ARE THE POLICE COMPETENT AND PROFESSIONAL?

I have both personal experience as well as documented evidence that suggests that Police Forces are a power unto themselves with nothing but token oversight and accountability. Above and beyond the personal and documented evidence there is also anecdotal. Movies and documentaries have been made about real life situations including Serpico, Rodney King and others. I have a close relative who spent thirty years as a Toronto cop as well as another who thought he would like to be. After graduation and seeing Waterloo Region's finest up close, he changed his mind. I went to school with a couple of kids who became Regional cops. To be blunt they were not the best and the brightest they were the dumbest and biggest.

Yesterday's Kitchener-Waterloo Record has this story: "Pickton case like Bernardo's". There is currently a public inquiry underway in British Columbia into the failure of police there to apprehend notorious mass murderer Robert Pickton. As with earlier postings here in the Waterloo Region Advocate, one of the issues surrounds who the victims were and an apparent bias against certain members of our society. When it comes to the powerless and disenfranchised, drug addicted prostitutes are front and centre. It has been suggested that if middle class housewives or professional women (other than those in the sex trade) were the victims, our Police and Justice System would have moved much more quickly. The reason for the Public inquiry is obvious damage control as whenever the sins , incompetence or weaknesses in the Judicial System become too glaring it becomes necessary to give the appearance to the public that something will be changed and improved. It rarely is but the object is to give the appearance; reality is a far second.

Deputy chief Jennifer Evans of Ontario's Peel Regional police reviewed the Pickton file for this Public Inquiry. She concluded that "...investigations by both the Vancouver police and the RCMP were plagued by poor communication and a lack of leadership". Furthermore she said "...for the most part, investigators on the ground were talking with each other, but their superiors were not." Also she added "...some of those superiors appeared to be unaware of the most basic details of the missing women case. Even when officers were talking, they often failed to act with the urgency the case demanded...".

All of this leads me to the following thoughts and questions. How are detectives trained for their positions? What is the criteria for promoting officers to leadership and supervisory roles? Are personal loyalties a greater consideration for promotion than competence and intelligence? Is the pool of "talent" at Police departments, available for promotion, weak to start with? Who actually picks Police Chiefs? Please tell me it isn't local municipal politicians and their appointed civilian Police Boards. If it indeed is then what criteria would any politician use above and beyond being loyal, a team player and a firm believer in the status quo? Here in these preceeding questions is the reasl nub of the problem. Don't hold your breath thinking this or any other Inquiry will address these systemic problems.