For almost two years now, Hamilton Mayor Larry Di Ianni has been embroiled in controversy about illegal contributions to his successful 2003 campaign. The law allows a maximum of $750 per individual or group of related companies. Dundas bookseller Joanna Chapman took Di Ianni to court and obtained an order for an audit. Di Ianni has returned thousands of dollars in overcontributions.
The case reads like a cheap mystery novel, full of shady characters, and a plot full of deceit. The problem is, this case is no piece of trashy pulp fiction. Real people will be held accountable and in the end that could be Hamilton tax payers to the sum of $100,000 by the time all the lawyers are paid.
Lets look at the story chapter by chapter. First the issue, Should Mayor Larry Di Ianni be forced to answer to a judge for accepting $26,000 in illegal campaign donations he says were honest mistakes?
The players, Mayor Larry Di Ianni: elected in 2003 after more than two decades as a Stoney Creek councillor. Joanna Chapman: a Dundas bookseller and former councillor. John Best: a communications consultant who lost in Ward 3. Marvin Caplan: former Ward 1 councillor defeated in 2003.
The rules, The Municipal Elections Act sets the rules for campaign donations. An individual or company cannot donate more than $750. It also stipulates how contributions must be documented. The act has been widely criticized as confusing and vague. It states council can take legal action if an audit finds possible contraventions.
Now the story, July 2004: Chapman asks council to audit Di Ianni's mayoral campaign expenses after she found possible violations. She also fingers councillors Tom Jackson, Bill Kelly, Terry Whitehead and five failed candidates. Council rejects her request. Chapman announces she is going to court. Di Ianni hires an auditor to examine his books, which are already under review by his team.
December 2004: Complaints against most of the candidates are dropped after they agree to play by the rules. Chapman continues to pursue Di Ianni, John Best and Marvin Caplan, who claim they've done nothing wrong.
May 2005: After months of arguments, Justice Timothy Culver makes history by ordering an audit of Di Ianni's books. Culver says Chapman had reasonable grounds to believe Di Ianni contravened the Municipal Elections Act. The judge chastises council for failing or refusing to exercise its jurisdiction and not considering the merits of Chapman's case.
Di Ianni has returned $19,500 in illegal donations after his own audit and investigation. The violations included companies making multiple donations which put them over the limit. He says any errors were unintentional.
Also, May 2005: Chapman lays charges against 18 companies for overcontributing to Di Ianni's campaign and violating the elections act.
Spokespersons for three of the companies -- J. Voortman and Associates, The Effort Trust Company and St. Lawrence Cement Inc. -- express surprise at the charges but acknowledge overcontributions. All suggest it resulted from simple error.
August 2005: Council hires Ken Froese, a chartered accountant with LECG Canada, to audit the books of Di Ianni, Best and Caplan.
October 2005: Froese's investigation finds five new violations worth $3,300 beyond those uncovered by Di Ianni.
Among the violations are donations from ineligible contributors including a charity, a Quebec-based company, an estate without the supporting will and two unincorporated companies. The auditor noted all contraventions, "were appropriately addressed by the candidate."
He asks to continue his audit to dig deeper. Froese finds three apparent contraventions and one reporting error in Best's books. Caplan can't find his records.
February 2006: Froese reports he's found another $3,100 in illegal donations to Di Ianni. He found three groups of connected companies that exceeded the $750 limit and donations from ineligible companies. In each violation, Froese notes his conclusions, "relied on information not otherwise provided to Di Ianni."
Caplan's audit finds a violation for not keeping his campaign finance records and two reporting errors. The auditor adds two reporting errors to Best's possible violations. Council hires a Kingston lawyer to advise on whether they should charge Di Ianni, Best and Caplan.
The decision, March 7, Larry Di Ianni told to answer to a judge for breaking election financing rules in his quest to be Hamilton's leader. City council made legal history yesterday, voting 12-1 to charge Di Ianni for violating the Municipal Elections Act. The decision came as vindication for citizen activist Joanna Chapman, who has fought for nearly two years to see the election of 2003 scrutinized.
The Mayor says "he will take his lumps". Council also voted to charge failed candidates Marvin Caplan and John Best. The mayor returned nearly $26,000 in illegal donations from his $330,000 mayoral campaign after his own investigation and a court-ordered audit. He says any violations were honest mistakes by a volunteer-driven campaign.
An outside legal opinion, debated by councillors behind closed doors for nearly two hours yesterday, advised there were reasonable grounds to charge Di Ianni. It countered a report by the city's own legal team, which recommended taking no action.
The alleged offences include failing to return illegal donations as soon as possible and poor bookkeeping of donor information. Under election rules, a corporation or individual can not donate more than $750. If found guilty of violating the act, a candidate can be fined up to $5,000 or kicked out of office.
The legal opinion forced the hand of councillors, many who feared taking no action would only lead to judicial review of their decision. Councillor Bill Kelly was the only councillor to vote against charges.
Flamborough Councillor Margaret McCarthy said it'd be "irresponsible" for council to ignore the legal advice.
Di Ianni said he wanted to speak to his lawyer before deciding if he will plead guilty to the charges.
But Best already plans to plead guilty. He has always maintained his errors, which the outside lawyer cited as reporting violations and not refunding an illegal donation in a timely manner were honest mistakes.
"I'm ready for the next round," he said, adding he does plan to seek legal advice about how the city handled his case.
He believes they were negligent in not going ahead with an audit months ago when he asked.
But Caplan, who was cited for not keeping proper election records, said he plans to fight the charges.
"I am not guilty," he said, questioning if it's even fair that Chapman, who does not live in his ward, can pursue him.
Di Ianni has already thrown his hat back in the ring for the fall election.
Voters will be the judge, he said.
The timing of Di Ianni's re-election campaign announcements is "interesting to say the least," said Chapman.
"It just seemed to me like extremely strange timing. I don't think it would have been my choice in his shoes."
Stay tuned for the next chapter in this Steeltown saga.
Final word, Mayor Larry Di Ianni still doesn't get it. He continues to blame Joanna Chapman for his problems and at the same time manipulating the public.
The issue is not about whether the mayor is doing a good job or not. The real issue is that his campaign accepted and deposited to his account dozens of illegal election donations, prohibited by the Municipal Elections Act. This was clear nearly two years ago but the mayor has been trying to avoid the consequences ever since.
And because of the choices he made, we, the taxpayers of Hamilton, have to pay the expenses of an audit and now a court case. Along with Chapman, we law-abiding citizens are the victims of this embarrassing situation.
Hopefully come November, Hamiltonian's will speak loud and clear with their votes and burn Di Ianni's little black book of lies. Furthermore, I hope this saga gives a wake up call to our elected officials downtown, sending them the message that us city folk are sick of the scandals that have plagued our city. Can we have a clean city election?
Later,
Kenaz
Saturday, March 11, 2006
SIU probes death of police prisoner
Hamilton Spectator, February 14,2006
The provincial police watchdog is investigating the death of a 40-year-old man from serious head injuries after his arrest for public intoxication. He was arrested by a Hamilton police officer at the liquor store on Dundurn Street at about 5:10 p.m. on Feb. 10 and taken to police headquarters on King William Street. He was lodged in a cell at about 6 p.m. According to a Special Investigations Unit press release, officers on a "routine check" of the cells could not wake the man at about 11:20 p.m.He was taken to St. Joseph's Hospital and then transferred to Hamilton General with serious head injuries. The man died Sunday. The results of a post-mortem examination conducted yesterday are not being released.
(Feb 15, 2006)The Hamilton Spectator
Ontario's Special Investigations Unit says it is still trying to piece together how and why a Hamilton man died after being taken into police custody late last week.
Darin Fournier, 40, of Hamilton, was arrested for public intoxication at the liquor store on Dundurn Street South on Thursday, Feb. 9.
Fournier spent about five and a half hours that evening in a police station holding cell. He was sent to hospital with serious head injuries after officers were unable to wake him during a routine check around 11:20 p.m. Fournier died Sunday evening in Hamilton General Hospital.
The SIU said he "succumbed to injuries," but would not reveal their nature.
"Considering that the cause of death is very pertinent to what we are investigating, we are not releasing the post- mortem examination results at this time," SIU spokesperson Rose Bliss said yesterday.
Bliss said investigators don't yet have clear answers if Fournier already had head injuries before being taken into custody.
Darin Fournier was laid to rest in his New Brunswick hometown on February 17. The Ontario Special Investigations Unit, which probes cases of civilians suffering serious injury, sexual assault or death in incidents involving police, is still looking into Fournier's death and have not offered any resolution to date.
April 9.2006
Update:Hamilton police have been cleared in the death of a homeless man who died from a head injury received in police custody.
An autopsy concluded Fournier died from blunt trauma to the head, suffered during a fall. While Fournier had fallen in the LCBO parking lot, the SIU determined he died from a head injury suffered in a later fall in a Central Station holding cell during a scuffle with police.
The SIU concluded the skirmish was initiated by Fournier and that police did not intentionally cause his fall. According to the SIU, two officers arrested Fournier Feb. 9 after receiving a complaint from LCBO staff about his behaviour outside the store around 5:15 p.m.
Unable to find an empty spot at a detox centre, the officers brought Fournier to the downtown station. After Fournier refused to get out of the cruiser, two officers pulled him out and dragged him by his arms into the station where he put up another struggle, lost his balance and fell, hitting the back of his head on the floor.
Video surveillance showed Fournier moving around in his cell at around 7:35 p.m. before going back to sleep. Police were unable to rouse Fournier at 11:30 p.m. and called paramedics. He died after spending three days in a coma in hospital.
SIU director James Cornish noted, "The outward signs of his injury were slow to manifest themselves.
"What signs there may have been were masked by his level of intoxication."
Cornish determined officers did not act irresponsibly.
"The force that the police used in that interaction was not unreasonable and certainly was not used with the intention of causing him to fall, let alone to cause him any injury."
I don't where Cornish gets off delivering this most unwise and uneducated deduction. I can remember playing recreational hockey as a kid and once being checked into the boards causing me to bump my head. Completely, minor. The point being, my mother watched me like a hawk for the next day, making sure I didn't sleep for any length of time! Any idiot knows that you don't let a person who has had two sugnificant blows to the head sleep, intoxicated or not.
This is yet another cry out to the city to better educate and train their officers and for the SIU to cross the "thin blue line" and admit their mistakes.
Alcoholic waist to society or not this man didn't deserve to die and his wife and children don't deserve the lies the Hamilton Police department have offered them.
Later,
Kenaz
The provincial police watchdog is investigating the death of a 40-year-old man from serious head injuries after his arrest for public intoxication. He was arrested by a Hamilton police officer at the liquor store on Dundurn Street at about 5:10 p.m. on Feb. 10 and taken to police headquarters on King William Street. He was lodged in a cell at about 6 p.m. According to a Special Investigations Unit press release, officers on a "routine check" of the cells could not wake the man at about 11:20 p.m.He was taken to St. Joseph's Hospital and then transferred to Hamilton General with serious head injuries. The man died Sunday. The results of a post-mortem examination conducted yesterday are not being released.
(Feb 15, 2006)The Hamilton Spectator
Ontario's Special Investigations Unit says it is still trying to piece together how and why a Hamilton man died after being taken into police custody late last week.
Darin Fournier, 40, of Hamilton, was arrested for public intoxication at the liquor store on Dundurn Street South on Thursday, Feb. 9.
Fournier spent about five and a half hours that evening in a police station holding cell. He was sent to hospital with serious head injuries after officers were unable to wake him during a routine check around 11:20 p.m. Fournier died Sunday evening in Hamilton General Hospital.
The SIU said he "succumbed to injuries," but would not reveal their nature.
"Considering that the cause of death is very pertinent to what we are investigating, we are not releasing the post- mortem examination results at this time," SIU spokesperson Rose Bliss said yesterday.
Bliss said investigators don't yet have clear answers if Fournier already had head injuries before being taken into custody.
Darin Fournier was laid to rest in his New Brunswick hometown on February 17. The Ontario Special Investigations Unit, which probes cases of civilians suffering serious injury, sexual assault or death in incidents involving police, is still looking into Fournier's death and have not offered any resolution to date.
April 9.2006
Update:Hamilton police have been cleared in the death of a homeless man who died from a head injury received in police custody.
An autopsy concluded Fournier died from blunt trauma to the head, suffered during a fall. While Fournier had fallen in the LCBO parking lot, the SIU determined he died from a head injury suffered in a later fall in a Central Station holding cell during a scuffle with police.
The SIU concluded the skirmish was initiated by Fournier and that police did not intentionally cause his fall. According to the SIU, two officers arrested Fournier Feb. 9 after receiving a complaint from LCBO staff about his behaviour outside the store around 5:15 p.m.
Unable to find an empty spot at a detox centre, the officers brought Fournier to the downtown station. After Fournier refused to get out of the cruiser, two officers pulled him out and dragged him by his arms into the station where he put up another struggle, lost his balance and fell, hitting the back of his head on the floor.
Video surveillance showed Fournier moving around in his cell at around 7:35 p.m. before going back to sleep. Police were unable to rouse Fournier at 11:30 p.m. and called paramedics. He died after spending three days in a coma in hospital.
SIU director James Cornish noted, "The outward signs of his injury were slow to manifest themselves.
"What signs there may have been were masked by his level of intoxication."
Cornish determined officers did not act irresponsibly.
"The force that the police used in that interaction was not unreasonable and certainly was not used with the intention of causing him to fall, let alone to cause him any injury."
I don't where Cornish gets off delivering this most unwise and uneducated deduction. I can remember playing recreational hockey as a kid and once being checked into the boards causing me to bump my head. Completely, minor. The point being, my mother watched me like a hawk for the next day, making sure I didn't sleep for any length of time! Any idiot knows that you don't let a person who has had two sugnificant blows to the head sleep, intoxicated or not.
This is yet another cry out to the city to better educate and train their officers and for the SIU to cross the "thin blue line" and admit their mistakes.
Alcoholic waist to society or not this man didn't deserve to die and his wife and children don't deserve the lies the Hamilton Police department have offered them.
Later,
Kenaz
Convicted sex offender only gets 2 years less a day
Hagersville's Zach Wobbes is going to prison for rape. But the judge in the case says his parents also bear some responsibility for the crime.
Zach Wobbes grew up in "a poison environment." The convicted sex offender is going to jail for two years less a day for gang raping an 18-year-old girl. That's his punishment.
His parents' punishment is shame and a very public tongue-lashing by a Superior Court Justice. Looking over Zach's bowed head as he wept in the prisoner's box, Justice David Marshall locked his eyes on Andy and Sheila Wobbes as they sat in the first row of the packed courtroom. He has no authority over the couple even though Sheila supplied a bunch of Zach's underage friends from Hagersville High School with booze and beer and Jell-O shots. Even though she was home while the same boys watched pornography. And even though she was in the house when Zach and two friends, 15 and 16, first kissed, groped and shaved the drunk girl and then violated her with bottles while she was unconscious. Five or six other boys watched.
Even though one partygoer, disgusted by the rape, told her she should check on what was happening in her son's room. She didn't. No, Sheila was never charged.
But Marshall was not about to let her, or her husband, off that easily. Moments before handing down his much-anticipated sentence yesterday, the judge took the highly unusual step of addressing the parents.
"Your home was a poison environment that was not a proper or decent place for a teenage boy to grow up," he said.
Andy, a tall, athletic man dressed all in black, gulped loudly, clasped his hands in his lap and looked toward the ceiling. Sheila, wearing a white shirt and black pants, removed her glasses and wiped at the tears that streamed down her cheeks. They have failed as parents. more
Zach rehearsed tears for the court: cellmate
The most dramatic moment in the Zach Wobbes sexual assault court case might not be what it seemed. The moment came Tuesday, at the very end of a long day at the sex offender's sentencing hearing. Zach was given an opportunity to address the court.
He rose, asked the judge's permission to face the father of the young woman he helped to gang rape with beer bottles, then wept as he told the story of his first night at the Hamilton-Wentworth Detention Centre.
He spoke of his cellmate, a big, bald man facing murder charges. Of the inmate ordering him to perform oral sex before going to bed. Of Zach's refusal.
"I think now I know the tiniest, tiniest bit of what she felt," Zach said.
It appeared to be the first time Zach had shown any empathy. Any remorse. A significant turning point that Justice David Marshall cited yesterday as a reason for handing down a sentence of two years less a day to Zach rather than the three or four years the Crown sought.
The problem is, Zach's cellmate says it's a lie. more
HAGERSVILLE IN PAIN
Tight community overcome with sadness, disgust over party rape and the mom's role in providing alcohol. This small community was left wondering yesterday.
Wondering how the grotesque rape of a teenage girl could have happened. Wondering why the prosecution didn't charge the mother of Zach Wobbes for providing teenage boys with alcohol before the rape.
There's no answer to that question. Officials will only say that she wasn't charged. But residents still wonder.
"She should be punished for letting all this happen," said longtime resident Frank Dillon.
He remembers hearing stories right after the incident in June 2004. But people just stopped talking about it after a week or two.
One Hagersville man's voice trembled and his jaw tightened when asked about Zach Wobbes.
"I have a 15-year-old daughter," said Tom, who refused to give his last name. "It could have happened to her."
As a father, Tom would do anything to protect his teenaged daughter, which is the reason he refused to give his last name. His daughter goes to Hagersville Secondary School, where Wobbes went, and he doesn't want her to be connected to his opinion.
"It disgusts me," he said. "Two years is a slap on the wrist and he should have gotten more. He has two years to figure out what he has done. That girl has the rest of her life to suffer." more
What I find even more disgusting than Zach Wobbes is his classmates attitudes. While all of this was going on in Zach's locked and darkened bedroom, there were five or six more Hagersville students watching the rape happen. They watched it the way they viewed the porno movie they had enjoyed earlier in the evening.
Amazingly, the Hagersville High connection doesn't end there. Dozens of students quickly heard about what happened at Zach's party. By the next day, the rumours were rampant. The victim herself heard details of her rape for the first time from students. And yet, all those students who knew the story did nothing. Didn't tell their teachers. Or the police.
Here's one comment from a severely mixed up girl, "even under the influence of alchol, Zach would not take advantage of a female. I strongly believe that he was under peer pressure from hs so called 'friends'. I do not feel that jail time is appropriate for this young man, but house arrest maybe a better idea."
more quotes from the rapists schoolmates.
The Hagersville I new growing was a place full of good people with holsome values, when did it revert back to the time of the caveman full of misogynistic drunken thugs.
Later,
Kenaz
Zach Wobbes grew up in "a poison environment." The convicted sex offender is going to jail for two years less a day for gang raping an 18-year-old girl. That's his punishment.
His parents' punishment is shame and a very public tongue-lashing by a Superior Court Justice. Looking over Zach's bowed head as he wept in the prisoner's box, Justice David Marshall locked his eyes on Andy and Sheila Wobbes as they sat in the first row of the packed courtroom. He has no authority over the couple even though Sheila supplied a bunch of Zach's underage friends from Hagersville High School with booze and beer and Jell-O shots. Even though she was home while the same boys watched pornography. And even though she was in the house when Zach and two friends, 15 and 16, first kissed, groped and shaved the drunk girl and then violated her with bottles while she was unconscious. Five or six other boys watched.
Even though one partygoer, disgusted by the rape, told her she should check on what was happening in her son's room. She didn't. No, Sheila was never charged.
But Marshall was not about to let her, or her husband, off that easily. Moments before handing down his much-anticipated sentence yesterday, the judge took the highly unusual step of addressing the parents.
"Your home was a poison environment that was not a proper or decent place for a teenage boy to grow up," he said.
Andy, a tall, athletic man dressed all in black, gulped loudly, clasped his hands in his lap and looked toward the ceiling. Sheila, wearing a white shirt and black pants, removed her glasses and wiped at the tears that streamed down her cheeks. They have failed as parents. more
Zach rehearsed tears for the court: cellmate
The most dramatic moment in the Zach Wobbes sexual assault court case might not be what it seemed. The moment came Tuesday, at the very end of a long day at the sex offender's sentencing hearing. Zach was given an opportunity to address the court.
He rose, asked the judge's permission to face the father of the young woman he helped to gang rape with beer bottles, then wept as he told the story of his first night at the Hamilton-Wentworth Detention Centre.
He spoke of his cellmate, a big, bald man facing murder charges. Of the inmate ordering him to perform oral sex before going to bed. Of Zach's refusal.
"I think now I know the tiniest, tiniest bit of what she felt," Zach said.
It appeared to be the first time Zach had shown any empathy. Any remorse. A significant turning point that Justice David Marshall cited yesterday as a reason for handing down a sentence of two years less a day to Zach rather than the three or four years the Crown sought.
The problem is, Zach's cellmate says it's a lie. more
HAGERSVILLE IN PAIN
Tight community overcome with sadness, disgust over party rape and the mom's role in providing alcohol. This small community was left wondering yesterday.
Wondering how the grotesque rape of a teenage girl could have happened. Wondering why the prosecution didn't charge the mother of Zach Wobbes for providing teenage boys with alcohol before the rape.
There's no answer to that question. Officials will only say that she wasn't charged. But residents still wonder.
"She should be punished for letting all this happen," said longtime resident Frank Dillon.
He remembers hearing stories right after the incident in June 2004. But people just stopped talking about it after a week or two.
One Hagersville man's voice trembled and his jaw tightened when asked about Zach Wobbes.
"I have a 15-year-old daughter," said Tom, who refused to give his last name. "It could have happened to her."
As a father, Tom would do anything to protect his teenaged daughter, which is the reason he refused to give his last name. His daughter goes to Hagersville Secondary School, where Wobbes went, and he doesn't want her to be connected to his opinion.
"It disgusts me," he said. "Two years is a slap on the wrist and he should have gotten more. He has two years to figure out what he has done. That girl has the rest of her life to suffer." more
What I find even more disgusting than Zach Wobbes is his classmates attitudes. While all of this was going on in Zach's locked and darkened bedroom, there were five or six more Hagersville students watching the rape happen. They watched it the way they viewed the porno movie they had enjoyed earlier in the evening.
Amazingly, the Hagersville High connection doesn't end there. Dozens of students quickly heard about what happened at Zach's party. By the next day, the rumours were rampant. The victim herself heard details of her rape for the first time from students. And yet, all those students who knew the story did nothing. Didn't tell their teachers. Or the police.
Here's one comment from a severely mixed up girl, "even under the influence of alchol, Zach would not take advantage of a female. I strongly believe that he was under peer pressure from hs so called 'friends'. I do not feel that jail time is appropriate for this young man, but house arrest maybe a better idea."
more quotes from the rapists schoolmates.
The Hagersville I new growing was a place full of good people with holsome values, when did it revert back to the time of the caveman full of misogynistic drunken thugs.
Later,
Kenaz
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