Hundreds From Various Police Departments To Pay Respect In Friday's Civic Funeral Service

Detective -Sergent Daniel Tessier, a 17-year veteran with the Laval Police Department, is dead following a shootout during an early-morning drug raid in a South Shore home on March 2.

Laval police were conducting a series of drug raids across Laval and in Brossard. The 42-year-old Tessier and his colleagues entered a private residence on Rimouski Street in Brossard when a gunfight erupted. Tessier was shot in the head while his partner, 46-year-old Stephane Forbes, a 20-yearveteran, was shot in the arm.

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ADQ Leader Would Curtail Conditional Releases, Make Prisoners Pay For Jail

Mario Dumont proposed getting tough on Quebec's "revolving-door prison system" yesterday, including making prisoners pay for their own incarceration.

Speaking at a former prison converted into a museum - a grim showcase to dissuade youngsters from a life of crime - the Action democratique du Quebec leader condemned the use of conditional releases as a way of easing prison overcrowding, a widespread practice which he blamed on cuts by Parti Quebecois governments.

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Was this the right police procedure?

Some veterans question why Laval officers had to bash down door during drug arrests.

Constable Daniel Tessier hadn't spent much time officially on the Laval police drug squad before he was killed Friday, but it was not the first time he had been involved in a high-risk police raid.

A police source said Tessier, a 17-year veteran of the Laval force, was trained in how to execute these procedures and had participated in numerous raids over the years despite being promoted to the squad only recently.

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Spot Where Tessier Died Shown In Report

A group representing most police officers in Quebec is denouncing the decision by some media outlets to broadcast the blood-stained interior of the Brossard home where Constable Daniel Tessier was killed Friday.

"The police community is in mourning and we haven't even buried our fallen colleague yet, and we see that on television? It doesn't make any sense," said Sherbrooke police officer Paulin Aube, vice-president of the Federation of Municipal Police Officers, an umbrella group that includes most of Quebec's police brotherhoods, including Laval's.

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Accused Mistook Officers With Battering Ram For Thieves, Lawyer Says

Basile Parasiris, his wife and two children awoke in a panic as police used a battering ram to break into their Brossard home and then started firing their guns inside during Friday's pre-dawn raid, his lawyer said yesterday.

Lawyer Frank Pappas said his client was trying to defend himself and his family when he grabbed a loaded gun and shot Laval Constable Daniel Tessier - whom Parasiris mistook for a crazed thief.

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A 41-year-old man is to be charged tomorrow with first-degree murder and attempted murder in the shooting death of a Laval police officer and the wounding of his partner during a drug raid Friday in Brossard.

Constable Daniel Tessier, 42, was pronounced dead at Charles LeMoyne Hospital in Greenfield Park after he was shot while executing a search warrant at a private home on Rimouski Cres.

Constable Stephane Forbes, 46, one of at least 13 other police officers involved in the Brossard raid, was shot in the arm. He is recovering in a hospital.

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Early-Morning Shootout Ends In Tragedy After Police Storm Montreal-Area Home

MONTREAL -- A major investigation into a suspected cocaine-trafficking ring in the Montreal area ended in tragedy yesterday when a newly promoted detective was shot dead as he and other officers stormed into the home of a bar owner to execute a search warrant.

Neighbours described a gunfight before sunrise, with the house alarm ringing, people screaming and at least 10 shots being fired inside a two-storey home in an upscale residential suburb.

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When Constable Daniel Tessier was declared dead yesterday at Charles LeMoyne Hospital in Greenfield Park, Laval police chief Jean-Pierre Gariepy knew the impact on staff morale was going to be considerable.

Just 15 months ago, another Laval police officer, Constable Valerie Gignac, was shot dead in the line of duty.

So before Laval police would confirm they lost one of their own in a pre-dawn drug raid in Brossard, Gariepy personally delivered the bad news to detectives' headquarters on Le Corbusier Blvd., where Tessier was based.

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RCMP Kept Eye On Consenza Social Club. Bugs, Video Catch The Bosses Counting Money And Agonizing Over Which Luxury Car To Buy

Kidnappings, murders, drug deals, grasping wives and painful hair transplants are all part of an Italian Mafia lifestyle described in court documents recently unsealed in Quebec Superior Court.

The documents relate how Mafia bosses met regularly at their headquarters, the Consenza Social Club at 4891 Jarry St. E., where runners brought them huge amounts of packaged cash.

The RCMP bugged and videotaped the inside of the club. The photos and recordings show

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Suspect Wounded

MONTREAL - Constable Daniel Tessier, fatally shot in a predawn drug raid yesterday, became the second Laval, Que., officer in 15 months to be killed in the line of duty.

The death of Const. Tessier, a 42-year-old father of two, will have a considerable impact on the morale of the force, Laval's police chief said yesterday.

"I would say our people are in deep shock, very heavy shock," Chief Jean-Pierre Gariepy told reporters.

Just 15 months ago, another Laval police officer, Constable Valerie Gignac, 25, was shot dead while responding to a noise complaint. Const. Tessier, who is married to Repentigny, Que., police Constable Dominique Lapointe and leaves behind two daughters, aged 10 and 12, was shot during a raid on a home in Brossard, a suburb of Montreal.

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"We are in a dangerous profession," says Laval police chief Jean-Pierre Gariepy. "And when you are in a dangerous profession, there are risks involved.

"You can give the training, the equipment - all the necessary tools - but there remains an extremely dangerous grey zone.

"And I'd place the events of this morning in that dangerous grey zone, despite all of the training and the tools and the equipment."

The events Gariepy's talking about exploded in a Brossard home at about 5 a.m. yesterday and left Laval police Constable Daniel Tessier dead from a gunshot wound to the head.

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Hugo St-Onge is convinced he has the winning conditions for his looming "reeferendum."

His Bloc Pot party, set to run 50 to 65 candidates in the March 26 election, is organizing the online plebiscite on the legalization of marijuana in Quebec.

It'll be a fair process, the Bloc leader insisted at a news conference at an Ontario St. bar yesterday. A non-party-member will oversee voting. Only those on the official voters' list can cast ballots (unless, of course, they're 16 or 17 years old, in which case anybody can vote).

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Montreal Woman Seeking To File Class Action Against Government On Behalf Of Patients

A Federal Court judge is to review the case of a Montreal woman unwittingly subjected to Central Intelligence Agency brainwashing experiments after refusing a federal government application to dismiss her lawsuit.

Janine Huard, 79, is seeking approval from the court for a class action lawsuit on behalf of potentially hundreds of patients who were subjected to the Cold War-era experiments funded jointly by the U.S. spy agency and the Canadian government.

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Daughter Killed By Snow Truck In '05. Last Week's Arrest Of A Blue-Collar Worker For Drunk Driving Triggers Painful Memories

The mother of a woman killed by a snow-removal truck 14 months ago is urging cities and police to test municipal truck drivers for drugs and alcohol in the wake of last week's arrest of a Montreal blue-collar worker for drug possession and for operating a vehicle while under the influence of alcohol.

"If you want to work for the city, you should have to be tested," Jeannette Holman-Price, whose daughter, Jessica, 21, was killed on Dec. 19, 2005, said in a telephone interview from Newfoundland, where she now lives.

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Pelletier Leader Gets 10 Years. First Time Federal Gangsterism Law Used To Shut Down A Street Gang In Canada

Gang leader Bernard Mathieu got a 10-year prison sentence, the "delivery boy" got almost five years, and other members of the Pelletier Ave. gang received something in between for their roles in dealing drugs, arms and fear in Montreal North.

With those sentences handed down yesterday, Quebec Court Judge Jean-Pierre Bonin brought an end to a five-month megatrial and the gang's 10-year hold on the neighbourhood, which had left high school students hooked on crack and residents cowering in their homes.

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Appeals For Softer Sentence. Gang Gave Students First Hit Of Crack Free

Bernard Mathieu, convicted of controlling a group of drug dealers who gave high school students their first hit of crack cocaine free of charge, made an impassioned speech from the prisoner's box yesterday, saying he would pay for what he'd done, but not for what he's been accused of.

Mathieu, who came to Canada from Haiti 27 years ago when he was just 8, said he might have trafficked a few kilograms of cocaine, but was never the boss of a network of dealers that held Pelletier Ave. in Montreal North hostage.

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Fight Against This Type Of Criminal Activity Is Top Priority, Police Say At Briefing

Street-gang activity in the city remains under control even though gang-related killings rose by more than double last year, Montreal police say.

There were 12 gang-related slayings on Montreal Island last year, up from five in 2005. Despite that increase, however, the gang situation in the city is "fairly stable," Mario Plante, the top city cop in charge of fighting street gangs, told reporters at a briefing yesterday.

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With Full Status, Group Promotes Drug Safety

Conceived at the beginning of the year, the Students' Society's Harm Reduction Centre aimed to ensure the safe use of drugs and alcohol among students. Named an official SSMU service in November 2006, the centre is now aiming to promote more awareness of its budding services by spreading word-of-mouth and maintaining regular office hours.

Although originally conceived as a club, SSMU Vice-President Clubs and Services Floh Herra-Vega decided that the HRC should be developed into a service.

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New Strategy For Opium Farmers Necessary For Support Of Mission, Duceppe Warns

MONTREAL -- The Canadian government has to work on an international strategy to purchase poppy crops from farmers in Afghanistan in order to stop the heroin trade and end the fighting in the war-ravaged country, Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe said yesterday.

In a speech in Montreal, Mr. Duceppe said a new strategy on opium is mandatory if the Canadian government wishes to continue enjoying the Bloc's support for the military mission in Afghanistan.

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The laundry-list of "guilty" verdicts this week, at the end of a three-month drug-gang "mega-trial," is good news for the justice system, and for all Montrealers.

The street gang of dealers that operated brazenly on Pelletier Ave. in Montreal North, using violence and threats of violence to maintain its monopoly, has been demolished by the investigation, arrests, and now convictions of 15 men.

Three of them, not Canadian citizens, are now prime candidates for deportation. Assuming they are not rescued by the appeal court, the three should be bundled onto a plane and sent back to Haiti.

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