Keystone Kops: The Saskatchewan (Party's) Marshals, Part 2
The need for rigorous oversight should not entail the erosion of any Canadian’s fundamental rights, including police officers under investigation.
I’m not a big fan of cops.
As a kid I worshipped them. In my simple little mind, they were the heroes who stood between us and the bad guys.
As an adult, seeing how poorly domestic violence incidents were handled by police, specifically in the 2000s and 2010s and for my Indigenous friends, was brutal. It became obvious that officers were not infallible, or not always the good guys.
Yet I’m not anti-police. I know most cops are dedicated first responders who run into the danger the rest of us run from. I’ve lived in countries where police officers are useless, cowards and corrupt; it’s definitely not a better option. A strong police force operating mindfully and ethically is one of the most important keys to preserving civility in North American society.
What had the biggest impact on my relationship with law enforcement occurred a few years ago, on a day that had been really bad for me already. Just inches inside city limits the cruiser popped out from behind an overpass with its lights on. I was a handful of clicks over the limit, on one of those stretches going into the city where the speed limit bounces around between 70, 80 and 90 and back again.
Whatever, I was speeding and he got me. Fine.
After the initial curt greetings, the officer spent an insane amount of time in his cruiser, to the point I thought he forgot about me. He finally strolled back to my vehicle and wordlessly handed me my ticket. It was all very routine; he seemed bored.
I believe fulfilling quotas, or setting up traps to hand out tickets en masse, is just backdoor taxation and the worst kind of policing. Unfortunately, I made the poor (ok, stupid) choice to flaunt my white privilege and said so, to his face.
He lost his mind, screaming and hollering.
That shit doesn’t work on me. I gave it back to him as good. A huge mistake on my part, to be clear, because no matter how angry you get or unfair they are, cops will always have more power than you. Please be smarter than I am.
Swearing at me as he walked away, he then uploaded a report to CPIC depicting me as a police-hater. The interactions I’ve had since with law enforcement (with the exception of detectives and investigators) have been unpleasant. One clown even relayed the CPIC report back to me.
They want me to know I will pay for that bad day for the rest of my life, because they can.
Between that and my scrutiny of the RCMP’s fraudulent, coordinated, authoritarian and Orwellian attacks on Nova Scotia man Jeremy Mackenzie, it’s safe to say law enforcement and I are not going to be exchanging friendship bracelets anytime soon.
So those are my biases on policing. I’m not the only Canadian to have them. I think it’s important we check our biases when having these discussions.
Now let’s continue looking at the absolute farce that is Scooter’s Marshals.
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