Serving and Protecting Whom?

Photo by YYC - Montebello 2007


Serving and Protecting Whom?

The policeman is no longer your friend.

NatNewswatch/CanPress - Jan. 30/20: Conservatives lodge complaint over RCMP’s refusal to probe PM’s island stays

• The federal Conservatives want the RCMP watchdog to review the police force's refusal to launch a criminal investigation into whether Prime Minister Justin Trudeau broke the law by accepting family vacations on the Aga Khan's private Caribbean island.

Could the Cons be any more naive?  A "watchdog" watches ... ideally. So it seems the dog has already sniffed around in the dirt and concluded, "nothing to see here folks".  Probably saw how other government pets got tossed to the wolves for their scruples, and wanted to stay in its nice, comfy doggie bed.

DailyCaller:

• The RCMP isn’t saying how it managed to spend $53,253 on “travel, accommodation and per diems” and another $18,735 on overtime, suggesting that it would compromise the prime minister’s security to extrapolate.

Read the following closely and see what Mary Dawson knew, or should have known, before making a show of coming down hard on Trudeau:

• In December 2017, Mary Dawson, federal ethics commissioner at the time, found Trudeau contravened four sections of the Conflict of Interest Act in relation to a Christmas 2016 stay on the island, saying the holiday could reasonably be seen as a gift designed to influence the prime minister.
• Dawson's report said the federal government had supported projects of the Aga Khan Foundation Canada by contributing nearly $330 million to initiatives in various countries.

It doesn't take much brainpower to figure out that the trip was not a bribe paid by the Aga Khan at all; it was decidedly over-paid-for by the Canadian taxpayers.

Oh, thank you for all that money, says the Aga Khan. No thanks needed says the taxpayer; just let our adorable PM and our cute RCMP officers have themselves a fun vacation. Surely you owe us that.

GlobalNews: April 10, 2019 - RCMP ‘fesses up 817 days later

• Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s RCMP handlers were vetting The Bahamas as a vacation destination for the prime minister at least nine months before Trudeau took his family on the 2016-2017 Christmas vacation

No doubt it wasn't easy to settle the burning question of which of their officers would get to go along for the ride.

Here's something else Canadians, apparently, are delighted to pay for:

CBC: Major overhaul in store for entire block facing Parliament

• The redevelopment plan could see some of the 11 buildings currently on the site demolished and replaced by a new building or set of buildings. It marks the latest step in a series of expansive renovation and rehabilitation projects costing billions of dollars that aim to modernize Ottawa's aging parliamentary precinct.

It's going to mess up Canada Day, but Trudeau hasn't seemed to care much about Canada Day, anyway, and that's reportedly causing some disgruntlement among would-be red-and-white-garbed carousers.

Actually, I'm not a fan of Canada Day either. It's scary, all those drunken maniacs with their painted faces, running willy-nilly all over the place.

But at least they are not confronted by Darth Vader cops with pointed weapons and scary big dogs snapping at their heels, as happened when some little old, church-going ladies joined the late 2001 protests against the WTO.*

Globe&Mail - Feb. 3: Ottawa to adopt ‘red flag’ laws to allow courts to confiscate guns from people deemed to pose a threat

They need to start with a few of the most scary police officers (like the one who killed Sammy Yatim and the one who killed Michael MacIsaac).

I don't know what goes wrong with policemen/women, but either some of them are not too swift to begin with or their job somehow dumbs them down and makes them anti-social outside of their own group. They certainly can't admit to doing anything wrong or stupid.

Just for fun: here are a few of my bewildering experiences with Ottawa police officers:

 1 -- I'm in the lobby of my apartment building, about to press the button to open the inner door when an arm reaches out in front of me and hits the rental office call button. I turn to see a young woman glaring back at me because obviously I'm in her way. I say, "Well, that's kind of rude" and she retorts aggressively, "I'm the police".  And I say, "Is that any reason to be rude?" and she replies with thick sarcasm, "Well, you must have got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning."

This was too bizarre, so I stepped back and waited until she was finished with her call to the rental office.

2 -- I'm crossing a busy thoroughfare in Ottawa west, on the green light, and am forced to go out into oncoming traffic because there is a police car parked in the crosswalk. I say, "You're sitting in the crosswalk" with, I'm sure, an incredulous look on my face. Young guy officer at the wheel sort of wakes up and doesn't seem to know what to say. But his boss, again a female, sees me talking to him, comes over and announces importantly, "We're on a stakeout".

They were watching something farther down the street, but they certainly didn't have to sit in the crosswalk; they just felt like it, I guess.  And who was I to state the obvious; I mean, they were the cops, right?  I shrugged my shoulders, and made a display of gingerly staying as close to the front of the cop car as possible as I made my way to the sidewalk, my hand on the hood of the car for balance. 

When I returned later from my errand, the police car, though still on duty, was no longer in the crosswalk. Was that was their way of apologizing?  Or did they start to worry someone might place an official complaint?

3 -- I'm crossing on the green light on Elgin Street, and a left-turning vehicle comes within a hair's breadth of colliding with me, but slams on the brakes at the last second. I stop dead in my tracks, heart pounding, and look around to see a police vehicle driven by a middle-aged female cop. What's with these lady cops?  She just sits there, glaring at me, waiting for me to get out of the way.

Remember this: Cops don't gotta apologize for scaring the wits outta you.

4 -- I was not yet a political activist at the time of the WTO* protests, and it was pretty scary for me, while walking home after a hard day's work, not to be able to find access to the street that led to where I lived, so heavily guarded were a number of blocks by black-clad characters in Darth Vader helmets -- this despite their having pushed all of the protesters into a fenced park.

Finally I asked a regular uniformed cop, who was holding the leash of a very large dog, if it was okay for me to go down the street he was guarding. He grunted and then snapped, "Hurry it up!"  And that's when I snapped too. I said, "My god, what movie do you think you're in?" And I deliberately walked as slowly as I could past him and down the street to home. (I love telling that story because it was the day I became an activist.)

I was now officially in defiance of Law and Order, so I figured I might as well go all the way.  I joined the Raging Grannies for a while, and branched out from there. But I realize now that it has actually not done me or anyone else much good, because things have gotten way worse with the world than they were before 9/11 -- so you do have to suspect that the events of that unthinkable day may well have been a deliberate catalyst to allow more control over our own citizens and, of course, a shocking increase in Western dominance practically everywhere else in the world.

5 -- As an activist, I came out in support of a Parliament Hill protest by a group of immigrants who were mourning the deaths of their relatives back home at the hands of American invaders. On my way to the Hill, I passed a quartet of red-coated RCMP officers playing jazz music.  I asked them if they thought this was appropriate considering the mourners across the street. "We're just following orders, ma'am", was the reply.  "Like good Nazis?", I muttered and turned away to proceed to the Hill. Just as I was about the cross the street, (my back now turned to the musicians) I felt a massive stab of pain down my spine that momentarily took my breath away, and I stopped dead with my mouth hanging open. Never one to make a scene in public (ha ha) I silently waited till the pain abated, and then proceeded across the street.

When relating that story to my brother, an OPP officer at the time, he laughingly said, "They probably tazered you in revenge!"  And maybe they did -- those sweet, good-looking young red-coated officers who were just doing their job. And my own brother thought it was funny. But he was a cop, eh?  And I guess that's how modern cops are.  When I was a kid the policeman was my friend. He was there to "protect and serve".

Nowadays they've other fish to fry, like over $50,000 bucks worth of "work" on a tropical island.

Related on YYC: Royal Canadian Horse Manure

* From Corpwatch.org (PDF):

• The term “open markets” may sound enticing, but in the real world it often means the kind of rules enforced by the WTO at the expense of developing countries, farmers, consumers and the environment. Peoples’ movements against corporate globalization have very specifically targeted these rules and the ideology behind them.

Yet another book not available at my Public Library:
The Policeman Is Your Friend and Other Lies -- by Ned Beaumont