Although the 2010 Olympic Winter Games are over five years away, a traditional Olympic activity has already started in earnest, with the news that VANOC and its lawyers are hunting down unsuspecting small business owners and serving demand letters on them “to protect the Olympic brand”.

A Greek restaurant on Vancouver’s Denman Street and a Squamish home builder have already been targeted, and more local businesses are sure to be on the hit list. Such heavy-handed measures are necessary, say the organizers, to avoid a financial deficit in staging the games.

Oh, I get it. When BC taxpayers face the inevitable multimillion dollar cost overruns inherent in staging such an extravagant two-week circus, we are all to blame a West End pizzeria for the red ink.

The following are among the words, phrases and things that cannot be used without express permission:

Olympics, Olympiad, Olympian, The Olympic Rings, The Olympic Torch, The Olympic Flame, The Olympic Motto (citius, altius, fortius), 2010, Vancouver 2010, Canada 2010, Whistler 2010, Vancouver Whistler 2010, 2010 Games, Team Canada 2010, Winter Games, Countdown to 2010, Sea to Sky Games, Spirit of 2010 and Vancouver ’10.

We have served the materials in support of our application to certify the case as a class action. The Honourable Mr. Justice Romilly has been appointed as the Case Management judge and December 10, 2004 has been reserved for the lawyers’ first appearance before the Court. We anticipate that further scheduling issues will be discussed at that time, including the timing and length of the application for certification.

Please watch this site for further updates.

After a week of dramatic testimony, the four-man, one-woman jury at the coroner’s inquest into the deaths of Sherry Heron, Anna Adams and Bryan Heron delivered its findings and recommendations.

The jury found that Sherry Heron and Anna Adams were the victims of homicide, while Bryan Heron’s death was “undetermined”. Seven recommendations for procedural improvement were directed to the RCMP and to the Mission Memorial Hospital.

Coroner Marj Paonessa and the jury had earlier heard that Senior Correctional Officer Bryan Heron received a restraining order at 3:33 p.m. on May 20, 2003, left work and went to Mission Memorial Hospital, where he walked in to his wife’s hospital room and fatally shot her and her mother. The hospital staff had received a copy of the restraining order, but took no steps to keep Heron away or hide his wife from him. Bryan Heron died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in the bush on May 23, 2003 as police closed in.

A week earlier (May 13, 2003), Sherry Heron’s sister, brother and brother-in-law had gone to the Mission RCMP and reported incidents of domestic violence and threats by Bryan Heron against his hospitalized spouse. RCMP Cst. Mike Pfeifer interviewed a frightened and upset Sherry Heron that day, who confirmed the threats and said she feared for her and her family’s safety. Cst. Pfeifer spoke to his own father, a corrections colleague of Byan Heron’s, and was told Heron was a “good person”. Cst. Pfeifer did not investigate the matter further.

The incident was remarkably similar to a tragedy in Veron seven years earlier, where an estranged husband killed nine members of his family before taking his own life. That incident also resulted in a coroner’s inquest. At the time, a headline in The Province newspaper read, “RCMP ignored death threats”. The article continued, “The Mounties ignored a woman’s complaint that her estranged husband had threatened to kill her and her family, an inquest into their deaths heard yesterday.”

A coroner’s inquest into the deaths of Sherry Heron, Anna Adams and Bryan Heron enters its fifth and final day today, with eighteen witnesses completing their testimony so far. Coroner Marj Paonessa and a four-man, one-woman jury have heard that Senior Correctional Officer Bryan Heron received a restraining order at 3:33 p.m. on May 20, 2003, left work and went to Mission Memorial Hospital, where he walked in to his wife’s hospital room and fatally shot her and her mother. The hospital staff had received a copy of the restraining order, but took no steps to keep Heron away or hide his wife from him. Bryan Heron killed himself in the bush on May 23, 2003 as police closed in.

A week earlier (May 13, 2003), Sherry Heron’s sister, brother and brother-in-law had gone to the Mission RCMP and reported incidents of domestic violence and threats by Bryan Heron against his hospitalized spouse. RCMP Cst. Mike Pfeifer interviewed a frightened and upset Sherry Heron that day, who confirmed the threats and said she feared for her and her family’s safety. Cst. Pfeifer spoke to his own father, a corrections colleague of Byan Heron’s, and was told Heron was a “good person”. Cst. Pfeifer did not investigate the matter further.

The incident is reminiscent of a tragedy in Veron seven years earlier, where an estranged husband killed nine members of his family before taking his own life. That incident also resulted in a coroner’s inquest. At the time, a headline in The Province newspaper read, “RCMP ignored death threats”. The article continued, “The Mounties ignored a woman’s complaint that her estranged husband had threatened to kill her and her family, an inquest into their deaths heard yesterday.”

The Heron inquest continues.

On news that British Columbia Police Complaint Commissioner Dirk Ryneveld has received an “independent” report on TASER use from Victoria Chief Constable Battershill, we question whether Mr. Ryneveld commissioned a truly independent and impartial report.

Instead of obtaining a report from an expert in the academic or scientific community, Mr. Ryneveld has commissioned a report from a police chief whose department has had a long businbess relationship with the stun gun’s manufacturer.

The Victoria Police Department was the first police department in Canada to buy Taser weaponry. In 1999, one of Chief Battershill’s police officers wrote a complimentary report on TASER use that the company, Taser International Inc., has posted on its website for promotional purposes: www.taser.com. More recently, Taser International sponsored a gathering of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, to which Chief Battershill and other Canadian chief constables were invited.

Mr. Ward brought his concerns to the attention of Mr. Ryneveld in a letter dated September 7, 2004. He wrote: “We question whether Chief Constable Paul Battershill is in a position to conduct an impartial investigation, given his police department’s association with Taser International, the manufacturer of the weapon. We note that a report authored by Sgt. Darren Laur, control tactics coordinator, of the Victoria Police Department appears as a testimonial to TASER use on Taser International’s website…In the circumstances, it is our view

that only a truly independent and impartial authority is in a position to investigate the concerns about TASER use.”

On September 29, 2004, Mr. Ryneveld wrote Mr. Ward to defend his selection of Chief Battershill.

We stand by our criticism. The Battershill report parrots the company line and is hardly an objective study. The Arizona Republic and the New York Times have published extensive reports documenting more than 70 deaths linked to TASER use by police officers in the United States. How can a police chief be qualified to express an opinion on the safety of a device that delivers up to 50,000 volts of electricity to the human body?

For more, go to www.azcentral.com.