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.

SCHOOLYARD BULLIES

Guess who's the biggest bully in the schoolyard? You may or may not be surprised to learn that it's the School Board themselves. Specifically that would be the Waterloo Region District School Board. This opinion of mine is shared by parents who have come up against the system , some very honest and courageous teachers within the system and finally I would suggest by Record reporter Luisa D'Amato in her Opinion piece in Saturday's Kitchener-Waterloo Record titled "Tory M.P.P.'s challenge public school board over child care". Let me quote her directly and you the reader decide if I'm overstating the case: "I covered education for many years at this paper. Sitting at school board meetings, I was routinely infuriated by what I saw as the board's culture of hostility to dissent, and it's intransigence."

"...the board's culture of hostility to dissent...". Wow that's pretty strong language and it's accurate. This I know from personal experience dealing with them when my children were young and in their clutches. You can't imagine my relief when both my children were out of high school and they and their parents no longer had to deal with the cowardly bullies who run our education system. My wife and I spent seven years in and out of Court, as a direct result of the School Board's refusal to deal honestly and properly with issues that they bore responsibilty for. Although our case was thank god significantly less horrific than the Ron Archer case, that case is one that this School Board should all wear to their graves. Indeed if there was one iota of justice in the local education system, there would have been a housecleaning at the Waterloo Region District School Board over their grotesque and I believe criminal failure to stop that pedophile in his tracks. Instead the Board enabled his criminal activities with a well known policy of transferring teachers which became known as "passing the trash". As far as bullying goes, it is our Judicial system which enables the school Board to bully parents. At that time the Waterloo Region District School Board had an annual budget of $350 million, just slightly higher than mine (HA!). They used their financial superiority to beat up on dissenting parents via the ridiculously costly judicial system. Whether civil suits, provincial offences such as Trespass or whatever their gutless little minds could dream up, nothing was too petty or malicious for them. The last thing however they would do is honestly discuss, debate , comprimise or even acknowledge when they had a problem much less admit a mistake. "...the board's culture of hostility to dissent and their intransigence.". Thankyou for this and other writings over the years Luisa D'Amato.

PASS THE JOINT

The hypocrisy ! Our legal system if not founded upon marijuana certainly has been maintained by it. How many billions of taxpayers dollars have been funnelled towards the Judicial System in their neverending, never sucessful battle against hemp? The devil's weed has indirectly financed Judges, lawyers, prosecuters, police and so many more for decades. If the Liberals were to eventually legalize marijuana what could take it's place? How can you justify a ravenous, always voracious Judicial System after you remove it's foundation? Sure you can always jail bankrobbers, stickup artists and shoplifters but seriously there just aren't enough of them. Maybe we can go back to prohibition. Ban alcohol. It's been done before and it worked (sort of).

Today's K-W Record has the following story: "Liberals want to make pot legal". As Bob Rae, interim leader of the Liberals stated, " Let's face up to it, Canada- the war on drugs has been a complete bust". More significantly for me Rae stated Canada should avoid " sending another generation of young people into prison". As expected the Conservatives in Ottawa took offense and said that the Liberals were "soft on crime". This is more evidence that the Conservatives proposed expansion of the prison system has less to do with real crime and criminals and more to do with ideology and jacking up the "crime" statistics. I think that we can count on two things now. One the Conservatives will be spending more taxpayers money touting the evils of marijuana and two the entire Court, Judicial System and Police will be voting Conservative from here on. It's all about preserving privelege, income and entitlement on the backs of ordinary Canadians: even if you have to make criminals of them. Not to worry though, I'm sure the Conservatives will again expand the Pardon system to remove the stigma of being a criminal. Afterall they don't want to offend their American friends by restricting Canadian tourists from crossing the border and spending money stateside.

DIAGNOSIS : MURDER

Apologies here in that I borrowed the above title from last night's "the fifth estate". It was on Channel #26 at 8 pm. and it absolutely blew my mind. I make very little pretense that I have a lot of respect for the law but last night stunned me. The fifth estate interviewed medical experts who essentially said that the science around SBS (shaken baby syndrome) has been voodoo science. They have done physical simulations with toddlers and infants (ie. weighted mannikins) with electrical sensors attached and basically it is nearly impossible for an adult human being to lift, hold and shake an infant long enough to produce the brain damage that has been found in dead infants and children. Their conclusion is that yes indeed children and toddlers do die of brain injuries but that the cause absolutely is not due to so called shaken baby syndrome. It appears that for decades now when doctors or pathologists couldn't determine an absolute cause of death, the fallback position was SBS.

The ramifications are absolutely stunning as is the application of the law. It seems that the majority of times when the legal system jumps in and lays charges, that the accused are young, poor and uneducated. It's even better if the "evidence" points to the father having recently been alone with the child. If young, poor, uneducated and male isn't available then the legal system will suffice with young, poor, uneducated and female. James Lockyer of the Association For The Wrongly Convicted has become involved with a number of cases. This gentleman and his group have made a name for themselves in regards to numerous wrongful murder convictions in Canada. In one of the more egregious cases involving medical and legal malfeasance a young girl was supposed to have been sodomized and strangled. The "perpetrater", her Uncle spent over a decade in jail not only for a crime he didn't commit but in fact for a crime that did not exist. Further forensic examination years later determined that the original pathologist had a long history of making mountains out of molehills. The girl had actually died of natural causes and was neither sodomized nor murdered.

Somewhere along the line the idea of "guilty beyond a reasonable doubt" has become twisted and distorted into guilty because you're the likeliest candidate we could come up with on short notice and it dosen't make the justice system look good having unsolved crimes. This sort of culture finds it very easy to throw blame on the fat, ugly, poor, disadvantaged, scarred, uneducated, short, black people among us. Our legal system discriminates, always has and as a result have brought themselves into disrepute. SHAME ON AN ENTIRE LEGAL SYSTEM .

DO WHAT I SAY, NOT WHAT I DO

Maybe in the whole scheme and history of police misconduct, this is small potatoes. Or maybe not. It certainly gives rise to legitimate concerns regarding police enforcement of laws, as well as concerns as to the culture within police departments. These concerns are not new. Several books have been written in the past by well known authors describing allegedly fictitious police departments. These books while fiction have had no difficulty in describing alcohol and drug abuse along with other morally questionable behaviour.

Today's K-W Record carrys a story titled "Officer guilty of Police Act charges in drug scandal". If it were only one or two Officers it could be written off as a couple of bad eggs. Unfortunately although only one Officer pled guilty this time to buying and using marijuana, she testified that a fellow Officer supplied drugs on occasion and she bought and used them in the company of fellow Officers in social settings. This article goes on to state "Last year, four other Waterloo Regional Police officers pleaded guilty to discreditable conduct charges under the police act for failing to report drug useage by officers and citizens during poker parties held at officers' homes".

The hypocrisy in these same officers charging citzens with drug offences is unbelievable. Questions need to be answered. Are our drug laws ridiculous? If police officers (plural) behave as if they are, then how are the rest of us to behave? Is there a systemic problem within the Waterloo Regional Police service? Exactly how accountable are our police officers and to whom exactly?

NO JUSTICE FOR TWO WORKERS DEATHS

Today's Kitchener-Waterloo Record carrys the following story " Supervisor fined $22,500 in deaths of migrant workers on Grey County farm". Sixteen months ago two workers were overcome by fumes while attempting to repair a pump at Filsinger's organic foods and orchards near Ayton, south of Hanover Ontario. The original charges under the Occupational Health and safety act included the owners and a supervisor. The charges were dropped against the owners and the supervisor pled guilty to a single charge. This did not go down well with an advocacy group called Justica for Migrant Workers. They stated "This decision implies that employers have carte blanche to engage in health and safety violations, and that the legal mechanisms meant to protect workers in fact shield employers from any form of accountability for deaths of their employees.".

It is my belief that each and every serious on the job injury and death should be front page news. Instead this article is a tiny one on page B8 of the Record. The number of major serious injuries and deaths in Waterloo Region is staggering and should be well publicized. Many employers, just like on the environmental front, can be shamed and embarassed into compliance with the laws of the land. Fines generally mean little or nothing. Publicity and public condemnation do mean something to them.

DEMOCRACY IS MESSY

Democracy is filled with contradictions and disincentives to honesty and integrity. Individual citizens have the numbers and hence the votes. The money and power however are held by the few. Personal benefits and considerations are also part of the equation. How many politicians after losing an election receive a golden parachute from the monied few? How many get appointed by the government of the day to a well paid commission, board or other perk? The Senate comes to mind.

Local/Municipal politicians are especially vulnerable to manipulation by higher tiers of government. Imagine that you are a local, activist Mayor, elected by the citizens as a protest against the old way of doing business. You want to put people first, not money and corporations. You begin reforms locally by fighting never ending expansion of gravel pits. You attempt not to block but to relocate a proposed bio-fuel plant that would generate increased truck traffic in your small town as well as most probably generate odours. Your small town already has a huge history of pollution from local industry and neglect and incompetence from the provincial Ministry of the Environment.

You enter office with hope and optimism. Then reality sets in. You as Mayor are automatically sitting on the next higher tier, namely Regional Council. Both the carrot and the stick are evident. Regional roads need upgrades in your community. The local Sewage Treatment Plant needs expansion if you want to have capacity for new developments and subdivisions. These are Regional decisions. Do you want the support of your colleagues for your local projects? If so then there is some give and take. Your current Regional Chair was voted in by his colleagues on Regional Council decades ago precisely because he did not represent one of the major urban centres in your Region. If you play your cards right you could replace him down the road as retirement can't be too far off. If you play your cards right.

Then there is the province to deal with. You are generally on good terms with them. They however have an election upcoming. They absolutely don't need you raising a ruckus about their long comprimised, underfunded and generally hopeless Ministry of the Environment. You are asked to make concessions in regards to your vigour in pushing them, especially publicly. You are asked for the sake of harmony and future benefits to your community, in other areas, to soften and to quiet any criticism coming from, for example, citizen committees of Council. You are advised that it is always in the best long term interests of a Municipality to listen carefully to the very few strong "requests" from the province.

Perhaps during all this pressure, local industry also comes knocking on your door. Lobbying let's call it. They too are displeased with your apparent grassroots bias. They feel that rather than you trying to please those who elected you in the recent past, perhaps you should be looking to the future. For example donations to Mayoral campaigns are always a good thing aren't they? Perhaps if a large employer feels too pressured locally to conform to provincial environmental laws that the M.O.E. are willing to let slide, then this large employer might move up his plans to retreat to a more business friendly environment. How would that look on a new Council and its' Mayor?

The pressures are enormous and the reality is that you can not please everyone. This is where a politician learns to stickhandle. No one is asking you to publicly deny your past supporters or your beliefs. Just modify them a touch. Comprimise and delay are always a smart move when you are doing something controversial. Things aren't really black and white. So learn how to take baby steps without offending others. Life will be so much easier if you adjust your direction according to the pressure upon you. Congratulations you are learning the art of politics.
Posted by Al Marshall at 8:46 AM 0 comments