A reflection on theft and justice

There use to be legal term in Britain, "perversion of justice," which I think we might do well to ponder.

Thirty and 40 years ago, it was commonplace back home in Newfoundland. Toward the fall of the year, afternoons and weekends, young men and old would head off into the woods armed with nothing but an axe apiece. For a month or more they'd chop down lengths of spruce -- spruce was very common where I lived -- limb them, and stack them up for taking home once the snow arrived.

Travel a couple of miles in the woods behind any small town then and you'd see these piled stacks of fresh-cut wood, ever so neatly trimmed, everywhere you looked. It was a lot of work for one man to cut, clean and transport a winter's load of wood for the home stove. Saving on the cost of oil was the main reason. That and a certain fondness for the type of heat produced by burning freshly cut wood. It's a folk maxim: "There's nothing like the wood heat." Wood heat was also greatly favoured for baking the best homemade bread.

Now there were many low, uncivil and even criminal acts that Newfoundlanders were, like any other bunch, capable of inflicting on one other. But even the vilest had their limits. People might pilfer and steal, for example, but only the true guttersnipe crossed certain boundaries. Who'd steal from the parish collection plate? Only a proper rat would think of it. Same with stealing from another man's pile of wood. It was the cheapest of cheap bastards, indeed -- sorry for the language, but it's called for -- who would steal another man's wood.

He wasn't only stealing the value, you see. He was stealing the labour. He was stealing the honest work of a man willing to work. He was mangling the idea of neighbour as well. The man who'd steal another man's store of firewood was lazy, miserable, vile, useless and universally despised. It was about as low as you were allowed to get back then.

I found myself thinking of that limited code, and the severity of its particular judgment, because of David Chen -- the immigrant Chinese grocer who fell so painfully and bizarrely afoul of the law here in Toronto, and whose trial, fitfully, was undertaken this week.

All of Toronto and most of the country knows his story by now. How he spotted a chronic shoplifter-thief (on the thief's second visit to his store in a single morning), chased him, caught him and threw him bound in a van while he (Chen) waited for the police to show up.

What followed had most of the country in a fit of anger and puzzlement when it got out. The police charged the young, hard labouring, non-thief, Mr. Chen-- with kidnapping, forcible confinement, assault and carrying a dangerous weapon. (Chen was carrying boxcutters -- a normal tool for a man who works in a grocery store.) Anyone with a still functioning mind who's heard of this case cannot understand what the Toronto police and prosecutors were thinking when they laid this raft of original charges. Apparently outrage and mockery -- I can't think what else -- led to the police dropping the kidnapping and "possession of boxcutter" charges, but they insisted on proceeding to trial on the other "offences."

The cops actually made a deal with the chronic small-time lout -- got him some special prosecutorial consideration -- if he would rat on the grocer he was robbing. All the zeal of Toronto's police establishment seemed turned on the poor model-immigrant David Chen. How do things get so perversely and so perfectly upside down that the hardworking honest new citizen is facing more peril from the sweet Canadian legal system than the man who chronically robs for a living?

That's the first part of people's anger and puzzlement. The second part goes to wider ground. Anyone who's spent time in this country's bigger cities will have become familiar with heroic examples of immigrants and their families working fearful hours, six and seven days a week, at the most menial or tiresome of jobs. You've seen them in taxi cabs, where 16-hour days are not unusual. You've seen the convenience store operators working marathon hours, some backed up by family members. You see them in restaurants and groceries, the dry cleaners and small shops everywhere.

These people work harder, longer, more diligently and more patiently than anyone else. It is from precisely these ranks that David Chen emerges. Apart from the outrage that should be felt over his lunatic prosecution, there should be a second outrage that this parasite -- Bennett is his name -- chose to steal the goods and labour of a man who has nothing but his goods and labour. The layabout and the crook injures the self-reliant and hardworking ... and then the "system" sides with the layabout. That's what has everyone so angry.

Just like the example from back home 30 years ago. To steal another man's firewood was the deed of the cheapest of cheap bastards. To rob David Chen -- and additionally to put him in jeopardy from the law for attempting to stop the assaults on his business -- is a cheap act in a mean world. Mr. Chen should not be prosecuted. And his thief should be shunned.

Source.