Police brutality? maybe, they're not all angels.

[Dayna36]

Or is this writer exaggerating? Is he comparing apples to oranges?

Stephen Hume
Vancouver Sun


Thursday, November 27, 2003




It's ironic that six Vancouver police constables should plead guilty to beating suspects in Stanley Park at the same time Canada takes Iran to task at the United Nations for human rights abuses.

On the one hand, our collective outrage is directed at the beating death of Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi after she was arrested by Iranian police last July. On the other, we have Vancouver Mayor Larry Campbell breezily labelling the local incident an "anomaly" that won't tarnish the department's reputation.

Perhaps. Perhaps not.

I'll be the first to acknowledge that police officers have a difficult job at the best of times. They must deal every day with unpleasant and sometimes violent people under the most trying of circumstances. Most do it with restraint, discipline and remarkable good cheer.

But let's be clear about one thing. Anyone who thinks it's okay to take suspects into the park and assault them has much in common with the Iranian officers who thought it was okay to take an irritating journalist into a back room and do the same. Only a matter of degree in the outcomes separates them.

And let's be clear about another thing. It doesn't matter that the victims in Vancouver were suspected of dealing drugs. Just as it doesn't matter that the Iranian police suspected Kazemi of being a spy.

Both victims were innocent. No guilt had been proven in either case. And we rightly expect those entrusted with custody of the law to be governed by the principle that one is innocent until proven otherwise by an impartial process.

That simple test separates civilization from barbarity. We set higher standards for ourselves than thugs do. And so we should.

In a civil society, we don't subject people to violent punishment on mere suspicion of crimes, or for being defiant of authority, or for exercising their right to assembly and free speech simply because it makes a few feel uncomfortable.

We leave punishment to the judiciary and even then, only once a legal process for testing any accusations against strict rules has been fully satisfied.

What we have in both the Vancouver and Iranian incidents is the subjection of people who haven't been charged with an offence to arbitrary extra-judicial violence of the kind that utterly mocks the rule of law.

The expedient response to the Stanley Park incident is to characterize the guilty as misguided, or inexperienced, or over-zealous, or just bad apples who don't represent the true nature of the police force. Or to blame the victims for provoking them.

The ethical response is to consider the incident in its broader context and to question whether it imposes upon all our policing institutions a responsibility to examine the internal culture from which it seems to arise.

Because that context includes a series of similar incidents across Canada. Considered together they raise some important questions about the culture of police institutions.

For example, the Vancouver incident comes hard on the heels of a report by the RCMP complaints commissioner asserting an abuse of police power in dealing with protesters in Quebec City.

And it had a precursor. Those who watched the performance of the RCMP in Vancouver during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meetings a few years ago won't share any misapprehension about the source of tactics applied in Quebec.

Yet nobody in authority seems troubled that many, perhaps the majority, of the victims of such police violence are innocent and are peacefully exercising their rights of assembly and free speech under the constitution.

At the same time that Canada seeks redress for the murder of Kazemi by Iranian law enforcement authorities, there's an inquiry going on into the death of Neil Stonechild. That inquiry was launched after allegations that the aboriginal teenager was driven out of Saskatoon in a police cruiser, kicked out in sub-zero weather, froze to death and that a subsequent internal investigation was unenthusiastic.

The same Saskatoon police department had already sacked two officers after they drove a drunken aboriginal man out into the country on a bitterly cold night and put him out of the car wearing only a T-shirt, jeans, cotton jacket and running shoes. The victim survived to report the incident when the maintenance man at a power station got him inside.

More worrisome is the suggestion that the frozen bodies of a number of aboriginal men have been found in the same general area over the years. This sounds like El Salvador, not Saskatchewan.

Meanwhile, in the wake of demands from Amnesty International and despite years of stonewalling, Ontario's new Liberal government has called an inquiry into the wrongful shooting by police of an unarmed aboriginal man during a protest at Ipperwash. A police officer was convicted but Amnesty thinks we should know who gave the orders.

There are common denominators in all these events. One is police officers who seem to think that when the law is inconvenient, it can be dispensed with in favour of some arbitrary measure, whether pepper-spraying bystanders at a demonstration, firing plastic bullets into people lying on the ground, driving unruly drunks into the country and leaving them to their fate in sub-zero temperatures or trying to control drug dealers by taking suspects into the woods to to be roughed up.

How, exactly, do these performances differ from those of the reviled enforcement agencies in Iran which thought it perfectly appropriate to beat a woman because she took some pictures in the wrong place?

They don't. And that is why instead of excuses, equivocations and mealy-mouthed attempts to diminish what happened in Stanley Park as some kind of "anomaly," we should all -- police, politicians and private citizens alike -- be doing some deep soul-searching about the institutional culture that permits the attitudes driving such behaviour to take root in a democracy.

shume@islandnet.com

© Copyright 2003 Vancouver Sun

[Samuel]

Typical of many non LEO's, that writer has little to no experience in law enforcement, no understanding of use of force, and is most likely a liberal/anti-LE type. He also stereotypes, generalizes, and is probably very quick to make ASSumptions and jump to conclusions. Everybody loves to second guess LE (talk the talk without walking the walk)... :rolleyes:

He IS comparing apples and oranges. Apparent 'spying' in a country like Iran is NOTHING like 'refusing to disperse' here in the US. Shoot, IIRC, in that part of the world, they can cut off offending body parts for such "paltry" crimes such as petty theft.

While there are bad apples (in ANY "group") out there, MOST LEO's are doing their jobs properly. If the writer wants to basically make a blanket statement that LE is ALWAYS mishandling situations and abusing authority (without being there himself and especially regarding the demonstration types) like he did, he is just showing himself (to those who know anything about LE work and/or have common sense) to be an ignorant jerk (if I were to generalize, I would add 'JUST LIKE 99% OF ALL MEDIA TYPES').

[Charlie]

Dayna36--

"Yet nobody in authority seems troubled that many, perhaps the majority, of the victims of such police violence are innocent and are peacefully exercising their rights of assembly and free speech under the constitution."

Reading this article, it is apparent to me where the author stands on this issue. Talk about being prejudged as being guilty...the about quote should give some insight into the author's opinion. And of course, it suggests that LE just messes with an innocent person for NO APPARENT REASON. How ridiculous is this often overused excuse? We hear it all the time...

In general, I agree that it is a possibility that the author likely knows next to little or nothing about the overall dynamics of law enforcement. And I would dare say as well that it seems they may be the anti-LE type.

Personally, I view this article witha great degree of skepticism and credibility.
--
Charlie

[spyman]

Originally posted by Charlie
Dayna36--

And of course, it suggests that LE just messes with an innocent person for NO APPARENT REASON. How ridiculous is this often overused excuse? We hear it all the time...

.
--
Charlie

And of course Charlie, we both know that this has in fact happened. I'm not saying often, or it happened in this situation, but it sure has happened in my neck of the woods. In fact, it happened to me off duty, where the cops didn't know that I was LE. Wasn't a big deal, but they do it every so often.:eek:

[Charlie]

Spyman--

I think it is apparent that I was speaking in generalities and was not taking into account every conceivable situation or incident. Does it happen? Sure, you bet I think it does! I was not denying that by any means. But IMHO, it appears the author seems to suggest at a blanket level that this is something that is widespread and at an epidemic proportion.

Like any other profession, you got people out there wearing badges that shouldn't and make us all look bad. Should something be done about it? Absolutely. Should the cops engaging in this activity be punished, dismissed and prosecuted to the extent of the law whenever warranted? If they've definitely done something wrong, you bet...Our profession is not immune from the bad apples.

But again, I am weary of hearing the classic, "the cops were messing with me or that person, etc. and I was not doing anything." Yeah,...right...get real... Personally, I don't know of any professional cops that make it a point of messing with someone (i.. violating their rights or something like that) for absolutely no reason. THAT is the point I was trying to make...
--
Charlie

[rdp]

Nice article..... maybe we should rely on facts and not some lame opinionated one sided article.

If you can find facts to the case, maybe post those instead of reposting an anti-le opinion.

[Dayna36]

I agree with you samuel and charlie. I thought the author was over generalizing. There are some cops who are jerks obviously.(The ones who commit brutality, no one here.) Unfortunately it is the case that in any specific group be it LOEs or an ethnic group, the bad apples tend to reflect badly on the whole group. People are always looking for negatives I guess. I too thought the article was very biased. Just wanted other opinions. Don't get your shorts in a knot rdp:D

[rdp]

Not in a knot.......just a loser displaying an opinion and using his status as a writer to lead people to believe this propaganda.....

Just junk......nothing else.