The Ben Mulroney Show - The Toronto hour -- Drug dealer charged with manslaughter, protester steals reporter's scooter
Episode Date: August 27, 2025- London City Councillor Susan Stevenson - Caryma Sa'd/lawyer and independent journalist If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! �...�https://link.chtbl.com/bms Also, on youtube -- https://www.youtube.com/@BenMulroneyShow Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Insta: @benmulroneyshow Twitter: @benmulroneyshow TikTok: @benmulroneyshow Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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H-E-L-P-M-R-R-O-R-N-Y.
Welcome to the Ben Mulroney show on Hump Day.
It's Wednesday, August 27.
Thank you so much for being here.
This month went by very, very quickly.
But we will all remember where we were
when we heard the news
that Taylor Swift
got engaged
to her longtime boyfriend
member of the Kansas City Chiefs
Super Bowl winning
Travis Kelsey
and I'm so happy for her
I'm so, so very happy for her
I love Taylor Swift
I love her
I still have my friendship bracelets
and I don't care if it doesn't
I don't care if I'm an old man
and I'm not supposed to do this
I do what I want okay
and I'm just, she deserves happiness.
She's dated some not so great boyfriends,
but those not so great boyfriends turned into some hit songs.
So are we going to enter a new era in Taylor Swift's life?
And is this going to be the era of, you know, love that found purchase, right?
The seed was planted and it grew as opposed to those false starts and unfinished symphonies
that were all her other relationships.
I don't know.
I don't know if she's a very talented lady
and I believe
she writes the songs that exist in my heart.
Like she writes my feelings.
That's what it is.
So to Taylor Swift and to Travis Kelsey
I say congratulations
and we will be
cheering yon from the Ben Will Rine show.
People were asking me earlier today
how this, like what this wedding is going to be like?
I have no idea. I have no idea.
I'm not a, I'm not a,
I don't follow entertainment news the way I used to.
And so I have no idea.
But I hope, I hope that they do it private.
I hope they do it very, very privately.
I do enjoy how some people found out about it, though.
Oh, yes, that's right.
Yes, thank you very much.
So, okay, I just telegraphed, I'm a big fan.
I had to tell you I'm a big fan.
This woman, what's her name?
Her name is Olivia Ronaldo.
as she works for CBS News
and she was waiting for a hit.
She was going to do a hit for CBS News
from the White House lawn.
Like that's where you want to be
if you're a journalist on the way up.
She did not,
you can see in this moment,
nothing else matters.
The tariffs,
Ukraine, whatever the heck she was talking about,
did not matter in this moment. Let's listen.
Taylor Swift is engaged.
Taylor Swift is engaged.
This, come back.
to me she just posted it oh my god oh my god oh it's huge the ring is ginormous
this is so exciting oh my god oh my god oh my god it's on her Instagram it's on her
Instagram it's on her Instagram oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god I feel like
Paul Revere right now like this is a very exciting moment for me in my professional
career because I get to announce that Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey are engaged
She did not sound like a journalist right there
She sounded like a fan girl
And good for her
Because that's what Taylor Swift does
How many? Oh my gods were there?
Eight maybe
12. Oh, there's 12?
I think there. I think yeah, it's something like that
Yeah, and she put on her Instagram
She's a fan
Everybody, if you're a fan of Taylor Swift
Then you're not
Yeah, you're a Swifty
You're not a banker and you're not a student
And you're not a this and you're a Swifty
And in that moment she was a Swifty
She was not a CBS reporter about to go live
into one of the most storied news programs in American history.
She was a Swifty.
Yeah, she went from going from super serious talks about tariffs and policing and
taking over police departments in various cities to Taylor Swift.
Well, so that's, that was a lovely story we just shared.
Here's one that was shared yesterday on a show on another, on this radio station that we
broadcast from.
Brad Smith
For those of you
who don't know Brad Smith
He's been really
He's been learning the ropes here
At
at a chorus radio
He's been filling in for a lot of people
He's been acquitting himself
Very very well
You may recognize his face
Because he was the
He was the original Bachelor
Canadian Bachelor
And he's also been on food network
And reinvented himself
As a Bon Vivant in the media
And he's doing a great great job
Well yesterday
He was on a show
on this network, and he relayed a personal story about Taylor Swift.
I'll show you this picture.
I have a picture of me and Taylor Swift in my phone.
I interviewed her in 2014 for when 1989 came out.
When she walked into the room, I understood in that moment, even though this was like
pre-superstar, why she was a superstar.
She commanded the room.
She was so nice to everybody.
But when she spoke, the people listened.
her PR person did ask
if I wanted to go
to Soho House
it's like a members club in Toronto
and she wasn't asking
so that I could go join the PR person
but I was engaged at the time
from that TV show
it happened a couple times
but the other famous one
was Madonna
actual true story
yeah he was
they set him up with Madonna
and they tried to set him up
with Taylor Swift
I met Taylor Swift a couple of times
and she was
she could not have been
nicer. Now, I didn't meet her at the height of her fame. I met her on the way up. She could not have
been nicer. She showed up early for her interviews. She stuck around as we were trying to,
the expression is, jege the set, you know, make it pretty, change the lights. She was patient.
She did not complain. And she also didn't mind when I brought my niece to meet her, which is a no-no these
days. Oh, big time. But I was not going to, I don't, I didn't care. Like,
You're not paying me enough.
So at least I'm going to get these bonuses out of it.
Anyway, so congratulations.
Congratulations to her.
And I think we should talk about Air Canada for the last couple of minutes here.
So as we know, voting on Air Canada's new tentative agreement for flight attendants begins today.
And there's a growing discontent over the proposed wage increases with an online petition already collecting 4,800 signatures.
So it's a four-year deal.
deal that offers 16 to 20% total pay raises with starting wages at 33, 60 an hour, top wages
reaching $68.14 by year 10. Many of the flight attendants argue that this remains below a livable
wage in cities like Toronto and Vancouver. How is $68 an hour, which translates into about
$130,000, $140,000. Yeah. I don't know. And I don't know what their schedules are. For
example, one of my best friends in the world is an Air Canada flight attendant.
And he's been working there for 20 some odd years.
As long as I've been in media, actually more than that.
I think he started when we both got out of college.
So he's been doing it for 20, almost 30 years.
And so he does that job.
But he's also a real estate agent on the side.
So it's not a nine to five.
And there are certain times where you are working a lot.
but, and other times when you're not,
and that's when he does this other stuff.
But when you take the job, you accept that these,
you have these weird hours.
Sort of like our job, we have, we have bizarre hours ourselves.
Yeah, well, he's, so we're all going to pay very close attention to this,
because if, if in fact, the flight attendants decide to say no to this deal,
what we learn today is it probably will not result in going back to the picket line.
I think they're going to go back to work, but they will be,
they're going to go to binding arbitration.
So that's a, 16 to 20% pay raises.
I know that they had to level set because they had a 10 year deal before and a lot has changed in the past 10 years.
And so they needed to catch up a little bit.
But look, I would kill to have a 16% raise over four years.
I mean, that's pretty good.
Yeah, that wouldn't be too, too bad.
So I don't know.
There's, there are, whenever I hear about these negotiations that take place in public for these big.
collective bargaining things, whether it be
the post office or whether it be Air Canada.
I get jealous
of what they're asking for.
Yeah. We've had deals in the past where
I worked previous. I remember
a four-year deal we had. I think it was zero
two and two.
That was it. Yeah. See, that's
more than media. And we were
apparently lucky to get that. Yes.
Yeah, we're all very lucky.
Yeah. All right. Well, thank you both for that
and thank you for joining us
at the top of this show.
York police have laid a rare manslaughter charge against a suspected drug dealer after an overdose death in Vaughn.
But is this just one case or the start of a new way to crack down on crime?
This is The Ben Mulroney Show.
Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show.
And sure, it's called The Ben Mulroney Show.
But in this segment, it's all about your opinion.
So give us a call at 416-8-60-6400 or 1-3-8-225 talk.
Here's what we're talking about.
Investigators with the York Region Police Number 4 District Criminal Investigators Bureau,
that's a mouthful, have charged a man with manslaughter and drug trafficking
following an overdose death in the city of Vaughn.
So this person died, and they're going after the drug dealer for manslaughter, right?
Didn't intend to kill him, but you killed him.
Might as well have been a gun.
And this is new.
This is, or at least it feels new, right?
It feels new, but it's not.
So the guy named Jafari Rootsari, 29, town of Georgina,
was charged with manslaughter and trafficking of a schedule one substance.
Possession and breach of probation.
Breach of probation.
And so it feels new, right?
It's like, ooh, they're weaponizing the courts against these drug dealers, which is a good thing.
But when you think about it, this sort of.
of pain point, this sort of leverage over people in their behavior, it happens just in other
places and gives a call 4168-870-6400 or 1-3-8-225 talk.
We'd love to talk to you about this.
Parents and guardians can be charged in cases of medical neglect.
So a parent refusing to seek medical care for a sick child due to religious beliefs or
mistrust of doctors.
And a lot of people have been, their parents have been charged.
that have been charged.
If the only way to save your kid is a blood transfusion
and you don't want to do it because you don't believe,
you can be charged.
I don't believe you'll always be charged, but you can be.
Drunk driving, right?
If whoever hosted the party,
if you kept serving and someone got in their car and drove drunk,
you can be liable.
And then there's also same thing with bartenders.
If bartenders know that they are overserving somebody and then they go outside and they get into some trouble, the bartender is going to be in trouble too.
And you might remember a couple, I think it was a couple of years ago, there was a school shooter in Michigan.
And his mother was charged as well because there was, and when you heard the evidence against her, it was damning.
Like this was a woman who just refused to see the warning signs and her son eventually took one of her guns and killed a lot of people's school.
So she is now in prison as well.
But it's just interesting with the manslaughter case with a drug dealer.
You think about the opioid crisis in the United States, especially, the pharmaceutical companies were held liable and had to pay billions in damages.
But this is the next step.
It's that dealer, the guy that provides the drugs to someone being held liable for manslaughter when, I mean, they took the drugs willingly, supposedly.
Well, what's going to be, well, it'll be interesting is I've watched enough law and order.
We've all watched enough law and order that sometimes the drug dealer, the street level drug dealer that you get, that's not the prize.
The prize is the gang running the whole thing.
And I don't know what they're going to do here.
But if this were, if this were district attorney McCoy.
He would be going, he'd be trying to leverage this guy, flip him.
So he goes, so he tells you who his supplier is, flip that guy and all the way up,
the criminal enterprise, you go until you get to, you can't go any further.
I don't know if they're going to do that.
I don't know if they have the capacity to do that.
If this guy is, even if they stop and are settled on this, I think that's a net positive.
I think it's a net positive.
But yeah, so give us a call it 416-870-6400 or one triple-8.
225 talk
and
this is interesting though
right
this is
we don't
to be adding
to the
what is your
responsibility
in any given place
I mean this guy
is a drug dealer
he is
he's conducting
illicit
illegal work
so it's not like
you're responsible
as a bartender
or you're hosting
a dinner party
but I do like
that they are trying
I very much like
that
They are trying to use the courts to change behavior.
Although, if I'm a drug dealer and I watch this case carefully,
if you end up getting arrested and then charged,
and if he goes to court,
if this guy doesn't actually spend any time in jail,
if he gets time served,
then if I'm the next drug dealer,
I'm thinking, oh, I can handle that.
Yeah, it'll be a pain in the butt to have to go to court and defend myself.
But even in a worst case scenario, if I end up going to get convicted, nothing's going to
me.
I'll be right back on the street selling my drugs the next day.
And we've spoken about this many, many times.
That's one of the problems that has came out of all of the liberal soft on crime policies
and laws is that there were examples out there for everybody.
And if you're a drug dealer, if you're a drug dealer, you're going to pay attention to this one very, very closely.
Okay, Dan on line two.
Welcome, Dan.
Good morning, Ben.
Hi.
I've called and spoken with you and said this exact thing.
When I heard this yesterday, I cheered.
Yeah.
For the first time in a long time, I cheered.
And I said, on my call with you, I said that drug dealers nowadays with fentanyl being laced and everything, they know that there's a possibility that someone's going to
overdose or die. Therefore, it's the intention. There's manslaughter, it should be an instant
manslaughter or second-degree murder charge instantly. Yeah. And I'd even give death penalty.
The one except for me is a drug dealer. There's no correlation with the example you're saying
with parenting and so forth. Parenting, the intent is to put out good kids. A drug dealers,
there is no good intent. Yeah, well, look, but the intent is obviously is not to make sure that
one of your customers dies, but that's not really the point. It's about
It's about having, like, what would a reasonable person do in that safe?
If the reasonable person test is applied to a drug dealer, then the reasonable person would
say, you know what, there's a lot of fentanyl out there, and I'm selling drugs, this might
have fentanyl in it.
And, but so if you don't then take the step to test it or be careful.
Yeah, exactly.
Which is why manslaughter fits.
It's like selling guns that have one bullet in the chamber.
Yeah.
It's Russian roulette.
Every time you give someone a packet of something or a perk a set or whatever the hell they're buying, it doesn't matter.
There's zero.
Dan, I got to drop you, but thank you so much for kicking this off for us.
Appreciate it.
And let's now say hi.
Steve on eight.
Welcome, Steve.
Thanks for calling in.
Hey, Ben.
I lost my son in 2021 to a drug overdose.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I'm so, so sorry.
Well, the guy who manufactured all the drugs down here was caught with a pill press with
was caught with pounds of fentanyl in his garage and who was making it,
got two years,
two 10-year sentences served concurrently,
which means he'll probably be out in six.
Yeah.
Yeah,
that's,
uh,
that's,
uh,
that's,
we let these guys walk.
Yeah.
I'm in,
I'm in,
I'm in,
uh,
and you,
the overdoses we've had,
it's unbelievable.
Yeah.
And this guy gets six years.
Yeah,
he'll get six years.
And,
and,
and meanwhile,
your,
your,
family's life was was torn asunder and I just even the worst part I went to court to watch this
guy get sentenced he turned and smiled at me oh gosh my he knows everybody knows you're still
drugs in Canada nothing will happen to you yeah and and people are watching this that's my
point the other the other drug dealers are going to be watching this very carefully and if this
guy gets off or gets of you know two two two weeks in in prison
And then they're all going to say, you know what?
Let's just keep doing what we're doing.
Hey, thank you so much for calling in.
I'm so sorry that this happened to your family.
And where are we going to go?
We're going to go to Sergio now.
Sergio, thanks so much for calling into the Ben Mulroney show.
Hey, thanks for having me on.
So I just have a quick point to make, I work in the court system.
And as much as people want to blame the liberal soft-on-crime laws,
I think the bigger problem that needs to be addressed is the liberal soft-on-crime case law
that judges have imposed on our society over,
many, many years. So I hope this is a step
in the right direction. I hope that
if, you know, the
crown is successful in pursuing these charges
and hope it gets appealed
and it goes right to the top. And I hope
we have some brave, you know,
Supreme Court judges who take a bit of a
turn here and start to
shift the case law that judges are bound
by, but sentenced people.
So the law is one thing, but
the case law is what's drowning us and
I hope that gets pressed. Serja, thank you so much.
That was important for us to end on that
And to Frank and Dave who called in, I do apologize, but we're taking a break.
And much more to come, including a London-Ontario city counselor was vilified for her views on homelessness and drug abuse, but is what she said wrong?
We're going to dig in next.
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Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show.
So we are on our way.
We're ramping up.
I think Sunday is international overdose awareness day.
And we at the Ben Mulroney show have decided that we are going to pick up that the challenge of being a voice for what we think is a reasonable position in the debate around drugs in our society and drugs amongst the most vulnerable.
and yesterday we had a woman on our show
who was
she faced a lot of scrutiny from Peterborough
the city she's in because she wanted
to open a treatment facility
apparently that was not allowed
and so
the question that we're asking yesterday is
why are people so afraid of treatment
why are we so excited to
throw drugs at people
throw drugs at the drug addicts
Here, come, come, try him here.
Can we make you more comfortable?
Would you like to shoot up in where it's nice and warm?
Why aren't we focusing on treatment?
As we said on the show, I've said this before.
The drug addict will take the path of least resistance.
Meaning, if I'm standing in front of the drug addict and I have two things in my hands.
On one hand, I've got drugs.
And in the other hand, I have a 30-day all-expense paid trip to the world's great
greatest treatment facility.
Which one do you think the drug addict is going to take every single time?
Unless they've hit that rock bottom thing and they just can't do it anymore.
They're going to go with the drugs.
So we have to work even harder at making treatment more accessible and more attractive and more effective.
So with that as the backdrop, we're going to continue these conversations.
And there was a London city council by the name of Susan Stevenson, who in July 23,
committed a cardinal sin.
I mean, this was a big deal, guys.
Like this, I'm surprised.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Susan, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much for being here.
Thank you for having me, Ben.
Yeah, okay.
So I hear this.
I hear that you were, you had committed a terrible crime.
Why don't you tell everybody what this terrible crime was that you committed?
Well, it seems that,
talking about what's wrong in our city or wanting to help people beyond the help that,
you know,
we're currently offering is really not allowed here.
Okay.
So let's let's get specific.
Okay.
So in July 2023, what?
You're at city council?
Yes.
Okay.
Not even into my first, like just not even into the first year yet.
Okay.
And I put out, I retweeted a smirkownish article called How to Solve Homelessness.
Yeah.
And by the way, for people who don't know, Peter, I think it's Peter Spurconish, he was the mayor of Philadelphia, Pittsburgh or something, yeah, Pittsburgh.
And now he is, he's on CNN.
He also has his own Sirius XM radio channel.
And he is the face, the face of the modern centrist in the United States.
He's not left.
He's not right.
He's dead center.
That's his brand.
So you retweeted a centrist position by the most centrist guy in the United States.
Yes, with the title, with a provocative title that says how to solve homelessness.
Okay. Oh, yeah. And it was this crazy utopian idea that I think most people support all levels of government, work together.
Everyone who needs a home gets it. Everyone who needs treatment gets it. And if somebody refuses all of those things and insists on living on the park, they would be arrested.
And that, I mean, listen, that, that, that word injured me. That, that, that word was an act of
violence against me. I'm feeling unsafe. I'm feeling triggered.
And so, so what happened to you? So you say this. And you put this out there.
Yes. God forbid people hear ideas that they might disagree with. But go on. So what happens?
What happens to you? Yes. Well, we have some drug user, you know, some people who support drug users and
fight for drug user rights here. And they retweeted the article and retweeted my post and said,
let me be perfectly clear.
Counselor Stevenson is calling for the internment of homeless people.
She wants them rounded up and arrested and put in internment camps.
It would be funny if the stakes weren't so high.
That's correct.
Yeah.
Because this went national news.
I did as many radio interviews and newspapers.
I kept saying, no, I am not saying we're going to arrest every homeless person.
I'm saying, you know, they deserve to have all of these offers and treatment.
And yes, if they absolutely refuse and say, I'm digging a stake in this park and this is where I'm going to be, what would happen if it were you and I?
Yeah, yeah.
The same treatment would be the same.
And, you know, sadly, this quote leader in our community who did that repost of my post, it ended up with criminal harassment of some young person from the university.
threatening me and my family because I think they probably didn't even follow what I'm doing.
They just follow these leaders who are saying, we've got this crazy politician who wants to arrest
every, yeah.
Okay, so let's go back to what happened to you at city council, because this is a person on the
outside, but these are your colleagues, right?
This is, you got voted in.
It must have been an honor for you.
What happened?
Well, it certainly was an honor for me to get elected, although it seems to have put a shock
through the whole system here.
I didn't realize that people who weren't already sort of known and weren't, you know,
I got in and they're still not sure how this happened.
Oh, of course.
They think freely and just wants to represent the people.
It's actually got a place with a voice.
That's terrible.
Terrible.
Yeah.
Okay.
So, so what have you?
You were sanctioned by counsel.
I was sanctioned by counsel.
The integrity commissioner didn't follow our code of conduct protocol.
They just emailed me and said, we've,
have a finding against you.
And I said, well, you skipped a bunch of steps.
Yeah.
So actually that particular one was dismissed by the integrity commissioner.
Yeah, because it was a process without any integrity.
No, that one actually, the integrity commissioner said, although they found it a bit provocative,
there wasn't anything wrong with me posting that.
Okay.
But a couple of months later, in September of that year, I had posted out some pictures of
homeless people in my area, which is, it's ground zero for the addiction crisis in our city.
People are devastated in that area, unhoused and housed.
Yep.
And I posted out a few pictures of homeless people.
I did try to block out the face on one.
And basically, I was saying, where's the help for these people?
Like, there wasn't anything, they were just sitting there drinking juice boxes or walking down the middle of the road.
I didn't take any pictures that were, you know, disparaging of them.
And for that one, the integrity commissioner found me guilty and recommended a formal reprimand.
and counsel did vote to do that.
Found you guilty of what?
They said conduct unbecoming of a city council.
Oh, Jesus, H.
And the next, you know, not even a year after that,
senior management of City Hall filed a complaint against me
of bullying, harassment, and targeting.
And the integrity commissioner found me guilty of that.
And in it, they said,
even though her words and tone are moderated,
and she sounds respectful.
The persistent questioning on the issue of homelessness
is experienced by the senior management as harassment.
Okay, so this is, this, it feels like, uh, crazy town.
It feels like we've taken crazy pills.
30 days pay.
So, and you lost 30 days pay.
So really, we don't have a lot of time left.
So I want to get through a few things with you, uh, Susan, is,
are we in a better place today to have these conversations than we were a few years ago?
Well, I think so in that I'm going to speak freely now.
I mean, there's a year left of our term.
Our city's in crisis were worse off than we were two years ago.
The hunger strike where the drug user rights activists were out there
have somehow been given a position of power in terms of our homeless response.
Counsel is deferring to these, quote, experts.
We don't get the briefings.
We're not allowed at the table.
The city is worse, and we don't want to talk about it.
But I am going to talk about it because the people have had it here.
Are you going to run again?
I am going to run again
and I'm going to speak very vocally off.
I'm going to be bringing things to counsel this fall.
And we've got to know where are counsel on this situation
and if not the public has a right to choose differently next fall.
Look, fundamentally there has been a co-opting of our language
by one side of the political spectrum.
And what they don't like, they call hateful.
What they don't, what, and if there's an idea out there
that would challenge their dogma,
well, they just ban it.
It happens all the time.
We see it almost every single day.
And you, unfortunately, sort of bore the brunt of it,
but it seems like you've picked yourself back up
and you're ready for the next round.
Yeah, absolutely, because this is a worthy cause, right?
Like, we have to talk about this.
I am not going to have my language police.
They can take my pay away, but they cannot silence me,
and the people deserve to be represented.
even those who are addicted and on our streets want better.
Yeah, of course they do.
They want better than a clean piece of foil and a needle and to be called a person who used drugs instead of an addict.
Yeah, well, Susan Stevenson, London counselor, thank you so much for being here.
We will follow your re-election campaign very closely here on the Ben Mulroney show.
I wish you the very best of luck.
Thank you very much.
Thanks for covering this.
It's important.
All right, coming up from covering a protest one moment to chasing a protester who stole her scooter the next,
We have a great story for you.
Don't go anywhere.
This is The Ben Mulroney Show, and welcome to the show.
If you live in the city of Toronto and you have been perplexed that the pro-Palestinian protests have continued almost every single day.
But one thing that's also continued is the work of our next guest covering not just those protests,
those are really quite central these days.
But covering those protests and making sure,
essentially it's the expression,
like who's watching the watcher?
Our next guest is watching the protesters.
And so please welcome to the show, Karim Asad.
She is a lawyer and she's also the lawyer
who has made a second career out of exposing the truth,
both good and bad, behind the protests in Toronto.
And Karima, welcome to the show.
Good morning, Ben.
Now, I want to point out that I'm very thankful.
thankful for you and your team because I walked in the St. Patrick's Day parade with my
sister, who was the Grand Marshal. And when we got to the end of the parade route, she still had
some ceremonial duties, which I was not going to stick around for. And I decided to make a
B-line through Young Dundas Square, which is what I'll be calling it forever. And I started walking,
and I saw some police, and I had a nice conversation with the police, and then I walked until
I got into an Uber. What I didn't notice is there.
was one of these rabble rousers
who's made a credit name for himself
by being a very loud
thorn in people's side.
He was following me with his camera.
But he stopped
when one of your cameraman caught
him following me. So
thank you very much for that because had you not done
that, he would have followed me
for blocks.
That's what we are there for
to catch sort of what's going on
whether good or bad.
And so
before we get into this,
you essentially taking the law in a good way into your own hands.
Why did you start this?
And when did you start it?
As I've been documenting protests for about four years now
and got really serious about it
after I tried hosting a comedy show that was blockaded
by some of these protesters.
And there was no real rhyme or reason to it.
And it made me committed to
understand this subculture. And so I've been really studying and keeping close tabs on the
ground and observed throughout the years all manner of disruption, everything from statue
beheadings to railway blocking, intersection closed, union station occupied, you name it,
I've been there. And consistently, there are some of the same individual
who are present at all of these events.
Okay, so that then brings us to, when did this incident happen?
July of 2021 is where I was documenting protests.
Oh, no.
No way.
I meant the incident that has brought you to the show today.
Oh, well, today I'm here, not with respect to a protester necessarily,
but something that happened at a protest.
Yeah, so you were at a protest, and where was the protests?
So this was at Young and Bloor, just across.
from the Israeli consulate.
And it happened on Saturday, I believe.
So you're at the protest, and we'll give our listeners a little bit of the color,
because as you're there, one of the protesters recognizes you.
Yeah.
No, the protester, the guy with the, the guy with the, he's wearing a kaffia.
He's on the street.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, basically, when I go to these protests, my videographer and I,
we rely on scooters to get around.
And, you know, it's a very effective mode of transportation.
It allows us to weave in and out to the crowd.
And our scooter was there.
And then suddenly it wasn't.
And this happened right before my videographer's eyes in plain view of police directly in front of the facial recognition ban.
And even though police who were on bikes, they, to their credit, sprung into action and tried to face the culprit down.
they were unsuccessful.
Yeah, they gave Chase and he was faster.
And so, okay.
So, no, I was going to throw to the, to the,
to give people the color of what you do when the guy asked you if you were proud of yourself.
But we don't.
Yeah.
Yeah, can we, can we, can you play that?
Are you proud of yourself?
I am actually.
I am, actually, very proud of my experience.
Like, super proud of.
are buried off the school.
Yeah, so I wanted people to sort of hear
what you typically come up against.
Okay, so now we're back at the,
we're back at the guy who took your scooter
and the cops tried and gave up.
They tried valiantly to catch this guy,
but he was too fast.
Yeah.
But then I look at your Twitter
and I see you caught the guy.
So.
That should take some times.
Okay, walk me through.
First of all, like,
Sometimes people will just say, you know what, I'm just, I'm writing that off as a loss.
You didn't do that.
No, I don't like taking unnecessary losses.
Okay, fair enough.
And this is a mode of transportation.
I also have like a real, a real gear to grind with people who steal things like bicycles and scooters.
Because, you know, maybe it's a crime of opportunity, but typically you are directly harming another citizen.
So it goes for cars as well.
So how did you find this guy?
Well, I have an air tag in all of my scooters.
I highly recommend that any scooter users do the same because that led me directly to his front door.
How far away was the scooter from where this gentleman had absconded with it?
Relatively close.
So we were at Young and Bloor, and I had to go down Bloor just around the Dina area.
And you show up and he knows.
He knows the jig is up.
I think so.
And in fact, the neighbors surrounding him assisted in pointing out that the likely culprit was among them.
So I don't think I'm the first victim of this particular nature of crime.
And hopefully we'll be the last.
so yeah so i've got to ask you know you've been you've been covering these protests for years where
people don't get arrested and and they break the law and they and they don't get they don't have
permits and yet they're allowed to take over the city um do you think this guy is is going to
face any sort of justice you know we'll see um certainly i've done my part um in in what i can
to bring it to the appropriate uh attention of the authorities um i also you know observed and
heard some things that would suggest there were other vehicles that perhaps didn't belong to him
in the unit.
Yeah. So it's now really in the hands of Toronto Police. And we'll see what happens. But
like from my perspective as a lawyer, I'm constantly mindful that rule of law is fragile and
really only as strong as our willingness to enforce it. Yeah. And so whether it's a big or
small, like, there has to be some measure of consistency in enforcing the law. But if everything
is just, you know, who cares? She got it back. Yeah. I've done. It's over. I don't find that
to be a satisfactory resolution. Karima, real quick, if people want to follow you on your social
media channels, what's the address? You can find me on X at Karima Rules. That's C-A-R-Y-M-A-R-U-E-S.
Or just Google, SAD, Lawyer, Toronto.
Thank you so much, Karima, keep up to fight.
Thank you.
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