Just Another Corrupt Border Guard?

November 8, 2007

Seized during the Kandola bust were 208 kilos of cocaine, an HK 9 mm pistol and HK .45-cal. pistol, a Sturm Ruger .44 magnum revolver, forty rounds of ammo, and about $200,000 in cash.

Yet another Canadian border guard is facing drug smuggling and corruption charges. Unfortunately we the public are refused any substantive personal details about the accused. Armed with facts we might connect the dots and come to our own conclusions about the illegal drug industry in the province. That ugly knowledge might deny our criminals their full libation from the great steaming cauldron of Canadian Human Rights protection. We might learn to pick a gang banger out of the crowd, and thus deny him his basic human dignity. Can't have that!

Law enforcement agencies, the CBSA in particular, have closed ranks - claiming that a corrupt border guard is a one-off phenomenon, and are releasing no arrest photographs or personal history of the disgraced agent or his two Sikh cohorts. Worse, the Vancouver media, is not even pursuing the case. Not one media company sent a reporter to the arraignment hearing at Surrey Provincial Court last week.

Baljinder Kondola is facing six charges including importing cocaine and guns, breach of trust and bribery. And get this... Kim Scoville, Pacific Highway District Director for the Canada Border Services Agency, told reporters that he had "mixed feelings" about the probe into Kandola's activities. "It was a successful investigation. Unfortunately, one of our officers was a key figure." He added that "this is an incident involving a single officer and does not diminish the pride and confidence that we have in the men and women of the Canada Border Services Agency." Really?

At a news conference in Surrey an RCMP Inspector named Malo also gave up very little. The long investigation is alleged to have resulted from a "tip" in early 2006 that a Canadian border guard was allowing drug mules to cross with impunity. (This specific corruption investigation was dubbed Project EPELL.) Scoville would only say that Kandola was a full-time employee who, after completing recruit training and passing a "reliability check" in June 2001, has worked at the truck side [Pacific Crossing] of the port ever since.

It is not revealed if Kandola is related to the infamous Robbie Kandola, the cocaine mobster who was ambushed two years ago in swanky Coal Harbor and executed on the sidewalk. A few private photos of Kandola had once been posted on the Net, but a loyal family member deleted them on the morning he was taken into custody. As well his clan was planning an expensive Caribbean retreat for November. So sad he had to cancel his travel plans. You will probably never see his face. Arrest photos are never made available unless our drug lords happen to get captured on the American side of the border, and even then the Vancouver media do not try to secure copies.

In December of 2005 border guard Atlaf Merali, was sentenced to one and a half years in prison for smuggling $1 million in drugs. Merali tried to brazen a crossing with his Canada Customs uniform on display in his van - "a random search of his vehicle uncovered about 90 kilograms of marijuana in four hockey bags in the back seat – covered by his uniform jacket." Merali is already back on the street, but no longer working for law enforcement.

Mindi Nedermeiser was another CBSA border guard "let go". Incidents stretching back to 1996, including her firing for breaches of security at Vancouver airport, did not preclude her being reinstated and then being offered trusted work at the Canada-U.S. border... not until someone ratted her out for associating with the Hell's Angels.

The police of course are exasperated by the exposed connections between drug gangs and uniformed members of law enforcement. Almost all of the weapons used by the gangs are smuggled into Canada along with the cocaine and heroin, and the outlaws are fully prepared to murder people with those guns. Execution-style murders of drug gang hustlers and soldiers are accelerating in Vancouver. There have been four in the last two weeks - a Vietnamese, a Punjabi, an Iranian and a Cantonese. Not a red head in the bunch, but at least someone zapped a Big Circle Boy. That's progress. These extra-legal executions have reached such hilarious proportions that the official spokesman for the V.P.D., Constable Fanning, was reduced to firing this squib on Monday -"If anybody is in that lifestyle and has information that they want to pass on - because they could be next. It is obviously a very dangerous, dangerous way to live when you are involved in criminal activity because the end result is ... death." Now the V.P.D. is begging career criminals to turn informer, in attempt to save their own necks.

The police make no headway in these killings because they are facing many of the same socio-political realties which prevented the Canadian State from convicting the Sikhs who blew up the Air India 747. Police can corner and arrest, but the hapless prosecuters fail to convict. Why? Because Canadians have created an "anything can be tolerated" society, and they are doomed to live with the monster they mothered. In B.C., we were just told, only 39 per cent of recent gang-related killings were cleared by police (compared to 68 per cent of non-gang homicides). But these statistics are just as meaningless as those which also claim that overall, murders are down. (Really? How many old dames are falling down stairs or choking on their spinach now that their houses and city lots are worth $700 - 800 K.? Anyone keeping stats?) This week the police and the politicians are making all the obligatory noises about setting up special investigative units (they've existed for years) and toughening the laws. Stand down fellahs... we all know the killings will only abate when the gangs are exhausted, and forced to call a temporary truce. The Lower Mainland is only getting a small taste of what the future holds in store. A money-culture is the natural setting for organized crime.

Even mouthy NDP careerists are now demanding that our streets be cleaned up. It's all too funny. Back in the 1990s when the Reform Party of Canada still existed, it was the only political movement which advocated building new prisons and sending gang bangers away for life. Local NDP and Liberal politicians filled their scrapbooks with generous press coverage in which they were allowed to condemn "scary" Reform MPs as "dinosaurs" and "right wing extremists". Fine. And the cities have now gone further to hell. Enjoy. That history of organized neglect is also the reason no one today believes the childish prattle of those same politicians. Wally Oppal is going to get tough on crime? Give me a break! The poor sod is just trying to live long enough to spend the three fat pensions in his portfolio.

Let's just hope the drug outlaws, who this week are driving around our city with loaded their guns in their cars, trying to get the drop on each other, will manage to shoot only themselves in the face. For that blessing we law abiding citizens will be truly grateful.

Update November 10th - I note the publication in the Vancouver SUN of rare honest commentary on politicians, gang violence and murder: "POLITICIANS PLAY THE HOT AIR GAME ON CRIME" Peter MacKnight wrote,"But we don't need to rely on anecdotes, since the research confirms that the problem is not a lack of punishment for gangsters who get caught -- it's that many gangsters are never apprehended. Indeed, the only "justice" many gangsters face is at the hands of their fellow gang members." (read his piece)

And further comment in a hard hitting editorial published in The Asian Pacific Post, October 26, 2007: " Police information says there are 129 gangs active in B.C. with many other small gangs seeking to establish themselves. Today’s gang violence is the result of yesterday’s complacency when politicians and police insisted on playing down gang activity in BC. Our benign view of smoking pot is another major contributor to the violence that has taken so many innocent lives and injured others." Absolutely!

And lest anyone dare think or remark that I am trying to denigrate law enforcement.... I can only respond that you don't "read" me at all. To the contrary, I am 100% behind law enforcement efforts at drug interdiction and serious prosecution. Creeps like the criminals I describe in this Blog were NEVER law enforcement professionals. They were INFILTRATORS who always intended to illegally profit and to subvert justice while employed in privileged duties.

LOONEY TUNES IN BRITISH COLUMBIA

What a LOONY TUNE week in British Columbia. I’ll try to be brief, but there are so many stories that give a citizen-reader indigestion, it’s hard to keep it simple.

How about that story of Briony Penn, (March 21) the full time environmentalist and sometime lecturer at UVIC? A denizen of the Gulf Islands, Penn has decided to dazzle the Ottawa lawyer riffraff with her PhD, by contesting the Grit nomination in the riding of Saanich Gulf Islands. She actually endorses Stephane Dion’s pledge to mandate 33% of federal Liberal candidates be women in the next Canadian election. Liberal? Dictating terms to riding associations, refusing to sign off on their democratically chosen candidates, sounds hard line Stalinist to me. Members are supposed to dictate policy, not let leader driven policy dictate the candidates. Ms. Penn was a Green Party activist until handed a sweetheart deal by top echelon party recruiters. She’s most famous for baring her activist tits in downtown Vancouver in 2001, in a protest of the environmental policies of … the Liberal Government. Oh, oh!

Her campaign website Briony.ca panders to her ideological home - the Green Party, and the temple of her ambition, the Liberal red. Hoping to have it three ways, (a little Tory Blue) she actually boasts of having supported herself for years as a small businessperson. Hardly. A quick scan of her online c.v. reveals she's enjoyed her full libation of academic $$Welfare and access to government seed money.

Crime stories are a staple here and I’ve said before, B.C. is the most fertile breeding ground in Canada for serial killers. It’s irrefutable. Everyone knows that our criminal courts have a “catch and release” policy, which does not intimidate the outlaws and it certainly doesn't impress the legion of victims. The ONLY justice we get is when the criminals kill each other or sometimes themselves. Case in point : March 20 - two “career criminals” died when their ride spun out in New Westminster. Michael Emmitt Reid, 30 and Michael William Arthur Laird, 42 were fleeing police in a stolen car filled with loot and house breaking tools. Laird had 27 registered convictions since 1983 (God only knows how many charges!) and was out on Statutory Release from a federal prison. Reid had convictions going back to 1993 (when he was 16!). Nothing but nothing, was ever going to stop that pair, certainly none of our sissyboy “I feel your pain!” judges. Thank cripes for telephone poles and culverts.

More to the point, (and who with even half a brain didn't see this coming?)... we read (March 21) that B.C. millionaire human rights victim Rupudaman Singh Malik, the O.J. Simpson of the Vancouver legal system, is now suing the government for wrongful prosecution and wrongful detention. I'm not even going to rehash the case. If you don't know, I've got no time for you.

Needless to say we're damned lucky the hapless horsemen didn't torture the bloke, because we already know how many millions $$ that's worth.

There was a time when I supported the concept of a Sikh homeland. That was back when India was still a client state of the Soviets, and messing with us. Geopolitics being as filthy as it is, I'd now settle for just cleaning up our own backyard.

R.S.M on the left, in his salad days.

Yesterday (March 24) THE VANCOUVER SUN revealed that a female border guard, employed by the Canadian Border Services Agency, is a Hell’s Angels groupie, or worse. Her co-workers have scoped her out a biker events and informed the CBSA internal investigation unit. Evidence culled from CBSA documents acquired by the Vancouver newspaper clearly indicates that the guard has been assisting in the smuggling of cocaine. Rather than fess up, CBSA officials have decided to brazen it out. The tainted guard has also worked at Vancouver International Airport and her name is matched to an older high-value drug smuggling case. The Agency refused to identify the woman, and she continues to be employed by the Crown interdicting overages of cigarettes and wine at the 49th Parallel.

And last, you can’t make this stuff up… the Globe and Mail reported yesterday (March 24) on the rotten case of Richard Young, an unemployed informant who lived in Victoria B.C. He was “paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by the RCMP” for information which they later discovered he simply made up. Rather than taking him to a back road and giving him a good thumping, the Mounties chose to reward Young. They paid an additional $130,000 in debts he had run up, and gave him a new identity under the Witness Protection Program. Pardon my cynicism, but it sounds like a couple of Horsemen wanted him shut up and safely out of reach of the press – thereby saving their careers and thick pension packets. Then Mr. Young, who knows this society and its justice system far better than most, elected to murder someone. The Witness Protection Program is better than James Bond’s license to kill. He can’t be identified and the courts can’t charge a “Mr. X”. Is anyone screaming foul? All I hear from Ottawa is some chin music about reforming the system. Since we don’t have a Reform government we aren’t going to get reform. That’s all folks!

UPDATE March 28 - It was great to see that Chad Skelton, reporter for the Vancouver Sun, stuck with the story on the tainted Canadian border guard. In an update yesterday the paper identified the woman by name, and gave further (incredible) details about what she has gotten away with over the years. Maybe in addition to ... ah... dating bikers, drug runners and people smugglers, she has also been a police informer. Something has kept her out of jail. In any case the SUN published an undated and tightly cropped photograph of Mindi Niedermeiser enjoying herself at a bash.

If she had worked for the U.S. Border Service it's likely she be doing time.

I see that a biker news Blog republished this photo today, so I will let Runagatesclub readers having a look. If I were her, I'd move to P.E.I.