CITIZEN'S ARREST--THE DAVID CHEN CASE

At issue is the fact that Chen did not catch Bennett red-handed, but about an hour after he had shoplifted. The law states you can only make a citizen's arrest when you catch someone in the act.

Bennett testified that he stole flowers from Chen's store in May 2009 and then came back later to try and steal more.

I think Chen and the 2 other people (why weren't they in the courtroom too?) went overboard.

If what the story says is true, the robber, who wasn't caught in the inital act, was chased down by 3 grown men, had his limbs duct taped, and put in a van.

I would have felt like the police were rescuing me too.

Guess I've watched Pulp Fiction too many times.

No, really, they went too far, IMO

British case perhaps of some interest.



The Hussains subsequently had their 30 month jail sentence quashed by the Court of Appeal.

This sort of thing is incredible, no?

This is just anecdotal, i know, but any of the China towns i've walked through in Toronto (there is more than one China town here) have had no visible police presence. I suspect you see a lot more cops on the street near the pricey shops in downtown Toronto.

Gomer woulda done it Chai's way.

Barney on the other hand, would roughed 'em up a bit.

There's a reason Sheriff Taylor wouldn't let Deputy Fife have any bullets.

I don't think this is at all like the British Case.
This man was not beaten, but he did get a booboo on his finger...
I didn't realize you couldn't do a citizen's arrest unless the scumbag had possesion of the stolen goods. However, the thief admitted he came back to steal again. The profit margin in these little grocery stores is very tight, I don't blame the owner for fighting back... as it were. Who knows what kind of damage the thief would have done if they'd taken him back into the store. At least everyone was safe with the jerk in the van.
If the Mr. Chen had waited a few more minutes they could've caught him in the act. The thief was a career criminal and was able to victimize how many people during his life. He's free, on the streets, and now he gets to play the victim card. Puhleese!!
I really wished Mr. Chen had given him a few good shots.
I think what should be taken to task is our court system that continually lets these scumbags back out on the streets. We all keep paying for these scumbags crimes and we are virtually helpless to do anything about it.

I agree they diverge in detail. But what they have in common is that they raise the issues of personal versus institutional "law enforcement", and the cultural differences which operate thereto.

agreeing with that assessment

it seems this guy was well known by other store owners in the vicinity. he's not getting much sympathy from them

We've come to rely so much on governmental agencies doing everything for us (e.g. police to make arrests) that a citizen arrest seems like an anomalous anachronism in this day and age. If you have a minor fire in your house or back-yard, do you immediately call the Fire Dept. instead of grabbing a garden hose or a bucket of water? I bet lots of people do.

It makes sense to define some boundaries on citizen's arrests. There are also legal definitions on what would constitute police brutality.

Shun those who steal the goods and labour of good men

By Rex Murphy

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.

National Post



Read more: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/10/09/rex-murphy-those-who-steal-the-goods-and-labour-of-good-men-should-be-shunned/#ixzz11sEaLsuF

just on the news
acquitted on all charges

Yeah, i was glad to hear that. On CBC, they said the judge had said that when Bennett returned an hour later, with the admitted intent of stealling again, it was a part of the same crime, and not a separate event, and that therefore Chen was justified in detaining him until the police arrived. CBC also said that Chen and either his mother or his mother-in-law (i didn't hear that clealy) had apprehended and detained another shop-lifter today.

Olivia Chow was translating for him outside the court house too--can you say media circus?

Here we go, from the Toronto Star:

CBC just reported that Chen's store was hit by three separate shoplifters last night.

Mr. Bennett put himself in harms way when he made the decision enter Mr. Chen's property and rob him. All David Chen did was detain a scumball so the police could have some extra time to finish their coffee and donuts dust of the icing sugar from their jackets and proceed to his store to do thier jobs.
Way to go David Chen!!!