Excuse me while I slit your throat
Released just 11 days ago, Michael Derrick Robicheau was held and charged with sexual assault, robbery, and slitting the throat of a 44-year-old late night gas station attendant at an Ultramar station at 571 Portland Street in Dartmouth.
This raises the issue of toothless parole boards whose wise counsel falls upon jurisprudential deaf ears — as well as the nature of the late night retail environment for workers of large corporations.
Apparently, parole boards are hand-cuffed; they have to release a convict who has served two-thirds of the sentence, even if they suspect that the person is still a danger to the community. Why? Why cannot the “dangerous offender” categorization have a broader application?
Thirty-two-year-old Robicheau was convicted of a violent attack, again, on a late night female store clerk eight years ago and surrounding that is 28 convictions for break and enters in the 90s.
The man was deemed to have “low reintegration potential.” But, nonetheless, he was allowed a “community approach.” How nice.
Yet, the vicissitudes of the legal system or policing or the amount of crazies in the world is not really the point: A woman, alone, late at night, in a big city, is at risk. You are never going to have a perfect society. What is more disturbing is that gas stations and fast food organizations continue to put people, and younger people in the case of fast food, at risk.
There is not the traffic volume to necessitate two people often times, so only one worker does it. It is the old profit imperative again.
How about this: Government insists that a minimum of two people work late night and that there are state of the art accouterments: bullet proof glass, more cameras, better training, and maybe even security guards to protect employees – how revolutionary and profligate!
Why not? If there is real money at the late night window and the food is, by and large, unhealthy, why should the work environment be unhealthy too?
The accused, Robicheau, is a dime a dozen and hardly the point. Censure of the state is an easy reflex.
Where are the corporations?
August 23rd, 2007 at 6:44 am
The corporations I suspect could not care less, its all about the $ to them.
These kind of government regulations are not unreasonable and would most likely save some young person’s life down the road.
Re the Canadian Justice system when it comes to violent crime a lot needs to change. This includes a multi tiered approach to deal with the increase in youth and gang related violence we are seeing across the country.
August 23rd, 2007 at 8:56 am
Hey everyone,
What angers me about rape and near murder of a gasoline attendant is that this man has been in and out of jail before. This person was well known to police, he has a long list of convictions, but yet he was set free.
This time he’s going to jail for a while, but jail it too nice. I hate paying tax money for these ignorant individuals to do what they want and then held in jail where living conditions are significantly nicer than the streets. These individuals should be forced to do the jobs in society which normal people should not. I don’t believe in capital punishment, but I don’t believe in keeping these people in jail at the expense of the public.
There are dangerous jobs in this world such as underground mining, sewage treatment, and trash collection that should be done by criminals to pay back the community they have damaged. It should not be innocent paying these people to live in jail. They need to earn their meals and rent just like the rest of us.
It is time we make it not “cool” to go to jail.
August 28th, 2007 at 11:09 am
Does anyone know the current status of this woman?
August 29th, 2007 at 4:52 pm
Keep voting Liberal and NDP. We can all look forward to a safer community for our children, the elderly and your family. After all the public is not allowed to vote for judges, we have to rely on left wing Liberals to make those decisions for us. How reassuring.
August 31st, 2007 at 9:23 am
BZ:
Oh the left wing liberals are the problem. I understand it all now it makes sense. Everything thats wrong could be righted if we would only allow the state and government more extreme powers.
Why has nobody thought of that before….oh wait a minute they did …Adolf Hitler, Franco, Stalin, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein…..actually thats an old idea and it works to if you like facist regimes…. silly pucker.
September 28th, 2007 at 4:19 pm
I look at this service station every day. I work across the street from it. I am also concerned with her status.
I used to own the franchises for several small convenience stores. I have been held at knifepoint several times and my employees were stabbed and beaten many times over the last ten years.
I asked for help from the police and from the corperation that owned the chain. There is really not much they can do.
I eventually discovered that no matter what you do to stop criminals they will find away around it. At some point they will still get someone. If you lock the doors, they wait for a customer to go in and rush the door. If you go to a drawer system they will start robbing the customer who goes to the drawer. The only way to stop the robberies from happening is to only be open during hours you are actually busy enough to keep lots of witnesses around. Two people alone is still not enough. All you’re doing is moving the criminals to the next easy target.
What we need are stun collars like they put on dogs. Have it set to go off when it detects a certain sound. Like a woman screaming or yelling help or stop. They would never go for it of course but I would find it fun to follow them around and scream at them. Think of it as a mobile stockade.