 Const. Michael Sweet and his three girls, shortly before he was murdered in 1980.
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TORONTO - While being denied out-and-out day parole by a National Parole Board panel, Toronto cop-killer Craig Munro will soon be savouring his first taste of freedom in three decades after Tuesday being granted unescorted temporary absence passes -- despite being deemed a "moderate" risk to commit another act of violence.
These passes come with a tether, of course, but they come nevertheless only a year after the previous parole panel wholly rejected any semblance of freedom.
And that decision then seemed justified.
History may dull memories, but not the facts.
Thirty years ago Sunday, for instance, a heroin-addicted Craig Munro, along with his younger brother Jamie, shot uniformed Metro Const. Michael Sweet, a 30-year-old father of three young girls, during a bungled robbery of George's Bourbon St. Bistro on Queen St. W. -- the two mercilessly allowing Sweet to bleed out during a long standoff with Toronto's Emergency Task Force.
Those are the facts, and they're undeniable.
Craig Munro got life for first-degree murder, with no chance of parole for 25 years, while his younger brother, convicted of second-degree murder, got paroled in March 1992 and moved to Italy where he lives under the name of Massimo Marra.
A year ago, Munro failed to face those undeniable facts, and the parole board called him on it.
"Your description and your selective recall of the event demonstrated that you still lack insight into your criminal behaviour," the panel wrote in its decision to deny him parole.
"(Instead) you are (still) projecting blame on police who were doing their duty to safeguard a local enterprise (and) you seem not to understand the full meaning of the anti-social personality disorder you have been diagnosed as having."
Tuesday, however, a new parole panel did not address Munro's persistent denial of the facts which, according to Toronto lawyer Tim Danson, had him continuing to blame "everyone from his father, to his brother, to the police ... everyone but himself."
"No one hauled him up on the carpet for this," said Danson, who represented members of the Sweet family present at the parole hearing at the Mountain Institution in Agassiz, BC., including Sweet's widow, Karen Fraser, who gave a passionate statement urging for Munro's continued imprisonment.
"Not only did Munro deny his role, his testimony regarding the night he murdered Michael Sweet was factually wrong.
"Yet he gets unescorted temporary absence passes -- all which is hugely disappointing."
Within 30 days, therefore Munro will be moved from the Kwikwexwelhp Healing Village, a 50-bed minimum-security correctional facility formerly known as the Elbow Lake Institution, which is located in a remote mountain setting 37 km east of Mission, B.C., and will begin his first step at integretion into the halfway house settings around Kelowna.
While Kwikwexwelhp -- pronounced Kwee-kwee-kwelp -- is an aboriginal-focused facility, with an emphasis on spiritual and cultural teachings, non-aboriginal inmates are not exempt and Munro claims now to have embraced either Metis ancestry or Metis culture.
"It is available for any offender who wants to access the programs that are available there," said correctional services spokesman Dave Lefebvre.
"While it is an aboriginal healing village, any offender of any race is allowed to participate."
The two-person board who gave Munro his first sniff at freedom -- Kelly-Ann Speck, an aboriginal from the Namgis First Nations in B.C. and regional vice-chairman of the board; and Bob Besner, a former career air force officer -- could release their written judgment as early as Wednesday.
What is known, however, is that Craig Munro will be allowed four unescorted temporary absence passes over the next year, none to be longer than 72 hours in duration, and none to involve an overnight in any other venue than an agreed-upon federal halfway house.
He is to abstain from intoxicants, as well as known criminals outside the halfway house system, have no contact with any of his victims, and partake in all therapy programs deemed necessary.
Next year, by law, he can apply either for loosened restrictions or, again, for outright day parole.
According to Toronto Police Association president Mike McCormack, who sat in on a Toronto video link of the parole hearing with Kim Sweet, one of Michael Sweet's daughters, and who heard the often heart-wrenching impact statements of Munro's victims, there is only one place for a person like Craig Munro.
"And that's in prison for the rest of his life," said McCormack. "For someone to kill a police officer, and kill him in such a heinous way, life in prison should be life in prison.
"No way should he be free to walk any street."
mark.bonokoski@sunmedia.ca or 416-947-2445
