Taking the Rap

Women Doing Time for Society's Crimes

Ann Hansen

• Publisher: Between the Lines
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781771133562
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Jura
• Subtopic: Geschlechtszugehörigkeit & das Gesetz

When Ann Hansen was arrested in 1983 along with the four other members of the radical anarchist group known as the Squamish Five, her long-time commitment to prison abolition suddenly became much more personal. Now, she could see firsthand the brutal effects of imprisonment on real women's lives.

During more than thirty years in prison and on parole, the bonds and experiences Hansen shared with other imprisoned women only strengthened her resolve to fight the prison industrial complex. In Taking the Rap, she shares gripping stories of women caught in a system that treats them as disposable-poor women, racialized women, and Indigenous women, whose stories are both heartbreaking and enraging. Often serving time for minor offences due to mental health issues, abuse, and poverty, women prisoners are offered up as scapegoats by a society keen to find someone to punish for the problems we all have created.

Part I
Through the Looking Glass, 1983

“Some political prisoners are arrested for staging public demonstrations that address poverty, and some are arrested for living in poverty. Some actively protest social inequality, while others turn to drugs or alcohol because they can no longer bear the brunt of this inequality. Some choose to draw attention to injustice by their words and actions, while others are swept off the streets because their very presence is a public exposure of this injustice. Every prisoner is a political prisoner.”

Kelly Pflug-Back, in a letter from Vanier Prison, Milton, Ontario, 2012

One

When the smoke finally settled, the cop car slowly turned around and headed down the Squamish highway, leaving behind the remnants of what looked like a battle scene. Looking back through the foggy rearview window, I saw our pickup truck for the last time, sitting in a semicircle of shattered glass where its canopy window had been blown out. A dozen men in camouflage army fatigues carrying rifles were milling about the unmarked cop cars parked askew on both sides of the highway. The rancid smell of tear gas filled the cop car, and left the men still on the scene wiping stinging tears off their faces as they went about preparing to leave.

The suspense was over for the time being. The Plexiglas barrier that separated Julie and me from the cops in the front seat gave us the feeling that we could relax for a little while, even though we didn’t dare talk or even look at one another. I felt lucky to be alive.

A fine drizzle covered the windshield, so the cops turned on their defroster and windshield wipers, making it difficult to hear conversations. If we had decided to talk, there was no doubt they would be listening. That much we knew for sure.

I looked over at Julie once the car had settled down to a cruising speed. This sudden turn of events only strengthened my feelings of loyalty toward my friend. She always looked beautiful, no matter what. Her long black hair was dishevelled and tangled with bits of gravel. Her winter parka was covered in dirty slush, and her black mascara traced long dark lines down her face where her tears had flowed. She sat resolutely facing the window with her arms folded protectively across her chest, giving me the impression she did not want to be consoled. I stifled an impulse to put my arm around her.

Instead, I concentrated on the black asphalt highway disappearing rapidly under the car as we sped around the steep winding curves along the coastal highway. I peered out the window, trying to catch glimpses of the grey ocean through the gnarled pine trees that managed to survive among the rocky cliffs below us. On the other side, the steep sides of the mountains disappeared above the passenger window. I figured I had better take advantage of the opportunity to admire this coastal region of British Columbia, because it would probably be my last.

One of the cops turned halfway around and pushed apart the barrier window, just a little. “So what were you gals doing up here today?” His eyes contradicted his friendly voice. They looked cold, yet nervous, like we were the ones carrying the guns. I wondered why he thought we would engage in some casual banter with him after such a violent takedown.

After we ignored him for a few minutes, he nodded his head toward the road up ahead. “You don’t have any friends up here waiting for you, eh?”

It occurred to me that they really did think we had people waiting to ambush them around every corner. I started noticing that each time we rounded a curve in the highway, it seemed as though they were peering ahead to see the ambush before it was too late. The light rain and cold winter air had created a fog that grew thicker as we made our way toward sea level. Their mood was infectious; before long, Julie and I found ourselves trying to make out the silhouettes of nonexistent parked cars in the fog, just out of reach of their headlights—wishful thinking on our part, paranoia on theirs.

When the fog became so dense we could only see what appeared in the beams of the headlights, I started to worry more about the speed we were driving, and washed-out bridges. The winter rains had caused mudslides in areas where the forests had been clear cut off the mountain sides. In the past couple of years, the Squamish highway had been the scene of several disasters when bridges had been washed away in those mudslides, and unsuspecting motorists had fallen like dominoes into the river chasm below.

“So where do you think they’re taking us?” whispered Julie, forcing me back to the situation at hand.

“I don’t know.”

“I’m so scared that the boys are dead.” Her eyes welled up with tears.

“Dead! No, Jules. I thought the same thing when I heard the gunshots go off, but I’m sure I saw them sitting in another cop car when we were waiting to leave.”

“Are you sure?” She finally turned to look at me head on. Her pale blue eyes had that kind of energy that was almost physical.

“Unless they have twins who were coincidentally handcuffed in a police car at the same remote spot we were at today,” I reassured her. She smiled faintly. “Remember not to say anything other than you want to see your lawyer,” I reminded her in a low whisper. She nodded her head vigorously.

The same cop turned around and gave us a venomous stare. “Listen up. I don’t want you whispering at all!”

We settled into watching the wet, black highway snaking along in front of us and listening to the mesmerizing slap of the windshield wipers and whir of the tires racing along on the slick asphalt. I was still in a state of shock from the massive bust. Was this going to be the last time we would be outside? Was it possible that they knew everything, or were we just being busted for the stolen weapons and vehicle? I clung desperately to the hope that this was just about the guns and the truck, even though all the cops in army fatigues, and the way we had been taken down, testified to so much more.

Finally we rounded our last curve, and the lights from the outskirts of Squamish twinkled in the dusk. As we caught up to several other unmarked cars waiting at the first intersection for the lights to turn green, we realized we were actually part of a small convoy. The convoy cruised smoothly through the last few blocks before we reached the Squamish RCMP building.

The police car braked so abruptly in front of the entranceway that we lurched forward in our seat from the momentum. We got the distinct impression they were still anticipating an ambush from our mysterious comrades. No sooner had the car stopped moving than the cops in the front seat jumped out and scanned the horizon suspiciously, keeping their hands loosely resting on their gun holsters. Once again their fear was palpable, causing us to squint into the grey mist that had settled down, softly obliterating everything outside of the RCMP parking lot. Was it possible that someone was actually out there waiting to rescue us? If so, who knows what the cops would be capable of, with all that fear motivating their every move? If there was one thing I was sure of, after all those months of robbery preparation, fear is the root cause of most “accidents.”

We were so busy trying to see if there were some unexpected saviours hidden in the far reaches of the RCMP parking lot that we looked right through Brent and Doug, sitting in the police car parked directly in front of us. By the time my eyes began to focus on objects other than potential rescuers, they were turned around in their seats, staring at us through the rearview window.

“Look!” gasped Julie, bouncing up and down in her seat like a little girl who had just spotted Santa Claus. Brent looked back at me with sad, longing eyes. He looked pretty rough. In the dim overhead lights of the car’s interior, I could still make out how red and swollen his eyes were. Doug looked pretty much the same way.

“Where’s Gerry?” Julie’s emotions had swung from delight to despair again. I scoured the other cars parked behind and in front of us as best I could in the fading light.

Then we saw a cop open the back door of the car in front of Brent and Doug. Out came Gerry, his parka covered in slush and gravel. The cop escorting him motioned toward the door, but Gerry still managed to turn around and look for us. When he saw us, his face broke into a big smile. It occurred to me that if the three of them had been cleaned up, they would have looked a lot more like undercover cops than any of our marginalized friends. Brent, with his athletic six-foot-two physique, had taken to wearing his once long, curly black hair very short and sported a neatly trimmed beard in an attempt to blend in with people in suburbia. Even though Doug’s camouflaged jacket was also covered in slush, his clean-cut, chiselled face and broad shoulders reminded me of a young soldier.

The cops took Julie and me into the RCMP lockup together and placed us in open barred cells beside one another in what appeared to be a small cellblock. All we could see was a cinderblock wall across from our cells, and from the way the sounds echoed off the walls, we assumed there were no other women in our block.

“Hello!” Julie called out. Gerry returned a muffled greeting through a solid metal fire door that separated us from the men.

“I miss you so much! Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” he laughed. “We’re all in one piece, if that’s what you mean. So they got us all beside each other. How convenient, eh?”

“Yeah,” Julie yelled. “What happened to you?” We knew better than to say anything to each other that the police didn’t already know.

Doug chuckled. “We were just sitting there in the back of the truck freezing our butts off when suddenly all hell breaks loose. I thought we were going to die for sure. They smashed in the back window of the canopy and shot a couple of rounds of tear gas in so we couldn’t see or breathe. If they hadn’t dragged us out of there as fast as they did, we probably would have asphyxiated. But somehow I don’t think they dragged us out to save our lives or nothin’. What about you two? Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Julie said. “It was kind of funny, ’cause there was this sign that said there was rock blasting going on up ahead on the highway. So we come to this long lineup of cars waiting for them to clear the rock off the highway. They’re letting cars go through one at a time. So when it’s our turn, we drive along until we come to this flag man standing in front of this big dump truck parked right across the highway. This flag man motions for Alice to roll down her window so he can talk to her.” Julie was using my alias in case our cells were bugged. “Alice says to us that he reminds her of the cartoon guy, Dudley Do-Right, the RCMP guy. So we’re laughing at that when sure enough, right out of a nightmare, this guy transforms into Dudley Do-Right, and puts his one hand in the window and grabs Alice, and opens the door with the other. I barely had time to figure out what’s happening when some cop grabs me by the hair and drags me out of the truck onto the ground. That’s when I heard the shotgun blast, and I thought for sure you guys had been shot!”

It was hard yelling through the door.

“When I was lying on the ground with that cop on my back pressing his gun to my head, I was facing you. I could see you under the truck, facedown in the gravel with a cop lying on top of you, but I couldn’t see your face. I thought you were dead.”

There was a long silence as we reflected on the seriousness of our situation. It made me tired, so tired. I sat down on the cot that was fastened into the grey cinderblock wall and wished I could turn off the shimmering fluorescent lights.

A cop suddenly strode in and handed everyone a roll of toilet paper, a facecloth, and a comb through the bars. Then he asked if anyone wanted a shower to wash off the tear gas. I was way too paranoid to get naked in a shower stall in an RCMP lockup, so I declined. It struck me as strange that they should be concerned about our comfort. This experience certainly conflicted with my expectations of police brutality.

I took a minute to scrub the dirt and tear gas off my face, and ran the comb briefly through the tangles in my hair. After I was done, the tiredness was unbearable, so I curled up in a fetal position to succumb to a few minutes’ rest.

I must have just dozed off when I was startled into wakefulness by the sound of keys jangling in the cell door. Two uniformed cops stood in front of my cell, staring at me disdainfully. Whatever happened to that hospitality cop with the comb and facecloth? The old adage “If it’s too good to be true, it probably is” can be applied to the experience of hospitality cops; the offer to use a comb is actually a sneaky way for the cops to get a hair sample for possible DNA testing.

There were no sounds coming from the other cells. I had been in the constant company of Brent, Julie, Gerry, or Doug for so long now that I felt a sense of security in their presence, as though we were family. This was the first time in years I had the feeling of being alone, and it filled me with fear.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“We have a few questions.” Without asking, they picked up the comb and facecloth from the sink and led the way down the hall. As I expected, the others were not in their cells.

I followed them out of the cellblock area almost immediately into a small, empty office with only a chair, a large wooden desk, and a cop with an expressionless face sitting behind it, engrossed in a sheath of papers lying in front of him. I glanced around for a thick telephone book, an electronic device, or anything else that could be used as an instrument of torture, but there was nothing but the desk, the chair, and the man.

Even though I had been very tired only a few minutes before, it’s amazing how a police interrogation room can wake a person up. I repeated the mantra “I want to speak to my lawyer. I want to speak to my lawyer” over and over to myself. But when he opened up the questioning with my alias—“Miss Lillycropp, take a seat”—I decided it might be best to go along with this charade. Maybe, just maybe, this was only about the guns and the truck.

“So, Miss Lillycropp, what were you and your friends doing up in the mountains?” He gave me a piercing look.

Without hesitation I said, “Camping. Winter camping.”

“That is your name, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I said firmly.

There was a long silence, during which he stared at me with open contempt. Then for dramatic effect he slammed the open sheaf of papers shut. “Quit with the bullshit, Hansen. You are in very deep trouble. We know perfectly well that you are not Alice Ann Lillycropp, and if you don’t start telling us the truth, you will never see the light of day outside a prison cell again.”

It wasn’t difficult to look bummed out as he listed the number of offences I was facing: possession of stolen weapons, a stolen truck, and false identification. But when he stopped at that, my feeling of hope remained intact, although I still felt depressed. I maintained a look of despair.

He waited for me to say something, but when I didn’t, he rather quickly aborted his tactics of intimidation and decided to try flattery instead.

“You strike me as an intelligent person, Miss Hansen, and no doubt played a significant role in acquiring all those weapons, the truck, and the ID, but I assure you, it is in your best interests to cooperate with us if you ever want to be free again.” He sat motionless, waiting for my response.

“I want to speak to my lawyer,” I said in a voice I didn’t recognize as my own. For years I had mentally prepared for this moment, picturing myself as strong and defiant in the face of the inevitable torture. Despite the pounding of the thick telephone book against my diaphragm, legs, and face, I would still muster the courage to stand tall and repeat, “I want to speak to my lawyer.” Sitting on the wooden chair, balanced precariously on the brink of the concrete stairwell, I would repeat, “I want to speak to my lawyer.” No matter how powerful the electric shock, I would focus on the phrase, “I want to speak to my lawyer.” But here I was without any torture whatsoever, and the voice I heard was so much weaker and unsteadier than my own.

I can only assume they had higher expectations for myself than I did, because instead of playing good cop/bad cop or, worse yet, resorting to torture, he asked for the name of my lawyer.

“Stan Guenther,” I said with the same sense of relief I might have felt if Jesus was about to intervene.

“We’ll give him a call, and you’ll see him when we get you down to Vancouver.” And that was the end of that.

When they escorted me back to my cellblock, the guys weren’t back yet, but I squeezed Julie’s hand through the bars as I passed. The affinity I felt toward her could not have been stronger. For a few minutes we sat in silence, until we heard the laughter of the guys bouncing off the walls. I wondered how different it would be to be arrested by yourself.

I also wondered how different it would be to be Indigenous or Black or a white sex worker arrested on the streets of the Downtown Eastside. As these scenes unfolded, it began to dawn on me that all the brutality and torture I had anticipated would have unfolded if I had been any of the above, but the fact I was a young white woman who presented as middle class cemented an unconscious bond with the cops and probably the future judge and jury, who would identify with me as “just like their sister or cousin” as opposed to an “other.”

“Hey, Alice,” Julie whispered loudly thro...