Let’s quit hanging badges on bullies

frank
Do we really want men and women in uniform who think being a cop is just a good job? I think we don’t. And we don’t have to settle for that, either. The staggering lawful power each police officer commands over other citizens—including other cops—calls for a much higher order of citizen than just someone looking for a good job and career.

That’s because policing is above “job” grade. It is a calling, a sacred trust. It deals with that most precious element of our nation: personal liberty. Policing must be reserved for those who feel that calling to serve and protect people and their rights without malice and with equanimity. It should bar domineering and brutish personalities from membership.

Such well-intentioned people do abound in our society. Often they turn to other occupations because too many thugs are attracted to policing or are turned by others toward thuggish misbehaviour.

There’s a distinct problem with police recruiting and vetting practises, especially when skin colour or ethnicity play a huge role and trump character in the selection of officers.

What we don’t want are the abuses of power that were highlighted at G20. It also happens on the beat, but not as obviously. Take the case of John Pruyn, a 57-year-old amputee, a Revenue Canada employee. He and others with him say he was brutalized by Toronto and other police at the G20.

(You can see his video rendition of his experience in the online version of this article at www.thebulletin.ca)

Cops ordered him to leave the Queen’s Park “free speech zone” that had been set up to keep citizens away from the elites whose meeting robbed Torontonians of their city for the weekend. They yanked off his leg (calling it a weapon) and told him to hop along with his hands cuffed behind his back. They held him down, one jamming his head into the ground with a knee. Others, he says, hit him. Then they hauled him off to a cramped paddy wagon for hours in the heat and later kept him in a cold cell on Eastern Ave. with other innocent and abused citizens. Absolutely unforgivable in a professional police service.

Clearly neither Stephen Harper nor Dalton McGuinty are ethically suited to govern the Canada or the Ontario we want and expect. That was brought out in a letter to Toronto Star by a true conservative, MPP Randy Hillier, who rightly tore strips off both those villains over their abuses of Canadians at G20, though he should also include as a threat his own dangerous leader, Tim Hudak, a Mike Harris wannabe.

Hillier said it perfectly: “McGuinty and Harper set the stage, created the environment and controlled the unfolding of these events, and together they have lowered the threshold of protecting our civil liberties. No longer are our freedoms and liberties only in peril during times of war or a direct threat upon our democratic institutions. They are now in peril every day we have political leaders such as this.”

Harper, you’d think, should have known better than to hold the unnecessary spectacle in Toronto. Is he a socially numb hayseed from Alberta, or maybe just a congenital dirty bastard trying to bring Toronto down and glorify himself at the same time?

I lean toward that last characterization. We’ll see for sure his mettle if Harper actually reimburses the hundreds of Downtown businesses that suffered huge losses, mostly in lost sales rather than vandalism, as a result of his selfish photo op. Stay tuned.

Many outrages were imposed upon Toronto by both the Harper and McGuinty governments for this useless G20. Was it to prepare us for a police state? Or was it just callous unconcern? There’s nothing in G20 for us anyhow. It’s an elite group aimed at promoting the interests of billionaires on the backs of the North American middle class who are being rendered poor to serve monopoly transnational corporations.

 They call it going green or watching our carbon footprint. Either way, it involves creating another financial derivative like the ones that brought this current crash into being. Anyone for a bankster’s Carbon Credit? Outside of China and India, that is.

frank

McGuinty, if he had a decent bone in his body, would have told Harper to ringmaster his circus on federal property and stay out of Downtown. Harper would have had to comply.

And Mayor David Miller should have insisted that our city police serve our citizens, not the ensconced elites, and protect the businesses that suffered from a small number of vandals who were instead allowed to pillage. In fairness he probably didn’t know what the RCMP had in mind for us since they, of all forces, were running things. And they are not a paragon of police professionalism or restraint.

We definitely need a full-blown public inquiry on this whole outrageous affair. And we need to take a close look at exactly what types of men and women we want to hang badges, guns and awesome powers on. Clearly in too many cases we need much better. Let’s go for it now, while the evils caused by brutal people wearing badges are fresh in our minds.