Weird and wacky crime and police-related incidents in 2022 include a naked car thief, a dog startling a smuggler trying to retrieve handguns from a drone, and a woman bee-buzzing police.
In addition, police successfully pursued an accused boat thief trying to escape on a riding lawnmower, a casket was battered during a family funeral brawl, climate protesters tossed potatoes and tomato soup at paintings, and an author who wrote about murder did just that.
On Tuesday, a nobody named Randall McKenzie became somebody in the chilling fashion that seems bountiful in the third decade of the century.
The 25-year-old, of Hamilton, Kingston, Six Nations and points in between, stands charged with first-degree murder in connection with the “ambush” slaying of OPP Const. Grzegorz “Greg” Pierzchala, 28.
A woman named Brandi Stewart-Sperry, 30, of Hamilton and the system, is also charged with first-degree murder.
Both suspects had been wanted by cops: Him for skipping a court appearance for assaulting a Hamilton police officer and getting pinched with a gun (he has two-lifetime firearms bans). She for breaching conditions.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Ontario Premier Doug Ford were on hand as GM’s Brightdrop division rolled out an electric delivery van and announced a major order from courier company DHL. Getting GM to make the van in Ingersoll, and keeping the 400 jobs there came at a cost of over $500 million split between Ontario and the federal government.
It’s part of at least $2 billion and likely much, much more spent to ensure electric vehicle manufacturing stays in Canada. Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne said he has absolutely no problem justifying the taxpayer dollars pumped into multi-national companies like GM, Honda and Stelantis, Chrysler’s parent company.
“Governments have to be part of the equation and I would say the return on investments is some of the best you can find in the market,” Champagne said in an interview with the National Post.
Second, why co-operate with a repressive regime? Apple had the standard answer with which the Desmarais family’s Power Corp. dominated Canada’s China policy for decades: There is a lot of money to be made there, and that money and more foreign contacts will lead to political liberalization and human rights.
No one believes that anymore. China was moving in a more repressive direction before the pandemic, and the variegated mischief in Wuhan only confirmed it. Even the Trudeau-Mulroney-Chrétien-Martin-Trudeau bastion of support for China did not survive the kidnapping of the “Two Michaels.”
So it was in November 2022 when Apple CEO Tim Cook unveiled a China-only update for the iPhone. It made it more difficult for Chinese customers to use the “AirDrop” feature, which permits iPhone users to transfer information between them when close by, thereby avoiding the internet censorship of the Chinese communist regime. That feature is most helpful in arranging protests in authoritarian China. The CCP doesn’t like that, and what the CCP doesn’t like, Cook doesn’t like, and so Apple took action that assisted the communist regime.
