Reflections, Observations, and Analyses Pertaining to the Canadian Political Scene
Monday, July 23, 2012
"We Need Justice"
Sunday, July 22, 2012
Police Brutality In Anaheim
H/t Sandra Harris
Friday, July 20, 2012
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
The Irony Of Police 'Sensitivity'
In responding to The Toronto Star's series, Police Who Lie, Mike McCormack, president of the Toronto Police Association, complains that the investigative project is a gross misrepresentation of police practices, and condemns it for using a presentation style disturbingly similar to the covers of tabloid magazines that grab your attention while you’re standing in the checkout line at the grocery store.
The sad truth is that the police have no one but themselves to blame when their behaviour is held up to public scrutiny and found wanting. And what McCormack fails to acknowledge is that the public has every right to know about misconduct which, in the case of the Toronto Police, has taken many forms, lying in court being only one of them.
Who, for example, can forget the wiretapping and surveillance conducted upon former Police Services Board Chair Susan Eng, done when Mike's father, William, was the Toronto Police Chief? Eng attributed this illegal activity to the fact that prior to becoming chair of the board, she had been a vocal critic of the police.
Then, as just another example, there was Craig Bromell, former head of the police union now being led by Mike McCormack. In cases of involving investigation by the SIU, Bromell told his members not to co-operate with its inquiries and threatened lawsuits against police critics. Such directives and threats hardly fostered an environment conducive to the public trust that the constabulary seems to believe is its due.
The infamous G20 misconduct, in which Toronto police played a key role, is well-knowned, attested to even by voices as credible as Steve Paikin's.
So I'm sorry that public scrutiny so-much disheartens Mike McCormack and his troops, but he is going to have to learn that because police wield so much power, they must be held to the highest standards, and if they want to avoid criticism, they are going to have to govern themselves by those standards.
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Another Victory For The Star
Ontario’s chief prosecutor will probe the issue of police officers who are found by judges to have lied in court.
Attorney General John Gerretsen made the announcement Monday following a Toronto Star investigation that found more than 100 cases of police deception in Ontario and across the country.
“The most important thing is that people tell the truth in court. The question really becomes: if a judge makes a serious comment (about an officer’s testimony) what should happen?” said Gerretsen.
As a citizen, I am heartened to know that solid investigative reporting is still being done at a time when most journals have abandoned it as a costly and quixotic pursuit.
Sunday, April 29, 2012
The Star Continues To Shine A Light On Some Very Dark Places
Thus begins the third part of the Star's investigation into police officers who abuse their authority and subsequently perjure themselves in court, usually with no subsequent punishment from their departments.
You can read all of the sordid details here.
Saturday, April 28, 2012
More Troubling News On The Police Front
The unfortunate pitfall of all of this, of course, is the danger of slipping into the fallacy of gross over-generalizations. The fact is, of course, that the majority of police do not abuse their powers (except in special circumstances such as the Toronto G20 Summit of 2010); it just seems that way thanks to a sometimes-vigilant press and some intrepid citizen journalists.
If you have the stomach for it, read about a Windsor police detective, David Van Buskirk, who has just been found guilty of viciously assaulting a visually-impaired doctor, Tyceer Abouhassan, and lying to cover up the assault. The Windsor Police Association, of course, is falling all over itself explaining away his aberrant and abhorrent behaviour and calling for understanding of the stresses he was under at the time of the beating.
No word yet about the stress Dr. Abouhassan experienced as a result of the assault.
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Another Kind of Power Abuse
Although the political abuse of power is endemic in this country, especially at the federal level, it is sadly not the only one in which innocent people are victimized.
While I have frequently written on police misuse of power, the instances of that abuse, and the difficulty in bringing the perpetrators to account, seem only to be growing. Both Susan Clairmont, of The Hamilton Spectator, and The Star's Rosie DiManno, in an especially hard-hitting piece, offer some important insights into the obstacles faced by those seeking to bring rogue authorities to justice.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Bill O'Reilly on UC-Davis Pepper-Spraying: No Big Deal
Sunday, November 20, 2011
The roots of the UC-Davis pepper-spraying
Amongst his findings are the following:
- excessive police force against non-violent protest is not a new phenomenon;
- that excessive force has been emboldened since 9/11;
- this disproportionate use of force is not having the desired effect, in that it is galvanizing, not deterring people to join in activist acts.
I hope yoiu will take the time to read the entire article, which includes video of Greenwald speaking about Badley Manning and WikiLeaks.
Saturday, November 19, 2011
A Premeditated Act of Police Brutality
The reaction of the bystanders, however, is to their credit: total non-violence. A moral victory for the oppressed 99%.
Saturday, October 29, 2011
A Video That Police In All Democracies Should be Required To Watch
Saturday, October 1, 2011
A Powerful Indictment of NYPD Brutality During The Occupy Wall Street Protest
The host of the MSNBC show, Lawrence O'Donnell, has strong condemnation, as you will see, of what the police did to non-violent young protesters, and offers a realistic assertion that police abuse of citizens happens all too frequently, and that all too infrequently are they held to account. Not once do I recall this kind of condemnation by any mainstream media sources over the terrible things done in Toronto last year.
Please sign this petition urging Prime Minister Harper to stop threatening Michaela Keyserlingk and to stop exporting asbestos.
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Velcro Ripper On The Occupy Wall Street Movement
So writes well-known Canadian documentary filmmaker Velcro Ripper as he describes one man's experience of police violence which included the use of mace last Saturday during the ongoing Wall Street Occupation. In an article entitled The revolution will be tweeted, written for rabble.ca, Ripper offers his impressions of the movement and includes a short video, which can be seen below, following the video of the apparently unprovoked macing of young women BEHIND a barricade:
Friday, September 23, 2011
From The Police Beat: More Police Brutality
I have written previously about Ontario Court Justice Lesley Baldwin and her brave comments that 'contempt of cop is not a crime'. Unlike the SIU, which has proven both toothless and feckless in fulfilling their mandate of investigating the police, Justice Baldwin has clearly seen through the barrier of the 'blue wall' that police tend to erect whenever one of their own is under fire.
She is once more in the news in a Toronto Star article entitled ‘Courageous’ judge takes on Halton cops. In part, the piece summarizes her previous ruling that prompted her 'contempt of cop' comments as she dismissed charges against Kyle Davidson of assaulting a peace officer, resisting arrest and being intoxicated in public in connection with a June 2009 arrest.
According to Davidson in an interview I saw last night on TV, a police car sped by him, narrowly missing him, at which point he mouthed an obscentiy. The police car came to a sudden stop and Davidson was told he was under arrest. Incredulous at the turn of events, he asked "For what?" after which Const. Erich Paroshy broke his arm.
Justice Baldwin's observations were as follows:
"I do find, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Officer Paroshy used excessive force and broke Kyle Davidson’s arm in this case,” said Justice Baldwin in her 16-page ruling, making clear that “contempt of cop” is not a justification for an arrest.
Davidson said he has read the ruling “like 75 times” and added that he “feels absolutely vindicated. I really doubted the system.”
Baldwin went further in her ruling, calling police conduct in the case “harsh and callous.” She added: “I sensed no empathy on the part of either officer for the injuries Kyle Davidson sustained in this matter.”
In a related Star story, Justice Baldwin recommended to Crown prosecutors that they “carefully screen cases where an accused is brought before the Court on charges that arise from circumstances of suspected ‘contempt of cop’ before they proceed to prosecute the matter.” In the Dyrda case, she recommended screening “where no underlying charges accompany ‘assault resist arrest’ and ‘obstruct police’ charges.”
The above reference to the Dryda case, interestingly enough, also involved Erich Paroshy, the officer who broke Davidson's arm. The details of that case are as follows:
Baldwin acquitted brothers Bogumil and Stanislaw Dyrda of all charges, including assaulting a peace officer, stemming from an incident in January 2009.
According to court documents, Stanislaw was returning from dropping his daughter off at university in Ottawa when his car swerved off the road into a pile of rocks, deploying the airbag.
Constables Paroshy and Blair Egerter responded to a dispatch around 10 p.m. and alleged that when they tried to get information from Stanislaw he responded by saying “no.”
As they escorted him back to the cruiser, the officers testified they suspected Stanislaw was intoxicated and that he pushed himself away from Paroshy.
He was then placed under arrest, and as an altercation ensued, Paroshy alleged that Bogumil, having arrived on the scene after receiving a call from his brother, interfered by pulling off his bulletproof vest.
Stanislaw was punched by the officers, taken to the ground by Egerter and pepper-sprayed by Paroshy.
The brothers said that Stanislaw was not intoxicated, but exhausted from driving 17 hours and disoriented from the car crash; also, that Bogumil was trying to diffuse the situation by offering to translate for his brother, who speaks little English. He denied trying to take off Paroshy’s vest.
“Their duty as officers was to determine if this man needed some help. Help was not what Stanislaw Dyrda got that evening. He got beaten,” said Justice Baldwin in a 32-page ruling. “At the end of this long trial, it was clear that this case involved the excessive use of police force.”
Predictably, the Halton Police Association is offended and defensive about the judge's comments.
Police association president Duncan Foot slammed the judge for her decision in a letter to a local paper.
Trying to conceal rather than root out the problems is not a strategy that will restore public confidence, nor will it do anything to curb what seems to be the rising number of reported incidents of police brutality and excessive use of force.
Added to that, to paraphrase a subject popular with the Harper government, we can only wonder about the number of unreported crimes committed by police in their overzealous pursuit of their public safety duties.
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Sometimes The Tools Of Police Intimidation Are Not Physical
The officer who was alleged to have inflicted the most serious injuries on Hay, Ryan Tocher, was charged with his assault but later had those charges dismissed, despite the fact that the presiding judge believed police had engaged in a coverup.
As reported in today's Spectator, Hay initiated a lawsuit against "more than 20 Hamilton police officers, Chief Glenn De Caire and the police board in August. His statement of claim alleges he was falsely arrested, imprisoned and hurt by police using excessive force. The short, slender man claims he still suffers from “debilitating” injuries sustained during the raid."
The Hamilton Police Force is asking the court to dismiss the suit, claiming that "Hay “provoked the application of force” by police during the raid." As I recall, Po's 'provocation' was to try to resist an unwarranted arrest, a resistance no doubt quite limited by his slight 59-year-old frame. This attempt to blame the victim for his injuries is especially odious, given how it harkens back to a time when women were often said to have been 'asking for it' when they were brutally raped.
However, the Hamilton Police are attempting to cover all of their bases. Should this request to have the suit tossed fail, they are also asking "the court to order the [currently unemployed] 59-year-old to pay legal costs for the defendants."
Not all tools of intimidation are physical.
Please sign this petition urging Prime Minister Harper to stop threatening Michaela Keyserlingk and to stop exporting asbestos.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
More Police Brutality
As well, a video in which the witness describes the event is available here.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Police Facial Recognition Skills Continue To Decline
Perhaps the most public example of this dysfunction was evident in the case of Adam Nobody, the young Toronto man who was viciously assaulted by Toronto Police during last year's G20 Summit in Toronto. Despite the fact that he was swarmed by up to 15 officers, only one, Const. Andalib-Goortani, has ever been charged, the rest of the officers apparently unable to identify other colleagues who took part in the assault.
The affliction's latest known victims are members of the Hamilton Police Service who took part in a botched drug raid in May of 2010. Having broken into the wrong apartment (perhaps number recognition failure is a symptom of the disease's progression?) in their efforts to arrest a 36-year-old black cocaine trafficker, (colour-recognition problems?) they instead arrested a 5-foot-7, 130-pound 59-year-old refugee from Burma, Po La Hay, who wound up with facial lacerations, three broken ribs and a fractured vertebra.
As reported in today's Hamilton Spectator, Hay was the key witness Wednesday at the opening of the assault causing bodily harm trial of Hamilton police officer Ryan Tocher, who has pleaded not guilty. Despite Hay's testimony that he had been kicked in the ribs two or three times, and despite the fact that five officers were in the kitchen where the beating took place, no one seems to be able to identify Tocher as the assailant.
I can only hope, for the sake of peace, order, and our security, that Canada's best medical minds are currently and urgently researching this terrible malady that seems to be targetting our boys and girls in blue.
Monday, July 4, 2011
Toronto Star Readers Speak Out On Police Abuses
Part of that mission is well-fulfilled in the publication of readers' letters, something that reassures those of us in the progressive blogosphere that we are not alone in our thirst for societal fairness and justice. Three letters in today's paper, critical of the Toronto Police and the judiciary that treats them so differently from others, are well-worth reading.