Raging Duff

Quebec Court Judge Juanita Westmoreland-Traore invokes the disadvantaged-First Nations excuse to release self-confessed police-car vandal Davin Johnny on bail. Whose side is this woman on?
I’ve just listened to Westmoreland-Traore’s seven-minute ruling. It’s just plain bizarre. She refers to the photos and videos — many photos and videos — of Johnny smashing the windows of police cruisers, of Johnny dancing on the roofs and says “ despite the videos, there’s the presumption of innocence.”
Johnny’s admissions to having called the cops pigs shows a distrust of authority, she says. The Westmoreland-Traore proceeds to the key part of any bail hearing — deciding whether there’s a danger of Johnny reoffending or being a danger either to himself or to others. Nope, no danger, says the learned judge. This was a specific cultural activity, she explains. One could assume Westmoreland-=Traore knows about hockey playoffs, that there’s a series going on, but I fear to assume this woman has any knowledge of anything outside her bubble of political correctness.
I know Juanita Wesmoreland-Traore. She’s one of those people for whom the world is composed of two classes — the oppressors and the oppressed. Her duty as a judge is to ensure that she’s always on the right side of that line, whether it’s good law or not. It doesn’t matter that the oppressed drink and steal and shoot drugs and harass people on the streets. It’s society’s fault. Davin Johnny is a victim, not a perpetrator. In Juanita Westmoreland-Traore’s world, he must be protected from society, because he’s one of the oppressed. Back at Loyola, the Jesuits taught us that line, but they also taught us the need to protect the social fabric. I guess Westmoreland Traore missed those classes.