By Toronto Sun
Last Updated: October 30, 2010 6:22pm
From the beginning, David Chen, Chinatown’s “vigilante grocer,” has struck most people as a reasonable man caught in unreasonable circumstances.
On Friday, Justice Ramez Khawly rightly acquitted him and two associates of assaulting and forcibly confining convicted shoplifter (and career criminal) Anthony Bennett.
The judge found they had interrupted Bennett as he was trying to steal merchandise from Chen’s Lucky Moose Food Mart for the second time in an hour on May 23, 2009.
That made their citizen’s arrest of him legal, because it meant they had, in effect, caught Bennett red-handed, as the law requires.
(Chen and store employees Qing Ping Li and Jie Chen, no relation, were charged after they chased down Bennett, tied him up and tossed him in a van, claiming they intended to hold him for police.)
But Judge Khawly was also critical of the testimony of the defendants and Bennett, and said he ultimately acquitted the three accused on the basis of reasonable doubt.
The judge criticized the media and others for portraying Chen as a hero and for questioning why police laid charges, although he also noted the lack of law enforcement in Chinatown led to “moral cynicism” there.
Be that as it may, we still don’t understand why this case ever went to trial and why the Crown, at least, didn’t exercise its discretion not to proceed with charges.
What was this law-abiding, hard-working store owner earning a modest living for his family supposed to do, given the persistent problems of shoplifting he faced?
From testimony, we know when Chen called police to deal with shoplifters he had apprehended, they often didn’t show up for hours and then let off the thieves with a warning.
Chen had even installed a $30,000 video security system, apparently to little avail.
So was Chen supposed to meekly accept that shoplifters would always cut into his narrow profit margins as a fact of life?
How is that fair?
If the Crown’s intent was to serve notice to the public they can’t exact vigilante justice on petty criminals, it couldn’t have picked a worse case, given the facts.
Indeed, Chen has now become something of a national hero, his case cited by many as an example of everything they feel is wrong with a justice system that often seems a guide for the guilty and a trap for the innocent.
In the wake of Chen’s case, Liberal MP Joe Volpe and NDPer Olivia Chow have proposed private member’s bills that would make it easier to carry out a citizen’s arrest. That may be a partial solution.
But as long as the police can’t effectively combat shoplifting, especially given available resources, it all comes back to the same question.
What was a reasonable person like Chen supposed to do, given the unreasonable circumstances he faced?
What is any reasonable person supposed to do?