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 Police subdue two women yesterday after a crime spree involving shoplifting, a stolen vehicle and a chase across Burlington and Oakville. (David Ritchie photo) |
"Sometimes the ugliest of things come in the prettiest of packages."
-- Mark Elliot of Intervention Toronto
There was no question the woman in handcuffs was pretty.
She looked like she could have been a model -- one, though, who didn't have a chance to apply fresh make-up or brush her hair. A night in the slammer can do that.
It was one peculiar courtroom scene. No rough-looking macho alleged criminal in the prisoner's box.
Instead, there stood a thin woman with wavy hair, perfect posture and soft, inquisitive eyes. While dishevelled, she appeared painfully aware of the heap of trouble she was in.
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"She's beautiful," Sun courtroom artist Pam Davies said while looking at Dave Ritchie's dramatic picture in yesterday's Toronto Sun of a takedown Sunday by Halton Regional Police.
"She has this swan neck -- like that of a ballerina."
She was also one half of Sunday's alleged "Thelma and Louise" crime spree.
But she's neither Thelma nor Louise. She's Dyanna Bowman, 26, of Brampton, and is charged with three counts of theft under $5,000, possession of stolen property over $5,000, robbery, theft over $5,000, dangerous operation of a motor vehicle causing bodily harm, failing to stop at the scene of an accident, failing to comply with recognizance and possession of a controlled substance.
The allegations haven't been proven and there's no evidence of drug addiction.
Her alleged accomplice is Alicia Campbell, 28, also of Brampton, and she faces the same charges, sans drug possession. A bail hearing for both was set for 9:30 a.m. this morning in Milton court.
Yesterday, because Campbell was in hospital, only Bowman appeared before justice of the peace Barry Quinn.
It was right out of a movie.
"You are wrong," said high-profile drug counsellor and radio talk-show host Mark Elliot. "I understand why the media try to sell the Thelma and Louise angle but this is real life and it's not funny."
Elliot feels this court appearance is newsworthy not because "someone is attractive" but because it "shines a bright light" on a sign of the times.
"Are you going to write if someone comes to me before an alleged crime spree and says, 'I want help,' I would say, 'Great, I can get you on a waiting list for between six to 18 weeks?'
"Are you going to write that addicts are better off going to jail to get treatment because there are only 16 medical recovery beds available in Toronto?"
Elliot said the weekend papers were full of stories involving "the evil of drugs," but this case made the front pages.
"This was an epidemic before this," he said.
Some of that became evident in court when Bowman was asked by the clerk: "Did you hear the charges?"
After politely saying, "Yes, ma'am," Bowman sadly looked around for a familiar face.
No one was there, but earlier a man, describing himself as her husband, told a media colleague there were children involved and that this was a complicated situation.
They always are, said Elliot, who added that drugs don't discriminate.
"It doesn't matter if someone is male, female, old, young, pretty, rich, famous, from the right side of town or not."
What matters is the province understands it's going to see more of this because there's an exploding drug problem that long ago left the urban core and made its way into suburbia and small-town Ontario.
"You can't make sense of what addicts will do," Elliot said. "But I do know -- despite lots of money being collected in the form of sin taxes -- we don't have the recovery resources and that puts more than the addict at risk."
Elliot has many terrific out-of-the box ideas, including creating a "recovery jail/prison," a specialized "drug addiction hospital."
Premier Dalton McGuinty should give him a call and Elliot said he'd take the call.
"But I have to say we need a study, not run by the people in charge of things now, but one with a new approach that I suspect will have more success than the revolving door system we have now."
From his own experience as both a recovering addict and counsellor, he said "treatment and education" are the only two measures that work. He said the flavour of the day called "harm reduction" has been a disaster.
"There's too much emphasis on trying to wean people off stuff and not enough emphasis or respect for the highly successful 12-step abstinence approach," he said.
The drug problem isn't pretty but, Elliot said, if the province doesn't deal with it soon, we haven't seen what ugly looks like.
joe.warmington@sunmedia.ca