Sexual assaults unclear in Ottawa police crime-alert system
Ottawa police released sketches of a man believed to be a serial rapist.
Photograph by: Handout photo , Ottawa Police Service
OTTAWA — Only one of six recent sexual assaults that Ottawa police believe could be the work of one predator shows up properly on an online map that authorities urge Ottawans to use to stay alert to crimes in their neighbourhoods.
Chief Charles Bordeleau called a news conference last week to warn about the possibility there may be a serial rapist attacking women in Ottawa and to ask for help finding him. DNA evidence has connected three sexual assaults with certainty and another seven are similar enough that police say they might be connected. They often involve attacks late at night or early in the morning, in public but secluded places, by an attacker who exposes himself and has a proclivity for choking his victims.
The police have had a task force dedicated to hunting him down since September but only said so publicly last week, raising some questions about why they kept the pattern of attacks to themselves for so long.
Now it turns out that even people actively trying to be aware of sex crimes in their neighbourhoods could easily have been thwarted by police records.
The online crime map the Ottawa Police Service encourages Ottawans to use to “stay alert and stay informed” is filled with police blotter information: calls for service, for everything from noisy public drunks to homicides. It includes the basic nature of each incident, where it happened and when. The idea is that residents can use the map to find out about, say, a rash of burglaries or muggings near them. You can also sign up for email alerts, including for specific kinds of crimes.
Even at its best, the map wouldn’t have enough specifics for laypeople to tell a sexual predator might be on the loose — the police don’t use it themselves, preferring a much more detailed internal database — but at least it would tell people who wanted to know that sexual assaults had been reported and where.
But it’s only as good as the data that the police plug into it. Anyone using the map the way it seems to be intended wouldn’t see most of the attacks because they’re entered as ordinary assaults, hidden among the dozens of bar fights and neighbourhood disturbances Ottawa sees each month.
The data goes back six months, a period that includes six of the 10 attacks that Chief Charles Bordeleau talked about.
Of those six assaults, only one, an Oct. 7 attack in Heron Park, shows up on the police map as a sexual assault.
Three are recorded as ordinary assaults but have the fact they were actually sex attacks recorded in an all-purpose area for notes.
A fifth, a Dec. 18 attack on Bordeau Grove in Orléans, has no indication it was a sexual assault.
The sixth, an attack Sept. 1 on Bilberry Drive nearby, doesn’t show up on the map at all.
They aren’t the only sexual assaults recorded as regular assaults. One on Jan. 5, in the 1100 block of Carling Avenue (the block that includes the Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre) is categorized as a regular assault but is called a sexual assault in the notes attached to it. One on Jan. 8, in the 1800 block of Kilborn Avenue in Alta Vista, is recorded the same way.
The weakness in the map and the alerts it leads to is that it relies on how calls are entered as they come in, said Const. Chuck Benoit, a police spokesman.
“It shows where the crimes have been committed,” he said. “A lot of times you’ll have an assault and it’ll become later a sexual assault. . . . It’s just the way the system categorizes them right off the bat. As time goes on, there’s more evidence, it could be a statement from a witness, that you were sexually assaulted.”
That’s what the notes mean: A call was written down as a regular assault but as the investigated police determined there was a sexual element.
“I won’t say it’s an accurate tool that has 100 per cent details and information,” Benoit said. “As it comes in, that’s the information that’s given. It gives you a red flag that something happened in your neighbourhood, whether it’s a disturbance, an assault, a sexual assault.”
ottawacitizen.com/greaterottawa
Source
Commentary
The Ottawa Police pull out all the stops when the victim is female and the perpetrator male. The fact is, the Ottawa Police apply a gender lens and what we don't hear about is the abuse of power and fabrication of evidence by the Ottawa Police Partner Assault Group.
These particular nasty sexual assaults upon strangers are an opportunity for the Ottawa Police to gain publicity and appear to be doing their job. The problem is, the Ottawa Police is more about appearances, to justify their $300 Million Dollar Budget than it is about fighting crime, especially the criminals working for the Ottawa Police like Detective Peter Vanderzander Badge No. 1639 Ext. 5833 .
The Ottawa Police Partner Assault group spend a lot of their time destroying marriages, encouraging women to be violent and rewarding them with incredible legal jackpots for making false allegations. That instantly destroys children's relationships with their father who most of the time, rarely ever get to see their dad again.
The Ottawa Police encourage violence and sexual assaults by women on men. They claim that 10% of women are actually abusers. Those stats defy reality and any sane man in Ottawa, Ontario or Canada knows that if he calls police because she assaulted him, HE will be arrested, charged and its unlikely that the children will see their father again.
What makes the Ottawa Police so offensive is that work very hard protecting female psychopaths who are frequently released with no charges while fabricated charges are laid against their male victims.
The Rot at the Ottawa Police goes all the way to the top in their promotion of hatred towards Men.
The most violent female abusers, female rapists, female psychopaths have the blessing of the Ottawa Police who use a significant amount of their Three Hundred Million Dollars on what can only be called "A war on Men"..
The tragic result is that increasingly children grow up without a father, without a role model, and learn violence and abuse from their violent and abusive mothers. These children grow up at a very high risk of being abusers and of breeding yet another generation of dysfunctional adults.
Those offenders who engage in violent sexual assaults against strangers generally have serious personality disorders and or mental health problems or , they grew up in a culture where violence and abuse against women was common place.
For that we can thank The Ottawa Police and our politicians who fund the Ottawa Police with $300 Million Dollars , of which a significant part is spent on promoting hatred towards men, and encouraging women to be violent to men and children.
www.OttawaMensCentre.com