|
Posted
March 14, 2005 |
|
By Mike Howell |
|
Longshoremen
not into ‘cloak and dagger stuff’
March 9, 2005,
Vancouver CourierUnion gives thumbs down to proposed meeting with senator By: Mike Howell The union representing 3,500 dock workers at Vancouver’s port refused to participate in a private meeting about port security last week with Liberal Senator Colin Kenny. Tom Dufresne, president of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, said he declined the senator’s request for the meeting because no minutes would be kept of the conversation. “We will meet with him in a public forum where there’s proper records kept of the meetings and of the statements,” Dufresne told the Courier. “We’re not interested in the cloak and dagger stuff where there’s no public records kept.” The port came under fire in March 2002 when a Senate committee recommended a public inquiry be struck to study serious failings at the Vancouver port and other Canadian ports. The report from Liberal and Progressive Conservative senators quoted the B.C. Organized Crime Unit as saying the Vancouver port is infiltrated by motorcycle gangs, Asian triads, Russian gangsters and “narco-terrorists” who sell drugs to finance terrorism. On March 2, the Courier reported a senior RCMP officer’s assertion that the Hells Angels motorcycle club doesn’t control the Vancouver port or its unions, despite public and “police universe” perceptions to the contrary. RCMP Insp. Doug Kiloh, the major case manager for marine security in Vancouver, made the comment after his team of investigators reached the conclusion within the last year. Kiloh’s admission is further evidence the senators’ report is inaccurate, said Dufresne, noting that neither a member of the Hells Angels nor any associates have been arrested at the docks since the Canada Ports Police was disbanded in 1997. “Either you’ve got an awful inept police force or this is a lot of overblown rhetoric.” Much of that rhetoric about the docks, Dufresne believes, was published recently in The Road to Hell: How The Biker Gangs Are Conquering Canada, a book written by Julian Sher and William Marsden. The authors reveal two ports police officers completed an intelligence report in 1994 claiming the Hells Angels “have extensively infiltrated the operations of the port.” The report also said the longshore union was “littered with members and associates of the Angels. They are placed in key positions that enable them to commit crimes.” Last week, Rick Ciarniello of the Hells Angels told the Courier one member of the motorcycle club works at the Vancouver port and another one in New Westminster. As for associates of the club, Ciarniello said, “They say associates, so I guess now that you’ve talked to me, you’re one of those. So, you know, where do you draw the line?” Ciarniello called Sher's book “a work of fiction,” noting he has argued with the author on open-line radio shows about the allegations. Ciarniello said the Hells Angels is not an organized crime group. Recounting one exchange with the author, Ciarniello said Sher encouraged the Hells Angels to kick out any members convicted of a criminal act. - 30 -
|
||