Two young women were found dead inside a Fort Erie waterfront mansion back in 2021. Here’s everything we know about what happened that night … nothing.
I’m exaggerating a bit here, sure, but not much. Thanks to the police’s obsession with secrecy, we know almost nothing about what happened that night. Who were those two young women? What were they doing there? What were the circumstances which led to their death?
In the weeks and months following that tragedy, police released virtually zero relevant information to the public. One of the only bits of information they did release was about a fast food order that was found inside the house, and they were asking the public’s help for identifying where it came from. Not exactly the information that was top of mind for the general public.
Nearly all the information the public wanted — including the fact the murder occurred inside an Airbnb rental, that there was a raucous party going on, and that the accused murderer was a rapper from Toronto — came first from journalists working the story, not from police.
As one of those journalists, I was bombarded with rumours and speculation from everyone I talked to while covering that case. Many of those rumours were so heinous and baseless that I wouldn’t dare repeat them here. But those rumours definitely made their way out into the community. Those unfounded rumours now form the basis of what most people in town have accepted as the official record of what happened that night.
The police could correct that record and offer at least their theory of what happened. They didn’t. And they won’t.
Because the police are very, very bad at releasing relevant information to the public. Most official records of a big incident released by the cops goes something like this: We received a call at approximately 4:52 p.m., police arrived at the scene and interacted with a male; that man is now dead; the SIU has invoked their mandate and we will have no further comment.
That’s it, that’s all they ever say. Then the SIU does some secretive half-hearted “investigation” that takes seven months, and at the end, the cops say, well, now that the investigation is complete we will have no comment.
They transition seamlessly from “No comment because the investigation is ongoing” to “No comment because this investigation is now closed” without anything resembling accountability or transparency.
The idea that keeping silent will work is absurd in the social media era
Which is why we should not be applauding them when, last week, they decided they would not be releasing the name of a Lincoln man charged with first-degree murder in a case the police say was an incident of “intimate partner violence.”
Disclaimer time: I don’t know what I’m talking about and you should not listen to me. In an article published in the St. Catharines Standard, Regional Councillor Laura Ip explained why she believes the cops made the “correct call” by not releasing the name of the accused killer. Laura Ip most certainly knows more than me about these situations, as she works with a shelter for women fleeing gender-based violence and helped them produce a report on the subject.
But unfortunately, I still have a column (the collapse of local media and TorStar bankruptcy couldn’t stop me) and I still get to write my dumb opinion every week.
And in my dumb opinion, the police made the wrong call when they decided to keep the accused murderer's name a secret.
Here’s why: Because it’s not really a secret. Anyone who really wants to know the name can find out by going on social media, where the man’s name is being freely passed around. There are public GoFundMe campaigns for the victim’s family which can be easily used to identify the people involved.
So the police refusing to release the name isn’t really doing anything to keep the name out of the public realm, all it does is undermine local media and give the police even more confidence that they are doing the right thing by never telling us anything.
But most importantly, police need to release credible information in order to combat misinformation. The idea that keeping silent will work is absurd in the social media era. The lack of information from the police simply creates a void that will be filled by rumour and speculation and misinformation. That’s not a good thing, and neither is withholding the name of a man accused of breaking the rules of civilized society in one of the worst ways possible.
James Culic is Fort Erie Race Track’s comms guy, a former journalist, and current columnist here at PelhamToday. Find out how to yell at him at the bottom of the page.
