Sneaky Pete

I have been looking for any information in the StarPhoenix about Sergeant Briant and his attempts to obtain funding and support for a Neighbourhood Activity Home in Pleasant Hill. There was a editorial after he approached city council about funding and then nothing until this mornings StarPhoenix (April 27 page 3).

The Commentary by Sarath Peiris reminds me of my youth and growing up in a large city. We lived in abandoned empty houses, if there was a notice and a lock on the door when I got home from school I knew we moved again. We lived near the waterfront in a poor neighbourhood. There was sawmills, rail yards, grain elevates, boats and an endless supply of ways to get into trouble.

One of my brothers would walk to school, he would steal a bike at school and ride a different bike home every day after school. He piled the bikes up where they could not be seen in a gully across the back alley from the house. When I got home one day the RCMP were in the back alley collecting up the stolen bikes. One of the officers had laid down the law and my brothers riding days were over. A short time after this the same RCMP officer drove into the back yard with a bike in the trunk of his police car. The officer gave the bike to my brother, without saying a word my brother took the bike, and he chucked it into the gully. I would not have to explain to Officer Briant why my older brother did that.

We did not think of our selves as a gang. We had to hang out together for protection. One of my friends was beaten so bad by a group of 5 older kids that his parents moved to a small town. They beat him unconscious with 2x4’s. Another friend didn’t hang on when he climbed on to our box car cross-town transportation and was killed, I remember seeing his picture in the newspaper. The last time I saw him he was in two pieces.

We would get bored, with nothing to do. The kids up the hill away from the waterfront would have nothing to do with us. We were called harbour rats, not just by the other kids, their parents would also treat us like we were contagious. The swimming pools, recreation and any sports activities were all up the hill, they all cost money, there was nothing close to the waterfront, there was nothing to do, and no guidance.

We did not go around robbing people and braking into houses, we would go to the local trucking company with a high fence around it and put the trucks into gear and push on the starter button on the floor and ride around at under one mile an hour until all the batteries were dead.

We were little thieves, we did not buy our smokes or booze and always had ways to steal enough money for the local cafe hangout and pinball machines. We used to carry a bobby pin with us for making payphone calls. We would brake the plastic off the ends, hold one end on the chrome around the coin return and the other end into a hole in the mouth piece was the same as a coin being deposited.

We would hang out at a cafe across from a row of about fifteen pay phones at the bus terminal and harbour ferry terminal. We would watch and laugh our heads off at all the people beating the hell out of the pay phones when it did not return their money. After the busses and ferry left we would run across to the phones and pull the napkins out of the coin returns. It was back to the cafe and wait twenty minutes for the next ferry and again watch adults have a fit when the phone did not return their dime, watching them was more fun then the Saturday matinee. There was not a kid in town that could walk past a payphone without sticking a finger up the coin return and when the adults started doing it the game was over.

Believe this or not, people would leave money in a milk bottle in plain view on their front porch when they went to bed at night.

There was a new RCMP officer in town and he was always in an unmarked police car. I called him Sneaky Pete and a few other names in a cafe under a block away from where I lived. He had me by the scuff of the neck and out the door before I knew what happened. He knew where I lived next door, he also knew that a few weeks before this I was in a cell at the police station for braking some windows at the school. I realised after that the guy that asked me what I was in for was a homeowner that witnessed my running around the school throwing rocks at the windows. My oldest brother came for a visit about a hour later. I refused to leave when the officer opened the cell door and told me to get out an hour later. He had to get my brother to come back and they both made me a promise before I would leave the cell. He knew.

He would give me a kick in the ass about every 5 steps and I started to have muscle seizures and was on the sidewalk unable to continue. I had him, I could see by the worried look on his face, after the seizure eased off we continued and after knocking on my door and telling my mother what I had done I quickly told her about his kicking me. She told him to kick my ass back where he found me. My life was going to be a living hell of washing dishes and cleaning house for a week, he had to have known that my mother just started day shift. A week of captivity in a house with no TV, fridge or furniture, just an old dresser and a fold-up bed on wheels.

I knew one thing, my mother was not like my friends mothers or fathers, the cops would get a blast of profanities from them if they ever picked on their kids, like he picked on me. He never kicked my ass again but he had me in a few head locks, I would holler that he was choking me until he got tired of my yelling and would let me go. It never occurred to me that I would not be able to holler my head off if he was choking me.

We would have arranged fights with the kids in the neighbouring municipalities. They would come into our territory and meet at a park or we would go to their territory. It was not a drug or any other territory, it was the part of the city where we lived. The main street between the two municipalities was six lanes wide and due to some crossed wires we both decided we were to go to the other municipality, we recognised our mistake when we meet on the six lane road, it was not as good as a park, but it would have to do. There was a picture of a bus driver in the paper the next day with a black eye. This was no different then two Saskatchewan hockey teams from rival towns except we did not have our parents yelling at us to beat someone’s brains out, we had bus drivers refereeing. We took a bad beating in the newspaper and we enjoyed every re-read. We had nothing better to do.

One night 5 of us were in-between two building on the main street when Sneaky Pete and his partner drove by. I hollered at Sneaky Pete with my usual greeting when I saw him, he was driving, he turned his head and saw me, a squeal of the tires told us that he was going to be coming down the alley and when I turned around to run, I was alone. I scrambled into a blackberry bush on the lot as I could not run more than a short distance. I could not see them as they searched, I could hear Sneaky Pete’s partner telling Sneaky Pete what he was going to do to my head when he caught me. Sneaky Pete was talking about me to his partner as if I was not there.

Sneaky Pete knew that I could only run a short distance before my muscles would seize up. He knew I was lying down in the blackberry bush with my muscles seized and my toes sticking straight up. He would have had to step on me to find me, that foot long flashlight of his was of little use other then to chuck it at a kid he was unable to outrun.

Sneaky Pete acted differently when he was by himself then when he was with his partner. There was something wrong with this cop. He would offer to help a kid find a part time job at a gas station or get a paper route when his partner was not with him. He even had the nerve to tell kids to have a bath once and awhile and get their hair cut.

By the time I was in grade eight, I can’t remember if it was the first time in grade eight or the second time. I borrowed a pair of dress pants, shirt, shoes, sports jacket, tie and was off to a movie with my first date. Right in front of the movie theatre with a squealing of tires, flashing lights and siren Sneaky Pete pulled his car up to a screeching halt. Must be a robbery in progress. He was out of the car on the run and grabbed me yelling “what is harbour trash doing up here, who did you steal this coat from, he dragged me to his car yanking on my borrowed tie and spread me out and did a search and in a quite voice said in my ear, “If you don’t smarten up, every time I see you with a girl this is what is going to happen”. Some cops are just rotten to the core.

After the kids trashed a small shopping centre the city realised what every kid knew, we had nothing else to do with our time. The city built a recreation centre, up the hill, with a hall used for sports and weekend dances. The harbour rats were not allowed in, there was a dress code and other rules that excluded us, and we were not welcomed.

At the same time Sneaky Pete started talking about what was called a “neighbourhood house” that opened close to the waterfront. The talk was that there were games and other activities that no one was interested in. There was a small bakery van that the kids would steal doughnuts from at night. The van doors were never locked and after the neighbourhood house opened it was always empty. The driver was leaving our daily unsold doughnuts at the neighbourhood house. Some of the kids started going and were talking about having fun washing dishes after making cookies in the kitchen. There was something wrong with these kids. I had to see this for myself. I did not go because of the activates that Sneaky Pete was spouting on about, I went because of the doughnuts.

They let me in, it did not matter what I was wearing, how I looked or my reputation for stealing anything of value. There was a TV and games, it did not take me long to realise that these friendly people had a sinister plot. I had to listen to talks like why it was importance to brush my teeth and how to use a tooth brush before I got a doughnut. There was no way to avoid it, they give me a tooth brush before they gave me a doughnut.

It was not long before I realised that it was fun to wash dishes and it was not the doughnuts that kept me coming back. It was a safe place to be, and above all else, I was treated like a rich kid. Older kids that had to be avoided at any cost on the street, were washing dishes together. The crime rate only had one way to go, down, and I know why, I was at the neighbourhood house and so were my friends.

Some of the kids I grew up with would know that they would get caught and yet they kept doing the same thing over and over. One of my friends would play with a blow torch in a garage when we were looking for bottles and metal to sell. Just after the garage burned down he told me that the firemen were trying to find out the cause of the fire and one of them picked up the blow torch, looked at it, put it back down saying “it was not this.” He had a thing about fire, stealing a car and going looking for a cop to chase him. I think it was after the third time he was sent to jail. He spent most of his life in jail. He did not make it past his 25th birthday. His brothers and sisters were the same. There was something wrong with the kids who had parents who were drunks, they were unable to grow up.

Sergeant Briant is talking about opening a neighbourhood house with programming for children and families. He should not have had to contact Sarath Peiris about doing a story. The children in Pleasant Hill are not there by choice, they are not just suffering “the legacy of the abuse inflicted on their parents.“ There were no kids prostituting themselves in my old neighbourhood. They were in the downtown core, most of them were wards of the court. These kids are future drug addicts, criminals and prostitutes. They are pimped by a society and community that places a higher value on the proceeds of gambling and seizing vehicles then it does on the health and welfare of children. It is no longer organised crime that benefits from gambling, organized crime benefits from drug addiction and prostitutes and their victims are growing up in neighbourhoods like Pleasant Hill all across Canada. Once they are done with them the young men and women are left to live in cardboard boxes under an overpass. Redirect some of that lottery money and the proceeds from selling the vehicles of sick perverts to Sergeant Briant. The help of the community is needed, after the home is opened, drop off your unsold doughnuts on your way home.

I went back to my old neighbourhood a few years later. One of the new generation of harbour rats stole my car. When I reported it at the police station a greying older cop named Sneaky Pete said in his usual embarrassing loud voice. “I thought you would be in jail”. I said in a loud voice, “no I am not, and you are responsible, I don’t know if it was a result of my bruised ass, your stunt in front of the movie theatre, the pep talk you gave me when I was hiding in the blackberry bush or that neighbourhood house you would not shut-up about”.