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Chinatown plant thief back in jail

From the Globe and Mail:

Colin Freeze
Toronto— From Monday's Globe and Mail

Anthony Bennett is back in jail, once again accused of stealing plants from a Chinese merchant in Toronto’s downtown.

Police locked him up on Friday, just three days after he testified in a high-profile trial. In that case, merchant David Chen and two co-accused face charges that they assaulted and forcibly confined Mr. Bennett after catching him stealing plants in 2009. Mr. Bennett is the Crown’s star witness in the case.

The latest allegations date back to the spring. Authorities said they could have charged Mr. Bennett months earlier with the thefts, but “each time, the suspect was not on the scene, so police were not able to make an arrest at that time,†Toronto Police Detective Henry Dyck told The Globe and Mail Sunday.

He added that “sometimes minor investigations sit for a while.â€

Mr. Bennett, who has amassed 43 prior convictions, is spending the long weekend in the Don Jail. On Wednesday, he is scheduled to appear in Old City Hall court to face five charges of theft under $5,000. Specifically, he stands accused of stealing plants on several occasions at the Jungle Fruit mart – a Kensington Market stall just half a kilometre away from Mr. Chen’s Lucky Moose Mart on Dundas Street West.

“Okay, I stole from [Mr. Chen]. I took the plant,†Mr. Bennett, a 52-year-old drug addict, testified last week. Then he argued that he had been targeted “because I’m black†and that it was wrong to “frigging tie me up and put me in the back of a frigging van.â€

Market merchants in the Spadina Avenue area complain that Mr. Bennett and others steal plants and other wares with near impunity.

Vendors tend to look at Mr. Chen as a hero who made a necessary citizen’s arrest.

Mr. Bennett is “a well known thief,†Jeff Ng, the owner of the Jungle Fruit Mart told The Globe and Mail Sunday from his store. He said he and his security cameras have frequently caught the man stealing.

Between May and July, he phoned these crimes into police and even presented authorities with video evidence.

The delay in the charges, is “a paperwork issue,†according to Det. Dyck, who went to Jungle Fruit Mart on Sunday to retrieve some additional surveillance-camera footage.

He explained he was only recently assigned to the work of collating complaints about Mr. Bennett. The detective insisted his investigation is completely distinct from the Lucky Moose trial – and no one had asked him to hold off charging Mr. Bennett until after he gave testimony.

Det. Dyck said that various theft reports had landed scattershot on different officers’ desks and inside a “centralized police reporting service†until he was assigned to the case. Then, “it was just a matter of putting all these reports together and speaking to the complainant,†he said.

About an hour before Det. Dyck picked up the tapes at Jungle Fruit Mart Sunday, the owner of a food store across Kensington Avenue was dialling police himself.

Frank Lu, owner of Essence of Life, got into a shouting match with a young man in a hoodie whom he accused of theft. “You stay there, I’m calling police,†he said, dialling Toronto Police’s 14 Division. “Yeah, buddy, don’t worry, I’m right here,†the young man replied, not budging.

“We have them [thefts] every day, there is not one day that goes by that somebody doesn’t steal something from our store,†Wan Lu, Mr. Lu’s daughter, said after the incient.

Police, she said, “don’t do anything, actually.â€

With a report from Christie Blatchford
Click to expand...
 
Not as if the news is surprising. Any minor jail time he receives is clearly not a deterrent, and when the people in charge of prosecution are making plea deals with you to lock up the people you're stealing from.. what's the worry?
 
GraphicMatt said:
Should the government spend the money to imprison what basically amounts to a compulsive flower thief? Is that cost effective?
Click to expand...

So continue and allow him to run rampant in chinatown?

I bet you this would not happen if he was stealing flower pots from residents in the Annex.... you'd see police cruisers on the regular in that area if that's the case. Suprisingly, Adam Vaughan has not weighed in one bit!?


one can argue this dude is continually infringing on the charter of rights of shop owners along spadina....
 
GraphicMatt said:
Should the government spend the money to imprison what basically amounts to a compulsive flower thief? Is that cost effective?
Click to expand...

Well, handing out bylaw tickets (and apparently prosecuting petty theft victims), is much more profitable.

There has to be a solution for dealing with petty theft that is more than spend the night in jail, then get released, if the offender is a habitual in nature. Cost effective, or not, they have a duty to the owners of these shops that are being targted.
 
I think this is the case wehre manual labour would be perfect.. help plow the fields and farms, quarry the rocks in mining stations, and perhaps even plant saplings in deforrested sites... .. in return, you receive education and training in a select field of interest...

1 year term allows gets you 7 months hard labour, and 3 months training...or something to that effect.

locking this guy up is too expensive and not worth the money
 
I like the idea of work programs - like the prison farm that was recently shut down - but the other subtext to this case is mental health. This guy is addicted to drugs and compulsively stealing plants. There's an imbalance there that needs to be treated and obviously our court system isn't equipped to deal with it effectively.
 
This story is a NRA member's wet dream. It proves their argument that you cannot count on the police to protect you, and you should have the right to take the law into your own hands to defend your property if necessary. Either that, or be a good little victim while the criminal does what they want with you.

Funny how the Crown prosecutor has no problems dropping violent charges against its friends (coughmichaelbryantcough), but will pursue frivolous charges like this to the death. Queen Elizabeth should use what little powers she has to clean Ontario's prosecution team.
 
GraphicMatt said:
I like the idea of work programs - like the prison farm that was recently shut down - but the other subtext to this case is mental health. This guy is addicted to drugs and compulsively stealing plants. There's an imbalance there that needs to be treated and obviously our court system isn't equipped to deal with it effectively.
Click to expand...

Drug usage is a personal choice. A person should be free to make choices, even if they are harmful. Stealing, however, limit other people's choices. There is no such thing as "compulsive", only lack of self-discipline. We make way too many excuses for ourselves, our kids and our criminals. A tour at a penal colony would be perfect for him. If you really hate drugs, then make sure there's no supply in the colony, the drug problem will take care of itself.

The only problem with a penal colony is that it could be more comfortable than the outside world (probably not a problem in Canada). That's why it's important that there are no free lunch there. You work or you starve.
 
The problem with drains on society like this thief is that no matter what we do with them, they're going to cost the taxpayer money. They either cost us money through social programs (homeless shelters, social housing, or drug rehab programs), through prison terms, or through an increased police presence in order to deal with the crimes that they create. No matter what, it's a lose-lose scenario for the average citizen. The ideal solution would be one that minimizes the expense to the taxpayer, but also provides incentive (even if it's through punishment) for the person to change their behaviour in order to fit in better with society. And the best way to reduce expenses is to generate some type of revenue to help offset them.

However, part of me just wants to say "let them get paid well below minimum wage to shovel horse shit all day until they've learned their lesson and repaid their debt to society".
 
archanfel said:
Drug usage is a personal choice. A person should be free to make choices, even if they are harmful. Stealing, however, limit other people's choices. There is no such thing as "compulsive", only lack of self-discipline. We make way too many excuses for ourselves, our kids and our criminals. A tour at a penal colony would be perfect for him. If you really hate drugs, then make sure there's no supply in the colony, the drug problem will take care of itself.

The only problem with a penal colony is that it could be more comfortable than the outside world (probably not a problem in Canada). That's why it's important that there are no free lunch there. You work or you starve.
Click to expand...

Okay, so your impression is that criminals commit crimes because a) the potential punishment isn't harsh enough to be a deterrent, and b) they aren't "self-disciplined" enough. Is that right?
 
GraphicMatt said:
Should the government spend the money to imprison what basically amounts to a compulsive flower thief? Is that cost effective?
Click to expand...

Sure it is, all these trials and police resources this thief has used up must be costing more than prison time. Besides that, we have a right to be protected from dirtbags with 40 criminal convictions.
 
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