Judge: Police Have A Culture That Rejects Accountability

Those were the words of Justice Elliot Allen as he sentenced two Toronto police officers to one year of house arrest for beating a Cabbagetown man in 2009. As is the usual practice when one of their own is under judicial scrutiny, the courthouse was packed with brothers and sisters in blue. Whether this had the effect of intimidating Justice Allen is unclear; he cited understaffing and overcrowding as reasons he didn't sentence them to a penitentiary term, saying their security couldn't be guaranteed. One wonders why protective custody wouldn't have provided that guarantee, since they would then have been segregated from the general prison population and permitted one hour of carefully monitored exercise per day.

Even though the sentence includes a prohibition on firearms' possession for 10 years, one wonders if the lack of a jail sentence means they get to keep their jobs.

Why Civilian Oversight of the Police is Crucial

Rex Meade of Dundas has a very interesting letter on police heavy-handedness and how to deal with it in today's Star. If you get a chance, take a look at it.

G20 Summit Police Tactics Continue to Outrage Canadians

There is a series of letters in today's Star that articulate the ongoing sentiments of ordinary Canadians a year after people had their Charter Rights ripped away by an out-of-control police force during the G20 Summit in Toronto.

There is also one by Bruce Cox, the Executive Director of Greenpeace, about the not-so-subtle lesson that 'kettling' imparts.

All of the letters speak for themselves, and need no further comment from me.

Asbestos - Canada's Shame Continues

I recently wrote about the opportunity that Canada had to end its pariah-like status by no longer opposing the listing of asbestos as a toxic product in the Rotterdam Convention. Because the Convention requires consensus, Canada, of all the member nations, was the only country to oppose that listing once again, scuttling any attempt to rein in its use in developing countries.

Bearing in mind that Canada's agreement would not have actually impeded its indefensible export of death, but only add a warning as to its danger, our country insisted upon being the lone holdout, continuing to adhere to the fiction that asbestos is safe when handled properly.

This is, of course, the Conservative Party line, one that was parroted by my Member of Parliament when I wrote to him about the issue. Now Geoffrey Simpson has written an article excoriating Canada for its position; it is a timely reminder of how, thanks to the neo-con agenda that has been so vigorously promoted these past several years, Canada has not only lost its former exemplary international reputation, but also made all of its citizens who say and do nothing about this abominable behaviour complicit in it.

Chief Bill Blair: No Apology, No Resignation

Having released a self-serving 70 page report reviewing the G20 Summit debacle, Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair has concluded he has nothing to apologize for and will not consider resigning. As reported in today's Star, despite a public opinion poll showing a dramatic drop in public support for police actions at the Summit, (2010- 72%) (2011 - 41%), the Chief seems content to talk about things that went right, such as protecting the perimeter fence, while ignoring the widespread violations of Charter Rights in the arrests of over 1100 protesters, promising only that kettling will not be used in the future.

Also absent from the report is any explanation for the obstructionist tactics employed by the police this past year in identifying offending officers, despite the plethora of video evidence submitted by citizens. The fact that only two officers have thus far been charged says a great deal to me about the Chief's 'commitment' to uncovering the identity of these renegades.

Despite the erosion of public trust in the police and despite the ongoing trauma of people who directly experienced last June's police-state actions, something positive emerged for Bill Blair - the opportunity to hone his political skills to the point where his public utterances match the platitudinous quality of the most seasoned of Queens Park or Parliament Hill veterans.

Clearly, should his police career suffer an unlikely reversal, a new one serving the people awaits him.

Canada's Quasi-Police state

While the Premier of Ontario continues to blithely and glibly disavow any responsibility for the horrendous abuses of Charter Rights that took place during last June's G20 Summit, admitting only that he "could have done a better job of communicating," evidence continues to mount that we are living in a quasi-police state.

Thanks to the Toronto Star's superb ongoing coverage, the issues arising from the illegal actions police took during the Summit continue to raise profoundly disturbing questions about the erosion of our freedoms and the almost complete impunity enjoyed by the police responsible for that erosion. The latest revelation, found in today's Star, has the headline, Police sued over hellish 11-hour G20 arrest ordeal. The story reveals how Sean Salvati claims he was arrested, strip-searched, beaten, denied access to a lawyer and left naked in a cell for nearly an hour.

What was Mr. Salvati's 'crime'? Speaking to two female RCMP officers who did not care to be spoken to on the eve of the Summit. Although the term is perhaps used too much, 'Kafkaesque' is the only one that seems appropriate for what followed. Please read the entire article to see what you think.

Tangentially, I guess there is one thing that people do like about Premier McGuinty. He recently promised to make the (GO) trains run on time. And for some, I guess that's all that matters.

Some Penetrating Truths

While I always attempt to write as carefully as I can, conciseness and clarity sometimes elude me. Because of these lapses, I take the liberty of reproducing a letter that appeared in today's print edition of the Toronto Star by Enrico Carlson that offers some timely and, I think, some very important observations, given the power the moneyed class has to heavily influence both the media we consume and the political agenda of our elected representatives:

How right hoodwinks the poor

Re Good jobs aren’t in the plan, June 18

I expect the rich and powerful to look after their own interests, but as always it’s the growing number of poor that remain a dilemma. Why do they support conservative policies designed to undermine their interests? Among the many reasons are five that stand out:

(1) the ability of the right to define the parameters of reality (what is “doable,” “affordable,” “realistic”) and the willingness of the majority to buy into those parameters;

(2) the right’s penchant for simplistic explanations easily digestable to a pseudo-citizenry wanting easy answers (“law and order,” “the economy” vs “labour disruption”);

(3) the ever diminishing possibilities of finding long-term, decent paying jobs, which leads to a spiraling down of expectations and a misguided suspicion of unions;

(4) the mass diversions in gadgets and “reality TV” that take away from really paying attention to political and economic realities; and,

(5) easy scapegoating (when things go wrong, point fingers).

To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson: vigilance is the lifeblood of democracy; no vigilance, no democracy.

Enrico Carlson-