plus 3, B.C. heroin addict returns to street after province seizes her home - The Province

B.C. heroin addict returns to street after province seizes her home - The Province

Posted: 07 Mar 2010 08:34 AM PST

VANCOUVER -- On a crisp March morning, Marianne Christine Sullivan sits on a dock in East Vancouver and talks about being homeless and broke after the government of British Columbia took her $562,000 home under civil-forfeiture legislation.
She says it has been days since she had her last fix of heroin. With a clear head, she now faces the fact she has lost her home because of legislation being used by B.C. police departments to get rid of troublesome households, and she lives and works on the streets.
When the B.C. Civil Forfeiture Office went before a B.C. Supreme Court judge in November to take possession of Sullivan's East Vancouver home, it was like taking candy from a baby, she says.
"I was no threat," she says of having her home taken away while she was a heroin addict and oblivious to the legislation in place to strip a person of their primary asset. "I wasn't doing anything illegal. I am not a criminal."
Shortly before her home was seized, Sullivan, 42, had it boarded up and stayed with friends. She says she did that to get away from the parade of greaseballs who would show up at all times of the night - some fleeing the law, others with stolen property they wanted to fence, others simply looking for a warm place to stay and do drugs.
Even after the home was boarded up, the reprobates who Sullivan says caused her nothing but problems still managed to get into the home, she says.
"I was tired of having people come to my home and take advantage of me," she says of her attempt to get clean and turn her life around.
Sullivan believes she was ultimately a victim of crime herself. She was given a chance to contest the forfeiture, but no one in the legal community seemed interested, she says.
"Once it was boarded up, no one was supposed to go in, but they broke into my home and it was torn apart and all my belongings were stolen," she says. "Everything has been taken away from me and none of it makes sense to me. It hurts me. It really, really hurts that they would do this to me."
Sullivan's house was the first in Vancouver to be forfeited under the Civil Forfeiture Act. In referring the home to the B.C. Civil Forfeiture Office, Vancouver police gave a detailed account of the site they claimed was known for drug dealing, violence and prostitution, and used as a staging area for robberies around the Lower Mainland.
Insp. Brad Desmarais of the gang and drug section says police were at the home constantly, and fed-up residents were demanding action.
"That home was a chronic problem for the police," said Desmarais. "There were over 500 calls to police (over a five-year period)."
In some cases, Desmarais says, those visits resulted in charges and convictions.
Desmarais says police are now using the civil-forfeiture legislation more frequently as a policing tool. "Civil forfeiture in B.C. is the most robust legislation in the country."
Taking a person's assets can also be done through a criminal forfeiture or removing one's possessions through proceeds-of-crime legislation. But Desmarais notes those approaches require a lot of time-consuming police work, and the civil process is far quicker and easier.
Desmarais maintains the file that was sent to Victoria had an overwhelming amount of evidence that Sullivan fully knew there was illegal activity going on at her home.
"If she was an innocent third party at that house, I would have expected her to have made that argument," he says of her day in court. He also feels both the forfeiture office and the judge carefully review the material passed on to them from the police agencies.
And he says he feels Sullivan would have been notified of the court proceedings, despite her position she was not aware of the serious consequences. "The court would have been properly satisfied she was properly served," he says of the legal process for a civil forfeiture.
From a legal perspective, he says, the fact that someone is an addict is irrelevant.
"If someone is an irresponsible landlord and running a flop house where there's prostitution and drugs, and if the courts believe they know or ought to know and chose not to do anything about it, then they act."
Sullivan says she knew her neighbours wanted action, and with that in mind, she asked police to stop by her house each day.
"I am very aware the neighbours weren't happy. That is why I asked the police to show up," she says. "If a cruiser is sitting in front of my home, then they won't come in.
"All (police) did was ask people (about) warrants," she says of the times police stopped by.
"Not once did they ask if I was doing anything illegal. I don't like criminals, I don't like crackheads and I don't care for people who don't have goals.
"Sure, there were 500 times the police were at my home, but never once was it for me committing a crime."
On some nights, Sullivan can be found, along with other hard-core addicts, working the street. There are alleys nearby, with bushes where she sometimes seeks refuge under a cardboard box. If she has enough money, a nearby motel offers a respite from the cold.
"Life on the street is very unsafe, very depressing, and there's a lot of weirdos out there," she says.
Former neighbour Dave Fellner, 66, says "something had to be done" about Sullivan's home because it had become a problem morning, noon and night.
"It was a hangout for people who just got out of jail," says Fellner.
But he says he feels sorry to learn that Sullivan lost everything. "It was sad seeing her lose the house and the way she lived her life."
In late January, Sullivan's home was sold for $562,000. In the listing, it was noted the home was being sold for land value only, and the structure was described as a "teardown."
With a $200,000 outstanding mortgage, about $362,000 from the sale ended up going to the forfeiture office that was created by the provincial government in April 2006.
The home was built by Sullivan's father. It was the only home his daughter had ever lived in.
Both Sullivan and friends remember happy times. At one point, Sullivan had a successful coffee wagon, with steady money to pay the bills around the house and help support her mother, Jeanette, a retired school teacher who had a brain aneurysm that left her needing constant care.
A trusted friend of her mother's lived with them at the house almost up to the time her mother died about two years ago. Sullivan says she went to the bank one day and found out the supposed friend had stolen her family's life savings.
At the time, Sullivan says she had been trying to get a loan to fix up the house so she could rent to students. But she soon found no financial institution would help someone who did not have a steady income or savings to fall back on.
One friend says Sullivan's story needs to be told.
"She helped a lot of people," says Jennifer Owen, 34. "I just don't know how they could take her home away and she gets none of the money."
To support herself, Sullivan now stands on street corners offering sexual services.
Her life of pain began when the once hard-working Sullivan had an industrial accident in 1996. Her right hand was left badly disfigured and virtually useless after it was caught in a die-cutting press. With only one functioning hand, Sullivan says, she still managed to run a coffee truck that she drove to construction sites.
"I was a good, successful, hard worker," she says. Then her coffee truck was stolen, leaving her without a steady income, says Sullivan, and she was also assaulted by an abusive boyfriend, who crushed her left hand in a fit of rage. She still does not have full use of the hand.
"My left hand hurts all the time," she says. "I live with chronic pain. That's why I started doing heroin."
Lisa Lapointe, assistant deputy director of the B.C. Civil Forfeiture Office, says since the civil-forfeiture legislation came into effect in 2006,police departments have used it more and more often.
"The burden of proof is not as challenging as in a criminal case," she says of going after a home like the one Sullivan owned. "We need to prove to a Supreme Court judge there is unlawful activity and that the property is an instrument of that illegal activity."
The money that comes from civil forfeiture helps administer the Civil Forfeiture Office and helps fund crime-prevention and crime-remediation programs, and in some cases helps compensate victims.
In a two-year status report, Robert Kroeker, executive director of the Civil Forfeiture Office, wrote that the office is meeting its goals.
"Fiscally, the Civil Forfeiture Office was challenged to become self-funding within 36 months of startup. I am pleased to report that this goal was achieved 18 months ahead of schedule."
Since the legislation came into effect, there have been 113 successful civil forfeitures in B.C. Of those, 29 were properties, the rest vehicles and currency.
Lawyer Kirk Tousaw, a board member of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, says Sullivan's case raises some questions.
"That is a lot to pay," he says of the $362,000 taken in the forfeiture. "Even if there is criminal activity, that is a heavy fine to pay for misconduct. This shows the potential downside of this type of forfeiture, and the potential for abuse always exists."
Tousaw says he's an opponent of civil-forfeiture laws.
"If they are doing criminal activity, then it should be handled in a criminal court," he says. "I think these civil forfeitures will be happening more and more as the police departments become more familiar with the legislation."
If Sullivan is to stay clean and sober, she has a daunting task ahead.
Among the biggest problems people have trying to beat an addiction like heroin is living in a stable environment.
"Having a home and stable environment is key," says Eva Breternitz, a manager at of the Onsite transitional recovery program in the Downtown Eastside.
Vancouver East MP Libby Davies says the sad situation Sullivan faces as a homeless person likely means it will cost society far more in the long run than what was taken with the forfeiture.
"It is unbelievable this could happen to her," she says. "The fact is, she is now living on the street and suffering from an addiction. What has been solved by making her homeless?"

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Continued: What's riding on the 2010 census? - Minneapolis Star Tribune

Posted: 07 Mar 2010 05:13 AM PST

With a sly smile, without mentioning names, he talked about the "black helicopter crowd," the far-right faction openly questioning the census. How ironic, he suggested, that the titans of American capitalism such as Target Corp. rely on the census for their most important decisions.
Suddenly, a student caught Ritchie off guard with a missive from the other side of the political spectrum.
"So you're saying," the young man said, "that big corporations use this data to know where to go to crowd out small family businesses."
Faced with such pushback, Census Bureau chief Robert Groves noted in a recent blog entry that Thomas Jefferson directed the first census in 1790. And James Madison suggested most of the questions.
"Jefferson himself wanted more than just a headcount," said Steve Ruggles, director of the Minnesota Population Center. "It's true the Constitution doesn't mandate the collection of other information -- but all the Founding Fathers agreed on that," and it's been done that way ever since.
Census data gets used to prove points by folks on all sides. Ruggles, for example, is using it to work with the New York Times on a research project on family issues throughout U.S. history. It will trace trends that some social conservatives deplore, such as rising rates of young children without both parents present, and a trend toward more unmarried cohabitation.
"A major part of my role in state government," Gillaspy said, "and a huge role for the census, is to raise the floor for these debates. You're welcome to your opinions, but facts are facts. We need a basic floor of facts, and then people can respond to those differently."
Every day, for decades already and for decades to come, people sit at computers at the University of Minnesota's West Bank campus, scanning census records and putting them into 21st century databases.
Last week, Rich Brantseg was peering over recently released 1930 census logs from Minneapolis's Fifth Ward, houses on Stevens Avenue not far from downtown. One of the most striking things about the list was all the unrelated people in so many homes.

Homes were kept full

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

It's now easier to file & pay taxes - Jamaica Observer

Posted: 07 Mar 2010 07:36 AM PST

Business

It's now easier to file & pay taxes

Sunday, March 07, 2010

COMPANIES, self-employed persons, partnerships, provident societies and other organisations have only a few days to meet the March 15 Income Tax deadline and the Tax Administration Directorate has made it easier to comply. A number of programmes have been introduced by the tax authorities to make submitting returns and paying taxes easier.

Where can I easily get tax forms?

Taxpayers have the convenience of downloading Income Tax Forms from the website www.jamaicatax.gov.jm. These forms may be completed electronically and then printed and signed for filing. Or persons may visit any of the 29 tax offices island wide to get the relevant forms.

Are there any special programmes to assist small business operators to prepare their income tax returns?

Yes. The Tax Administration began operating its annual Special Taxpayer Service Programme on January 15. The programme is aimed at assisting small business operators, professionals and self-employed persons to complete and file their income tax returns, to meet the March 15 deadline.

The eight-week programme, has over two hundred (200) free sessions scheduled right across the island at off-site locations -- such as -- town halls, school auditoriums, church halls, courthouses, and throughout the network of 29 tax offices. In the Corporate area for example, special "service sites" will be set up the St Andrew, Cross Roads and King Street Tax Offices at scheduled times during the week March 8 - 12. Details of the locations and times scheduled islandwide are available by contacting the Tax Administration Customer Care Centre at 1-888-TAX-HELP or the local Tax Office or visiting the website www.jamaicatax.gov.jm.

Taxpayers wishing to utilise the free service should take along their business documents such as Taxpayer Registration Number (TRN), bank statements, invoices, receipts, sales records and any other records used in their business operations.

Is there a number that persons can call to get tax advice?

Yes. Persons needing tax advice may call the Tax Administration Customer Care Centre at 1-888-TAX-HELP (1-888-829-4357) or email queries to taxhelp@tasd.gov.jm. Agents are available to assist persons to understand their rights and responsibilities and to guide them through the Income Tax filing process. The service operates from 8:30 am to 5:00 pm on Monday to Thursday and from 8:30 am to 4:00 pm on Friday.

Are there alternate filing and payment options?

The Tax Administration has electronic "drop boxes" available at six (6) of the busiest locations. Therefore persons paying by cheque or simply filing a return may use the electronic drop box facility at any of the following tax offices:

1. King Street

2. Constant Spring

3. Cross Roads

4. Spanish Town

5. Mandeville

6. Montego Bay

Persons should also remember that the Portmore Tax Office opens on a Saturday from 10:00 am - 4:00 pm. They may use this location if they unable to transact business during the week at their regular tax office.

Additionally, the Tax Administration is working with FISCAL Services Ltd to finalise plans to introduce electronic filing of income tax returns by the March 15 due date. This will allow self-employed persons and companies to file and pay income tax from the convenience of their home or office, 24hrs daily via the "Virtual" Tax Office at www.jamaicatax-online.gov.jm, once they are duly registered to use the online filing option.

Will the tax offices be opening later?

To meet the demands of the taxpaying public, fourteen of the busiest tax offices will open one hour later on the due date, Monday, March 15. The tax offices which will remain open to the public until 5:00 pm are:

1. Kingston

2. Constant Spring

3. Cross Roads

4. Mandeville

5. May Pen

6. Spanish Town

7. Portmore

8. Montego Bay

9. Savanna-La-Mar

10. Morant Bay

11. Brown's Town

12. St Ann's Bay

13. Falmouth

14. Lucea

All other Tax Offices will operate their regular schedule.

With the various programmes in place to assist taxpayers, thereby making it easier to pay, taxpayers are urged to submit their final return for 2009 and estimated return for 2010, as well as make payments to meet the March 15 Income Tax deadline.

Seventh of special eight-part series running up to the March 15 due date for the filing of income tax returns