Frank Touby –
There are two main reasons I advocate not only the removal of Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair, but also of Police Services Board (PSB) Chairman Alok Mukherjee…and perhaps most of the board.
In Blair’s case my chief complaints are these:
• He outfits his force in aggressive neo-fascist American-style black uniforms in place of traditional civilian-police blue. It’s bad psychology for cops and the public.
• He merely fined members of his force at the G20 disgrace $100 for committing felonious assaults while masked. Felonious assault! That’s a go-to-prison class of crime and it was purposely overlooked by the chief. One specific event I refer to is a so-called “kittling” operation where an array of cops trapped people who were present on the city street, most of whom were trying to go about their normal business.
The faces of the cops who surrounded them were masked by riot helmets and face guards, making individual officers unidentifiable. That was further exacerbated by cops committing the crime of concealing their identification tags as they went about committing offences of assault with deadly weapons in the form of billy clubs.
That’s a crime, worsened under law by being committed while concealing one’s identity.
Before becoming police chief, Blair had a sterling reputation commanding troubled, disgraceful 51 Division where criminal police officers would bring their own victims, and also empower bad cops from other divisions, to use a secluded truck-parking area on Cherry Beach they dubbed “Trailers.”
Over at Trailers, these criminals with badges would beat the crap out of people they didn’t like.
It was so common that the illegal police practice was known far and wide as “The Cherry Beach Express.” There is even a song commemorating it by the Pukka Orchestra. [Click here to hear it.]
Blair brought that to an end, we are led to believe, and it’s likely he did so.
On the police uniform issue it is a danger to our liberties and Canada’s way of life if Canadian cops are permitted to imitate the criminality of law enforcement in what is clearly the American police state.
America is a lost nation. Its rulers used the excuse of 911 and those strangely (dare we say mysteriously?) dissolving Twin Tower buildings that should have piled up a score of storeys of debris yet instead left holes in the ground as the wind blew away the dust which they mysteriously became. The excuse was that the nation is at war with an enemy who can’t be pinned down and can never be defeated. An endless state of war against a category, not another nation.
It’s a made-in-hell excuse to create a police state and the Yanks have done just that. Fully ripened, high-tech and endlessly at war as a rarefied few zillionaires continue to feast on the rest of Americans and on victims of its military.
Imitating the Nazi propaganda machines produced by Hitler’s mind-bending experts who spouted “Fatherland” in every missive, America initialized “Homeland.”
Like America’s militarized, arrogant, often out-of-control cops, we came close with the G20 that Chief Blair oversaw.
Murderous, thuggish individuals are put into city-cop uniforms and the department demands even more money at budget time. Training and selection of civilian police in Toronto is substandard and that’s Blair’s fault.
Instead of being a commander-in-chief of an armed force, he’s an advocate for his troops. Wrong!
The fact that cops actually have a labour union is outrageous! Discipline is a negotiated instead of coming from a top-down commander. The army wouldn’t think of having a labour union and neither should police.
The fact that groups of cops committed felonies against the public during G20 and got away with it means Blair’s reign must end.
Mukherjee, head of the civilian police oversight group also must leave for two main reasons:
• He congratulated Blair and Toronto cops immediately after G20 for what in reality was in many cases criminal misbehaviour.
• He refused to improve the meal of a crappy cheese sandwich to accused in jail just prior to their court appearances.
For what oversight the PSB actually is able to effect over city cops, it’s inexcusable to be anything but critical about an event that unlawfully pushed around so many ordinary citizens.
We expected a police-state advocate like Prime Minister Stephen Harper to pick Toronto as a centrepiece for G20 abuses and imposition of authoritarian reign on our citizenry. But Mukherjee didn’t have to play into it as he did.
The cheese sandwich issue speaks to a major mindset that Mukherjee entertains against ordinary citizens.
It might seem minor, but what we’re seeing in the mind of this guy who has stayed in power too long is a dismissal of the public’s vital interests and a bias against persons who might be innocent.
Those who’ve been arrested aren’t always guilty. Our system of justice is required to at least be neutral and officially it’s supposed to presume innocence.
Someone who’s been behind bars for a night before attending court to get bail needs more than a crappy imitation (read “processed”) cheese sandwich on nutrition-less white bread.
The person must address a judge and be as clear-thinking as he or she can be.
So that dismissal of basic rights of an accused to decent nutrition by saving a few bucks from the budget to give an accused a fair chance in front of a judge says we need to get free from Alok Mukherjee and return him to some pursuit where he can’t cause harm to the public.
And that absolutely wrong cop labour union should be immediately dismissed and a police chief appointed who runs a tight ship, demands and receives discipline and professionalism from all officers all the time.
Policing is a sacred trust. The chief must ensure all officers behave accordingly.
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