Kenaz
