Two situations jump out in this next story. How could a field test get it so wrong and cleanliness at the Remand Centre. If Ms Goodin's diary entries at the end of the article are to be believed, it sounds like certain areas are in severe need of Molly Maid. Interesting because for years the place was deplored and portrayed in the media and elsewhere as a wretched little hole, that is, until a shiny new one was build. From the outside it looks great but inside?
Read on.
Sincerely,
Clare L. Pieuk
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Grandma jailed for 12 days in heroin mixupTuesday, July 26, 2011
Alyshah Hashan, Staff Reporter
Janet Goodwin 66, of Warroad, Minnesota was arrested on the border as she tried to enter Manitoba for a bingo game in April (Facebook) Janet Goodin had hoped to spend the weekend with her family, starting with a half-hour drive over the border from Minnesota to meet her daughters for a game of bingo in Manitoba.
But when a jar of motor oil stowed in the back of her van tested positive for heroin during a border check, those plans changed.
That weekend in April ended with the 66-year-old grandmother in jail facing charges of heroin possession and trafficking, and enduring what she calls “the most humiliating experience of my whole life.”
Twelve days passed before an RCMP lab test showed the jar to contain nothing more than used motor oil and all charges were dropped.
And now Goodin, a retired office worker, has retained a lawyer and is considering her options as she awaits a Border Services report on the incident.
"I went to bingo and ended up in jail,” she said. “I’m probably the last person in the world who would be smuggling drugs.”
Goodin and her family frequently use the border crossing, which is situated between Warroad, Minnesota, where she lives, and Sprague, a rural Manitoba town two and a half hours south of Winnipeg.
On that particular weekend, she was pulled over for a secondary check because she was bringing some chairs to her daughter Angela. While she was lining up to pay duty on the chairs, border guards presented her with an unlabelled jar found in the back of her van, she said.
“I believe it’s motor oil,” she recalled telling them.
Soon after, she was asked to step into a room and informed that field tests showed the fluid tested positive for heroin.
“I was in complete disbelief,” said Goodin. “I’m not a drug dealer.”
Neither, she said, is her son-in-law, who poured the motor oil into the can after changing her oil two years ago.
Federal officials, including the Canada Border Services Agency, have declined to comment about the case, citing privacy issues. But a source says the suspicions of the border officials were first raised after they found the Mason jar containing the oil in a closed-off compartment in the trunk.
Goodin’s memories of that night on April 20 are blurred with many interrogations, but she vividly recalls being stripped naked and searched, having to remove the incontinence pad she sometimes wears.
“I am a really private person. I was raised on a farm. When I was young I didn’t wear low-cut blouses. To stand there naked in front of other women, and have them inspecting you — it was indescribable how humiliated I was, and still am.”
She was arrested by the RCMP for possession of heroin, and transported late that night to the Steinbach detachment.
“It was surreal. I was angry at first then I started getting really, really scared,” she said.
On the following morning she was transferred to Winnipeg Remand Centre and had more charges added.
“She was charged on three counts, trafficking in heroin, possession for the purpose of trafficking in heroin and importation. There is usually a minimum of two years in jail for the drug couriering,” said Scott Newman, the Winnipeg-based lawyer who was representing her at the time.
The judge granted her bail of $5,000 with a $15,000 surety. Her daughters borrowed the money from family to pay the cash, but couldn’t provide the surety because their houses are on a reserve under federal jurisdiction.
“It’s been a nightmare from the beginning . . . to being ridiculed in our [small] community. It was devastating for our entire family,” said Goodin’s daughter Tina, who lives on Buffalo Point First Nation, near Sprague. “I had to take my daughter out of school because [the other children] were harassing her at school.”
Goodin kept a journal while in prison, and admitted she thought she would be most scared of the inmates. Those fears turned out to be unfounded.
“They were very, very good to me. They treated me like their grandmother, they tried to take care of me, they carried my tray,” she said.
Twelve days later, on May 3 — her granddaughter’s birthday — she was released. The reason, she says she was told, was that the RCMP analysis had come back negative. All charges were dropped.
The federal source said the Canada Border Services Agency will be conducting an internal review to find out what went wrong and understand what caused the initial drug test to come back positive.
“We don’t know what caused the positive, whether maybe the container at some point had come into contact with something or whether it was a false positive,” the source said.
“But it’s used motor oil for sure. It’s not drugs.”
RCMP Sgt. Line Karpish said the arrest was based on information provided by border agents and that there was an attempt to conduct further testing on the oil as quickly as possible.
“We acted in good faith,” said Karpish.
Jeffrey Harris, Goodin’s current lawyer, said this case is important because it could happen to anyone.
“Think of the consequences for anyone crossing the border innocently. If there is a faulty testing system or negligent work being done it’s frightening,” he said.
“These are the guardians of the border, they’re supposed to catch bad guys — not innocent grandmothers who never got more than a traffic ticket in her life.”
He says until he receives the Border Services report, he can’t advise her on the best course of action. He expects to have it in the next few weeks.
Quotes from Janet Goodin’s jailhouse diary
I woke up again this morning aware of a constant gnawing anxiety — my constant accompaniment all day, every day. I open my eyes. I am in jail. IN JAIL!
The Winnipeg Remand Centre is an old building; the booking area, especially the holding cells, were filthy. It was nothing like the nice clean white-painted jails I had seen on TV. There was dirt around the edges of the floor and swirls of various hair on the floor. The toilets were disgusting.
My daughter is coming to visit at 7 p.m. She is bringing denture cleaning tablets. I have not been able to properly clean my dentures since I got here. I have asked several times for cleaner; I was told to ask the nurse. I asked the nurse, and she said they don’t provide that, and it is not available through the canteen either. They finally wrote up a form to leave at the main office giving me permission to have my daughter bring some for me.
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