'Excuse me? I'm free to go?'
K-W bank robber surrendered, but B.C. cops wouldn't take him
Saturday January 27, 2001
Brian Caldwell
RECORD STAFF
Mark Arnold was flat broke and bone tired, a wasted mess of a man on the run from the law. It had been three weeks since he pulled his first robbery on Aug. 5 last year, stuffing his pockets with cash from a Kitchener gas bar so he could fill his lungs with smoke from crack cocaine.
Now, two bank heists and 3,000 kilometres later, he needed more. His addiction said so.
Heeding his drug of choice had already taken Arnold all the way to Vancouver, where he holed up in a hotel with a crack pipe until every penny from the robberies was spent.
Alone and afraid, he had never been so exhausted -- or so desperate.
Arnold, 30, knew he was wanted by Waterloo regional police after his own mother identified him in a bank videotape she saw on the nightly news.
And with a record of assaults and property crimes going back a decade, he realized he faced his first taste of federal prison when they caught up to him.
Arnold had clearly crossed a line, putting even more distance between himself and the people he still cared about back home.
But had he finally gone too far? Was he past the point of no return?
Arnold turned those questions over and over as he planned his next move, the timid reservations of a battered conscience up against the screaming demands of a terrible addiction.
And then, in an uncharacteristic moment of responsibility, he did the right thing.
Instead of casing another bank, Arnold looked up an old friend in the nearby suburb of Burnaby and went to him for help.
The two of them talked for hours, sizing up a bad situation and agreeing it could be a lot worse.
"He knew I was on a fast road to nowhere,'' recalled Arnold. "He was concerned and he felt I was probably going to end up dead.''
A physical and emotional wreck, he didn't know if he could summon the strength to rob again, although it had proved amazingly easy once he got over his jitters.
And when his friend harped on his seven-year-old daughter in Kitchener, all he had left of a marriage blown apart by his stubborn substance abuse, Arnold concluded there was only one thing to do.
He'd take his lumps and cut his losses, turning himself in to the nearest police station before the powerful urge to get high overwhelmed him again.
On Aug. 26, a Saturday, Arnold accepted a ride from his friend to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police station in Burnaby, then walked in the front doors and introduced himself to a uniformed officer at the reception desk.
He gave his full name. He said he robbed banks to buy crack cocaine. And he urged the officer to confirm the story on his computer so he could start making amends.
"I basically told him I was fed up with my life,'' said Arnold. "I just didn't want to rob anymore at that point.''
Sure enough, a quick check showed the scrawny young man was wanted for robbing the Bank of Montreal branch on Highland Road West in Kitchener on Aug. 8, demanding the teller fill a plastic grocery bag with money before getting away with about $4,700.
The RCMP officer was concerned and supportive, giving Arnold credit for coming clean and ushering him into an interview room to answer a few routine questions.
He was permitted to go outside for a cigarette while further inquiries were made.
And then, to the astonishment of the crack-addicted fugitive, the officer told him there was a catch.
Arnold was wanted, all right. He just wasn't wanted that badly.
The warrant for his arrest, approved by an assistant Crown attorney in Waterloo Region under an administrative system designed to curb costs, only went as far as the Ontario border.
Burnaby police didn't have the legal authority to hold Arnold.
And when the RCMP officer made a telephone call to see about getting the warrant extended to all of Canada, the senior officer in charge of Waterloo regional police that day flatly informed him he wasn't interested.
The upshot, confirmed by both police forces involved, is that Arnold was allowed to walk back out the same door he had come in.
"I said, 'Excuse me? I'm free to go?' '' said Arnold, still incredulous, but not bitter, about how his attempted surrender was botched. "He (the RCMP officer) said, 'Yeah. Waterloo regional aren't willing to come out and get you.'
"I couldn't believe it was happening. Those were my exact words to my friend. It took a lot of courage to do what I did, so for them to give me an opportunity to walk away, well, I was just so relieved I wasn't going to jail.''
The revised plan at that point, recommended by the RCMP officer, was for Arnold to high-tail it home and give himself up to police in Kitchener.
His friend drove him straight from the police station to the bus station, in fact, buying a one-way ticket and seeing him off with more words of encouragement.
But it's a 67-hour bus ride from Burnaby to Toronto and, in all that time alone and on the road, Arnold's resolve weakened as his cravings for crack intensified.
He got off the bus at a station adjacent to Yorkdale Shopping Centre on Aug. 30 and plunked himself down on a bench for one last round of soul-searching.
"Basically, I talked myself out of it,'' said Arnold. "I decided I didn't want to go to jail.''
An hour later, his conscience quieted, he got up and robbed a nearby Canada Trust branch of $1,065.
With that, the spree he had tried to end kicked into high gear instead.
Arnold took a cab to Kitchener, looking for a bigger score, and promptly robbed the Waterloo Regional Credit Union on Weber Street West of $5,460 on Sept. 1.
When he felt guilty -- remembering his little girl or the fear on the faces of tellers he menaced -- he told himself he'd use the cash to stake a fresh start in Medicine Hat, Alta., where crack was particularly hard to find.
But that fantasy never lasted long.
"When I had a pocketful of money, my only concern was finding a place where I could smoke my drugs,'' said Arnold, who had been using crack off and on for several years. "At some points it was 24 hours a day.''
After bouncing around the Kitchener area for a few days, he headed for Ottawa, where he had once attended a drug rehabilitation program and knew some people.
Arnold robbed three Ottawa banks in a week starting Sept. 8, getting away with more than $10,000 as crack dealers made deliveries to his room in a fancy hotel.
Then, afraid he'd get caught if he stayed in one place too long, he boarded another bus back to Vancouver, where the drug was both good and widely available.
Out of money by Sept. 26, Arnold struck again in Burnaby, the very community where police had wished him well as he waltzed away exactly a month earlier.
Next was a bank job in Kelowna, B.C., where he got $4,513 -- enough to rekindle his pipe dream of settling down in Medicine Hat. Arnold actually bought a ticket there and boarded the bus, intending to stay clean.
But during an hour-long stopover in Calgary, he got off to buy one last hit and never made it back on again.
Instead, falling into the same old pattern, Arnold found a reliable dealer, rented a hotel room and hunkered down to smoke his brains out. Within days, assisted by an addicted couple he had met, the money was all gone again.
"If there is a devil on this earth, it is that drug,'' he said. "It will take control of your mind.''
Hurting and penniless, Arnold went out to sell some stolen power tools with his new friends. A contractor they approached got suspicious and called Calgary police.
On Oct. 2, a successful sale since made at a pawn shop, he looked up from his meal at a fast-food restaurant to see a cruiser pulling up outside.
Arnold thought of running but changed his mind, almost relieved that his robbery spree was over.
"That first night in jail was probably the best sleep I'd had in six weeks,'' he said.
By then he had criss-crossed the country, hitting nine banks and a gas bar in less than two months, usually waiting patiently in line, unarmed, until he reached a teller.
Arnold told Calgary police all about it, confessing to bank heists he wasn't even suspected of.
And this time, unlike the last, there was a Canada-wide warrant out for his arrest on the original Kitchener robberies.
Waterloo regional police went out to fetch him a few days later.
Contrite and fully co-operative, Arnold pleaded guilty in a Kitchener courtroom earlier this month to 10 counts of robbery and other minor charges.
Invited to have his say before being sentenced, he gave an impassioned apology to his friends, relatives and victims, warning others about the powerful hold and terrible consequences of crack.
His lawyer, Hal Mattson, submitted a report detailing Arnold's losing battle with booze and drugs since he was a 14-year-old high school student.
Beginning with alcohol and marijuana, he had moved on to powdered cocaine and crack, which he first tried to celebrate a big win in a government-run sports gambling game.
Mattson also suggested the state itself should bear some responsibility for turning Arnold away when he tried to surrender.
"There would have been two robberies, not 10, if they'd just paid the money to transport him back here,'' he said.
Justice Donald MacMillan was curious about the administrative foul-up, getting a partial explanation in court from assistant Crown attorney Steve Hamilton.
But he wasn't persuaded Arnold deserved a break because the system had sent him back out to feed his addiction by knocking off banks. The sentence, imposed to reflect the inherent violence of robbery, was six years and five months in a federal penitentiary.
Arnold took the lengthy sentence in stride, saying he was prepared to get up to 12 years.
And in an interview at the Waterloo Detention Centre in Cambridge while he was waiting to be transferred to a federal prison, he said he's determined to beat his addiction this time.
"What I've done is terribly wrong,'' said Arnold. "I just hope I get to a place where I can get the help I need.''
***************************************************************************
Skyhawk
K-W bank robber surrendered, but B.C. cops wouldn't take him
Saturday January 27, 2001
Brian Caldwell
RECORD STAFF
Mark Arnold was flat broke and bone tired, a wasted mess of a man on the run from the law. It had been three weeks since he pulled his first robbery on Aug. 5 last year, stuffing his pockets with cash from a Kitchener gas bar so he could fill his lungs with smoke from crack cocaine.
Now, two bank heists and 3,000 kilometres later, he needed more. His addiction said so.
Heeding his drug of choice had already taken Arnold all the way to Vancouver, where he holed up in a hotel with a crack pipe until every penny from the robberies was spent.
Alone and afraid, he had never been so exhausted -- or so desperate.
Arnold, 30, knew he was wanted by Waterloo regional police after his own mother identified him in a bank videotape she saw on the nightly news.
And with a record of assaults and property crimes going back a decade, he realized he faced his first taste of federal prison when they caught up to him.
Arnold had clearly crossed a line, putting even more distance between himself and the people he still cared about back home.
But had he finally gone too far? Was he past the point of no return?
Arnold turned those questions over and over as he planned his next move, the timid reservations of a battered conscience up against the screaming demands of a terrible addiction.
And then, in an uncharacteristic moment of responsibility, he did the right thing.
Instead of casing another bank, Arnold looked up an old friend in the nearby suburb of Burnaby and went to him for help.
The two of them talked for hours, sizing up a bad situation and agreeing it could be a lot worse.
"He knew I was on a fast road to nowhere,'' recalled Arnold. "He was concerned and he felt I was probably going to end up dead.''
A physical and emotional wreck, he didn't know if he could summon the strength to rob again, although it had proved amazingly easy once he got over his jitters.
And when his friend harped on his seven-year-old daughter in Kitchener, all he had left of a marriage blown apart by his stubborn substance abuse, Arnold concluded there was only one thing to do.
He'd take his lumps and cut his losses, turning himself in to the nearest police station before the powerful urge to get high overwhelmed him again.
On Aug. 26, a Saturday, Arnold accepted a ride from his friend to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police station in Burnaby, then walked in the front doors and introduced himself to a uniformed officer at the reception desk.
He gave his full name. He said he robbed banks to buy crack cocaine. And he urged the officer to confirm the story on his computer so he could start making amends.
"I basically told him I was fed up with my life,'' said Arnold. "I just didn't want to rob anymore at that point.''
Sure enough, a quick check showed the scrawny young man was wanted for robbing the Bank of Montreal branch on Highland Road West in Kitchener on Aug. 8, demanding the teller fill a plastic grocery bag with money before getting away with about $4,700.
The RCMP officer was concerned and supportive, giving Arnold credit for coming clean and ushering him into an interview room to answer a few routine questions.
He was permitted to go outside for a cigarette while further inquiries were made.
And then, to the astonishment of the crack-addicted fugitive, the officer told him there was a catch.
Arnold was wanted, all right. He just wasn't wanted that badly.
The warrant for his arrest, approved by an assistant Crown attorney in Waterloo Region under an administrative system designed to curb costs, only went as far as the Ontario border.
Burnaby police didn't have the legal authority to hold Arnold.
And when the RCMP officer made a telephone call to see about getting the warrant extended to all of Canada, the senior officer in charge of Waterloo regional police that day flatly informed him he wasn't interested.
The upshot, confirmed by both police forces involved, is that Arnold was allowed to walk back out the same door he had come in.
"I said, 'Excuse me? I'm free to go?' '' said Arnold, still incredulous, but not bitter, about how his attempted surrender was botched. "He (the RCMP officer) said, 'Yeah. Waterloo regional aren't willing to come out and get you.'
"I couldn't believe it was happening. Those were my exact words to my friend. It took a lot of courage to do what I did, so for them to give me an opportunity to walk away, well, I was just so relieved I wasn't going to jail.''
The revised plan at that point, recommended by the RCMP officer, was for Arnold to high-tail it home and give himself up to police in Kitchener.
His friend drove him straight from the police station to the bus station, in fact, buying a one-way ticket and seeing him off with more words of encouragement.
But it's a 67-hour bus ride from Burnaby to Toronto and, in all that time alone and on the road, Arnold's resolve weakened as his cravings for crack intensified.
He got off the bus at a station adjacent to Yorkdale Shopping Centre on Aug. 30 and plunked himself down on a bench for one last round of soul-searching.
"Basically, I talked myself out of it,'' said Arnold. "I decided I didn't want to go to jail.''
An hour later, his conscience quieted, he got up and robbed a nearby Canada Trust branch of $1,065.
With that, the spree he had tried to end kicked into high gear instead.
Arnold took a cab to Kitchener, looking for a bigger score, and promptly robbed the Waterloo Regional Credit Union on Weber Street West of $5,460 on Sept. 1.
When he felt guilty -- remembering his little girl or the fear on the faces of tellers he menaced -- he told himself he'd use the cash to stake a fresh start in Medicine Hat, Alta., where crack was particularly hard to find.
But that fantasy never lasted long.
"When I had a pocketful of money, my only concern was finding a place where I could smoke my drugs,'' said Arnold, who had been using crack off and on for several years. "At some points it was 24 hours a day.''
After bouncing around the Kitchener area for a few days, he headed for Ottawa, where he had once attended a drug rehabilitation program and knew some people.
Arnold robbed three Ottawa banks in a week starting Sept. 8, getting away with more than $10,000 as crack dealers made deliveries to his room in a fancy hotel.
Then, afraid he'd get caught if he stayed in one place too long, he boarded another bus back to Vancouver, where the drug was both good and widely available.
Out of money by Sept. 26, Arnold struck again in Burnaby, the very community where police had wished him well as he waltzed away exactly a month earlier.
Next was a bank job in Kelowna, B.C., where he got $4,513 -- enough to rekindle his pipe dream of settling down in Medicine Hat. Arnold actually bought a ticket there and boarded the bus, intending to stay clean.
But during an hour-long stopover in Calgary, he got off to buy one last hit and never made it back on again.
Instead, falling into the same old pattern, Arnold found a reliable dealer, rented a hotel room and hunkered down to smoke his brains out. Within days, assisted by an addicted couple he had met, the money was all gone again.
"If there is a devil on this earth, it is that drug,'' he said. "It will take control of your mind.''
Hurting and penniless, Arnold went out to sell some stolen power tools with his new friends. A contractor they approached got suspicious and called Calgary police.
On Oct. 2, a successful sale since made at a pawn shop, he looked up from his meal at a fast-food restaurant to see a cruiser pulling up outside.
Arnold thought of running but changed his mind, almost relieved that his robbery spree was over.
"That first night in jail was probably the best sleep I'd had in six weeks,'' he said.
By then he had criss-crossed the country, hitting nine banks and a gas bar in less than two months, usually waiting patiently in line, unarmed, until he reached a teller.
Arnold told Calgary police all about it, confessing to bank heists he wasn't even suspected of.
And this time, unlike the last, there was a Canada-wide warrant out for his arrest on the original Kitchener robberies.
Waterloo regional police went out to fetch him a few days later.
Contrite and fully co-operative, Arnold pleaded guilty in a Kitchener courtroom earlier this month to 10 counts of robbery and other minor charges.
Invited to have his say before being sentenced, he gave an impassioned apology to his friends, relatives and victims, warning others about the powerful hold and terrible consequences of crack.
His lawyer, Hal Mattson, submitted a report detailing Arnold's losing battle with booze and drugs since he was a 14-year-old high school student.
Beginning with alcohol and marijuana, he had moved on to powdered cocaine and crack, which he first tried to celebrate a big win in a government-run sports gambling game.
Mattson also suggested the state itself should bear some responsibility for turning Arnold away when he tried to surrender.
"There would have been two robberies, not 10, if they'd just paid the money to transport him back here,'' he said.
Justice Donald MacMillan was curious about the administrative foul-up, getting a partial explanation in court from assistant Crown attorney Steve Hamilton.
But he wasn't persuaded Arnold deserved a break because the system had sent him back out to feed his addiction by knocking off banks. The sentence, imposed to reflect the inherent violence of robbery, was six years and five months in a federal penitentiary.
Arnold took the lengthy sentence in stride, saying he was prepared to get up to 12 years.
And in an interview at the Waterloo Detention Centre in Cambridge while he was waiting to be transferred to a federal prison, he said he's determined to beat his addiction this time.
"What I've done is terribly wrong,'' said Arnold. "I just hope I get to a place where I can get the help I need.''
***************************************************************************
Skyhawk