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Crime

RCMP response not a factor in cell death

Published

5 minute read

April 09, 2019

On May 13, 2017 ASIRT was directed to investigate the circumstances surrounding the death of a 32-year-old man, who went into medical distress and later died following a period of custody at the Wood Buffalo South Policing Facility in Fort McMurray, Alberta.

On May 11, 2017, RCMP officers entered and searched a residence in Fort McMurray as part of a drug trafficking investigation. Once inside the residence, police located the 32-year-old man behind a locked door to one of the residence’s suites. Police negotiated with the man through the locked door, and ultimately, the man voluntarily emerged from the suite. Inside that residence, they located numerous items consistent with drug trafficking and the man was placed under arrest. The man was only wearing underwear upon arrest, and officers located clothing for him and assisted him in dressing, as he was handcuffed. RCMP transported the man to the Wood Buffalo South Policing Facility, and although the officers who dealt with him upon arrest and during transport observed some signs consistent with intoxication, there were no medical concerns based upon the man’s presentation and behaviour. Upon arrival at the facility, the man was searched, provided access to a phone, and placed inside a holding cell.

Once the man was booked into the holding facility, his movements were captured on CCTV video, providing a detailed record of the man’s time in custody. The majority of this time was unremarkable, however on two occasions, the man’s condition or behaviour raised concern with the civilian guards at the facility, and on those occasions, RCMP officers immediately responded to the man’s cell to check on his well-being. On one occasion, when the man appeared to be having some respiratory issues, EMS attended with the RCMP member but the man refused treatment, repeatedly indicating that he only had a cold. Based on subsequent observations made by an officer, a strip search was conducted but did not reveal any illicit substances on his person.

In the early hours of May 13, 2017, the man asked to call his lawyer again, and was taken to the phone room to make a call. While in the phone room, the man went into medical distress. RCMP officers immediately responded to the phone room, contacted EMS, and provided first aid to the man. EMS arrived minutes later, assumed care of the man, and transported him to hospital, where the man was later pronounced deceased.

An autopsy determined the cause of death was cocaine and fentanyl toxicity. Post-mortem toxicology reports revealed a potentially lethal level of cocaine in the man’s bloodstream, as well as metabolites of both cocaine and fentanyl. A small, torn “baggie” consistent with drug packaging was located inside the man’s stomach at autopsy.

While it is impossible to determine with absolute certainty, based on the evidence, it is a reasonable inference the man used the brief period of advance awareness of his forthcoming arrest to conceal drugs within his body that later led to him going into medical distress and ultimately resulted in his death. This tragic conclusion is only available through the compilation of the observations of numerous individual witnesses, the analysis of dozens of hours of CCTV footage, an autopsy and post-mortem toxicology analysis that provide a complete picture of what was a medical death. It is this hindsight that allows for an understanding of why the man died.

In all of the circumstances, while the man’s death is unquestionably tragic, the actions of the officers who dealt with him demonstrated concern for his well-being and responsiveness to his medical needs. The care and supervision provided to the man was reasonable and demonstrates genuine concern for his safety. There are no reasonable grounds to believe the conduct of any officer would constitute a criminal offence. As such, no charges will be laid in this case.

Crime

First Good Battlefield News From Trump’s Global War on Fentanyl

Published on

From for the Daily Wire

Maltz attributes slowing fentanyl smuggling directly to Trump’s controversial 25% trade tariffs, which compelled the first Mexican military raids against production labs in Sinaloa Cartel-controlled Culiacán, Mexico.

It’s early but not too early to note that President Donald Trump’s all-out World War on cross-border fentanyl smuggling into the United States, the highly lethal synthetic opiate responsible for 120,000 American overdose deaths in recent years, is achieving remarkable impacts for the first time in a decade.

A key indicator of broader total smuggling at and between the southern border’s ports of entry — U.S. law enforcement seizures of fentanyl — has dropped 50% since the November election, indicating a greater decline in total fentanyl smuggling.

That decline is attributable to Trump’s reset of U.S. Customs and Border Protection orders to aggressively hunt the drug as they and thousands of active-duty soldiers are now free of the distracting duty of processing hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants crossing the southern border every month throughout Joe Biden’s term. Trump policies quickly ended that mass migration distraction, as I wrote in The Daily Wire on March 20.

A 2024 seizure of fentanyl pills manufactured in Mexico. DEA photo.
A 2024 seizure of fentanyl pills manufactured in Mexico. DEA photo.

For context on the change with inbound fentanyl flows, from 2019 to 2023, the amounts seized rose every year in tandem with American overdose deaths and remained high in the 2,000-pound monthly range during 2024.

But In December and January, President-elect Trump threatened devastating trade tariffs against Mexico if they did not seriously crack down on cartel production and smuggling even before he entered office.

From October 2024 to January 2025, Southwest Border seizures of fentanyl fell from 2,000 pounds in 85 seizure events, to 990 pounds in 47 seizure events, CBP seizure data shows. Then in February 2025, seizures plummeted even further to 590 pounds in 45 events.

Combined, those January and February numbers are 50% less than the same period in 2024 and among the very lowest monthlies recorded since 2020.

City of Scottsdale, AZ, police department.
City of Scottsdale, AZ, police department.

Ranking administration officials, Border Patrol supervisors who hunt the drug on the ground, and media reporting from cartel laboratory-infested regions of Mexico tell us that March’s seizure numbers will solidify a reversal of a deadly decade-long upward fentanyl smuggling trend.

“Trump’s policies are having an impact, one hundred percent,” Acting Administrator of Trump’s Drug Enforcement Administration Derek Maltz told me for this Daily Wire story. And for Americans concerned about the scourge of fentanyl, there’s much more they will find surprising.

A Remarkable Display Of Cartel Pragmatism In Response To Trump

Derek Maltz speaking with attendees at the 2023 AmericaFest at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona. Photo by Gabe Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0. Wikimedia Commons.
Derek S. Maltz, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Photo by Gabe Skidmore. Wikimedia Commons.

What Maltz said next almost defies commonly believed narratives about Mexico’s cartel crime syndicates — especially the idea that they are more impulsively violent than strategic and pragmatic. Yet, according to Maltz, cartel leaders appear to have opted for a surprising strategic change in the face of Trump’s campaign against them over fentanyl.

The cartels appear to have determined that since Trump is so bad for business, they have decided to quit smuggling it into the American market and send it to Europe and other parts of the world instead. What to do about the lost revenue? Easy. Make up the difference by shipping greater volumes of less-politically and physiologically lethal drugs like cocaine and methamphetamine, Maltz said.

“We got their attention with a lot of talk about the deaths in America, and the cartels got very concerned. It became a business decision.” Maltz told me.

Indeed, cartels in the fentanyl crosshairs are facing a unique, existential threat that no prior president in modern times has imposed, over just this one line of cartel business. While it’s too early for anyone to declare victory in Trump’s unprecedented war on fentanyl, Maltz attributes slowing fentanyl smuggling directly to Trump’s controversial 25% trade tariffs, which compelled the first Mexican military raids against production labs in Sinaloa Cartel-controlled Culiacán, Mexico.

After his November 2024 election win, Trump vowed to follow through with executive orders that would establish punishing tariffs on China for tolerating the export of precursor fentanyl-making chemicals to Mexico. And almost since inauguration day, Trump’s moves have compelled the destruction of laboratories.

WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 14: U.S. President Donald Trump (L) looks on as Anne Fundner speaks about losing her 15-year-old son to fentanyl during a visit to the Justice Department March 14, 2025 in Washington, DC. As he has used the department to punish enemies, Trump is expected to deliver what the White House calls a law-and-order speech and outline steps he will take to counter “weaponization” of the department. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

He designated nine Mexican cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations subject to global financial isolation, surveillance and terrorism charges for anyone who partners with them.

The cartels no doubt also felt heat from unspecified threats of possible U.S. military action against them and their labs. Indeed, Trump has increased U.S. spy flights over Mexico, repositioned CIA officers into Mexico, deployed war ships to the Pacific and Gulf of America, and put specialized light infantry divisions on the southern border facing Mexico.

An Unlikely Source Of Credit For Trump: The New York Times

As part of the Trump administration, Maltz might be expected to lose some credibility by crediting his boss’s policies for good news about fentanyl.

Maltz is hardly alone, however, in attributing Trump’s policies to early apparent success. Natalie Kitroeff, the New York Times’ Mexico City bureau chief toured some manufacturing labs in the city of Culiacán with another reporter in December 2024, the Sinaloa Cartel-controlled city believed to be Mexico’s central hub for manufacturing fentanyl with well over 100 labs.

alxpina. Getty Images. View of the historic center of Culiacán, capital city of the state of Sinaloa, with the main Alvaro Obregón street that runs from north to south.
Getty Images. View of the historic center of Culiacán, capital city of the state of Sinaloa, with the main Alvaro Obregón street that runs from north to south.

In a March 2025 interview on the newspaper’s The Daily podcast, Kitroeff said she returned to Culiacán after Trump’s inauguration “to see whether all of the pressure that Trump had put on Mexico had led to real changes, whether any of this actually made a difference.”

After serendipitously witnessing Mexican troops raiding labs as she drove through Culiacán on a follow-up trip, Kitroeff’s conclusion was clear.

“It was really remarkable. The dynamics, it seemed, had completely changed from the last time we were there,” she said, adding that her cartel sources “told us there was basically no production of fentanyl happening in the city. It had totally plummeted, fallen off a cliff” because “there is such an intense crackdown by the government right now.”

“Is this all because of Trump?” the show’s host Michael Barbaro asked Kitroeff.

“Yeah, I think that’s what it looks like to a lot of people, a lot of regular Mexicans, a lot of cartel members, and a lot of security experts who have been studying this for a long time,” she responded.

“I think it’s pretty clear that the amount of progress, arrests, raids, lab busts, the pace of these actions is something that we’ve not seen in recent history in Mexico. One analyst told us, we’ve seen in one month what we might have seen in years,” Kitroeff continued. “I think what we’ve seen is that at least in this context, in this month, and in this place, the tariffs worked, for now at least.”

The reporter and Maltz said production still goes on elsewhere in Mexico.

But Maltz said his government intelligence suggests the cartels are contemplating shipping the drug to Europe, Australia and to other wealthy developed countries but not as much to the United States because of the Trump heat.

“They’re going to produce it and ship it over that way instead,” he said. “There’s a very good chance that other parts of the world may be getting shipments of fentanyl from the cartels, unless they just curtail the production altogether, which I don’t see happening.”

He and others also note that U.S. law enforcement began seizing higher volumes of cocaine and methamphetamine smuggled over the border since Trump’s election instead of fentanyl, also suggesting a self-preserving cartel strategy change.

What About American Deaths? 

Leavenworth, Kansas. Anti drug sign to stop Fentanyl from stealing families. . (Photo by: Michael Siluk/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Michael Siluk/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Another vital indicator that warrants tracking as a means to judge the long-term success of Trump’s muscular fentanyl initiatives: overdose deaths.

It’s just too early to know how the apparently falling smuggling rates translate into saved lives. Significant declines in overdose deaths began a year ago, according to the latest Center for Disease Control report on the subject, which lags real time by four months. Death rates fell by 24% for the 12 months through September 2024, from 114,000 to a still outrageous 87,000. The CDC attributes the decline to better life-saving treatment and awareness programs inside the United States but also to a factor it dubs without elaboration “shifts in the illegal drug supply.”

12 Month-ending Provisional Number and Percent Change of Drug Overdose Deaths. Based on data available for analysis on: March 2, 2025. Provisional Drug Overdose Death Counts. National Center for Health Statistics. CDC. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/drug-overdose-data.htm
National Center for Health Statistics. CDC.

That factor almost assuredly is a reference to a secretive deal that President Joe Biden bartered for Mexico in December 2023 to deploy 35,000 troops with orders to militarily contain illegal immigration flows in deep southern Mexico to help Biden’s presidential reelection campaign defend its border policies against Trump. Mexico responded to Biden’s favor request with major impactful force throughout the Biden or Harris reelection campaign that dramatically reduced human smuggling, as I frequently reported, and also no doubt hindered some fentanyl smuggling.

Trump watchers and all Americans who authentically care about the extreme damage this drug from Mexico has wrought on the United States should hope seizures continue to plummet as this likely means less is getting smuggled over. But Americans deserve to know if “shifts in illegal drug supply” is saving far more American lives.

If that body count number alone continues an even faster decline, Trump will have earned his country’s enduring gratitude and a place of reverence in American history. So far, anyway, the early results give rise to optimism.

* * *

Todd Bensman is a Senior National Security Fellow, Center for Immigration Studies and a two-time National Press Club award winner. He is a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism and a 23-year veteran newspaper reporter. He is the author of “America’s Covert Border War,” and “Overrun: How Joe Biden Unleashed the Greatest Border Crisis in U.S. History.”

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2025 Federal Election

Liberal MP Paul Chiang Resigns Without Naming the Real Threat—The CCP

Published on

The Opposition with Dan Knight     Dan Knight

After parroting a Chinese bounty on a Canadian citizen, Chiang exits the race without once mentioning the regime behind it—opting instead to blame “distractions” and Donald Trump.

So Paul Chiang is gone. Stepped aside. Out of the race. And if you’re expecting a moment of reflection, an ounce of honesty, or even the basic decency to acknowledge what this was really about—forget it.

In his carefully scripted resignation statement, Chiang didn’t even mention the Chinese Communist Party. Not once. He echoed a foreign bounty placed on a Canadian citizen—Joe Tay—and he couldn’t even bring himself to name the regime responsible.

Instead, he talked about… Donald Trump. That’s right. He dragged Trump into a resignation about repeating CCP bounty threats. The guy who effectively told Canadians, “If you deliver a Conservative to the Chinese consulate, you can collect a reward,” now wants us to believe the real threat is Trump?

I haven’t seen Donald Trump put bounties on Canadian citizens. But Beijing has. And Chiang parroted it like a good little foot soldier—and then blamed someone who lives 2,000 miles away.

But here’s the part you can’t miss: Mark Carney let him stay.

Let’s not forget, Carney called Chiang’s comments “deeply offensive” and a “lapse in judgment”—and then said he was staying on as the candidate. It wasn’t until the outrage hit boiling point, the headlines stacked up, and groups like Hong Kong Watch got the RCMP involved, that Chiang bailed. Not because Carney made a decision—because the optics got too toxic.

And where is Carney now? Still refusing to disclose his financial assets. Still dodging questions about that $250 million loan from the Bank of China to the firm he chaired. Still giving sanctimonious speeches about “protecting democracy” while his own caucus parrots authoritarian propaganda.

If you think Chiang’s resignation fixes the problem, you’re missing the real issue. Because Chiang was just the symptom.

Carney is the disease.

He covered for it. He excused it. He enabled it. And now he wants to pose as the man who will stand up to foreign interference?

He can’t even stand up to it in his own party.

So no, we’re not letting this go. Chiang may be gone—but the stench is still in the room. And it’s wearing a tailored suit, smiling for the cameras, and calling itself “leader of the Liberal Party.”

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