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Weekend Newsstand: January 15, 2011
Illustration by Jeremy Kai/Torontoist.
Selections from the world of Saturday: blazed-up Yonge Street building’s owners are being sued by a contractor, the SIU re-opens a G20 police misconduct probe, and antics from the brothers Ford—Do-Fo gets councillors riled while Ro-Fo makes his mark on the city’s phone number.
When the former Empress Hotel at 335 Yonge Street caught fire earlier this month, the building’s owners were already being taken to court by contractors Quantum Murray, who claim they are owed seventy thousand dollars for reinforcing the historic building after its partial collapse last April. Just to keep things complicated, the lawsuit names three defendants: Noori Lalani, the corporation the Lalani Group, and a numbered company for which four men named Lalani serve as directors. The contractor alleges that Noori Lalani hired them last April on behalf of the Lalani Group, despite the fact that it has not been recognized as a corporation by the Ontario government since 2006. The fire that took the building out is under investigation as arson.
Speaking of investigations, the Special Investigations Unit is re-opening a probe into police misconduct at the G20 summit last summer. Dorian Barton alleges that he was tackled while taking a photo with his cell phone and that the six police officers who assaulted him broke his arm and laughed at his request for medical attention. The SIU had been investigating Barton’s claim but gave up due to a lack of sufficient evidence to identify the officers involved. The agency has since received a number of photographs of the incident, and they are duly reopening the probe. Barton is also suing the Toronto Police Service for $250,000. His lawyer isn’t holding his breath about the influence of the SIU on the civil suit.
Just one more detail to add to the list of information known about Richard Kachkar, the man who allegedly killed Sergeant Ryan Russell with a hijacked snowplow Wednesday morning: he had a better-than-passing knowledge of plows. Funded by Ontario Works, Kachkar took a three-month training program at the St. Catharines campus of Transport Training Centres in 2009, where he learned to operate a host of bulky machines, snowplows included. While the instructor who taught him heavy machine operation remembers him as a capable student, Kachkar apparently didn’t do as well in other courses and, according to one instructor, struggled to drive a truck properly.
You know how when you’re a kid, sometimes you do something, and then your brother/sister undoes it, and then you do it again, and this can go on and on ad infinitum? A back-and-forth of sibling-like proportions took place between staff and management at the Central North Correctional Centre in Penetanguishene over the question of raising their flag at half-mast for the death of Sergeant Ryan Russell. Staff lowered the flag, and management raised it back up, citing a provincial protocol that flags not be lowered for the death of an officer outside the region where the death occurred. After staff lowered the flag again, management raised it and removed the flag crank. Now that is an excellent sibling-fighting tactic. Embarrassing, though, no? The flag’s back down again, by the way.
Speaking of intra-bureaucratic spats and siblings, we bring you two tidbits featuring City Hall’s Tweedles-Dee-and-Dum-in-residence:
Tidbit the first: this transcript of a back-and-forth between Doug Ford (Do-Fo?) and some city councillors whom he pisses off and puts on the defensive with pointed accusations is totally better than an episode of Judge Judy.
Tidbit the second: Want to shoot the shit with Ro-Fo? Discover the gift of gabbing with our mayor? Ford took a break from his station in front of the pencil sharpener to piss on the fire hydrant of the city’s phone number. Yes, friends, no longer shall you reach the mayor’s office with a call to 416-397-CITY, as in the days of David Miller, but by punching in 416-397-FORD. Vanity dialing: now that’s getting serious about customer service, folks.
Now to end on a brighter note because, hey, we like good news as much as the next curmudgeon, here’s a story from the Toronto Star about a grassroots program to keep teens on the straight-and-narrow that’s turning out results. (Like, the good straight-and-narrow where you stay safe and get an education, not the one where you’re a prig. You know what we mean.) Founded by four friends in their thirties, the Centre for Youth Development and Mentoring Services primarily targets the Somali-Canadian communities where its founders grew up. They say that none of the 300 or so teens who’ve participated in the program since its inception five years ago have dropped out of school, and many have seen their grades move from bare-passes to As and Bs. Sometimes, good things actually work. Gold stars for everyone involved.