I take your point Andrew but ... at what point do we lose public confidence in the whole legal system and slip into anarchy (for want of a better term). Having been threatened with physical violence and being told by the police that 'we can't do anything as no one heard it' was understandable BUT when there are videos of the threats being made and police officers standing around then a line has been crossed. At the least, the perpetrator should have been cuffed and led away even if no charges were laid - a message would have been sent 'if you can't settle down then we'll give you a time out as this is not appropriate behaviour'.
I believe that society is based on generally agreed principles of fair play, respect for one another, respect for rules and the over riding 'treat others as you would want to be treated' rule. If we lose that system and it becomes 'I can say whatever I want and threaten anyone I want with imunity' then we errode the society and encourage people to take the law into their own hands or we slip into tribalism where we look after our families/group and to heck with you. THAT is not my vision of Canada and it is certainly not the Canada I grew up in nor the Canada that I want my grandchildren to live in.
Defusing situations is fine, maintaining the peace is fine but only to a point. At some point we need to stand up and take action against the folks who burned churches 'in protest', who spread anti-semitism 'in protest', who block highways or railways 'in protest' wo block construction projects 'in protest' and so on. When do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one?
The laid back approach by the Ottawa Police Service backfired right from the beginning of the Freedom Convoy. By abdicating a critical police function, overseeing the orderly movement of motor vehicles, the truckers got the upper hand. Intransigence followed and then serious overreaction and legal overreach by the federal government, which was used as much as a punitive “we’ll fix you” as an efficient way to end the protest.
I’m waiting for a punitive reaction to the protests and anti-semitism that is running out of control in parts of Canada. Perhaps arresting a thug hiding behind a mask uttering threats in a shopping mall could send a message? The silence from politicians while these stunts are occurring is appalling and if there is no leadership at the top, what are police officers supposed to do?
Absolutely right on both counts, Darcy. However, I'm afraid that what we're seeing right now DOES reflect leadership at the top.
Andrew, I appreciated your article but I'm not sure about the conspiracy theory of policing. Absent an order to the contrary, it would only be expected that police would be motivated to make their lives as simple as possible.
Mary, are you meaning that simple = don't arrest wrongdoers? Because I think that that is your meaning and I, unfortunately agree that our cops are that simplistic.
Thanks Ken. That certainly seems to be what happened--or failed to happen--in Toronto. I have no background in law enforcement, but I think "simple" can mean "avoid escalation", and again this was Toronto. Sadly, avoiding escalation on the one side is avoiding consequences on the other, and no justice for the victims. What all of this says to me is that no one with authority directed the officers to engage.
Mary, you write, in part, " .... avoid escalation .... "
To me that is an absurdity. In certain cases the issue is sufficiently egregious that the authorities need to come down on the malefactors with both boots, in order to, you know, "Encourager les autres."
Thanks for a wonderful article which is right on in terms of the police doing whatever they please. “Assholes” in my view are anybody that threatens the police’s position of authority and job security. (A trait shared with certain ( the majority of?) civil servants whose main function is to invent rules of behavior that enhance their status and job security). When I lived in Toronto several moons the Star would refer to the police FIdo rule (F@@k It, Drive On) when dealing with black on black street violence. Somehow the police interpretation of Canada’s motto “Peace Order and Good Government” has become “Population Control through Givernment”.
Canada’s inexorable disarmament of the population is another step in the control exercise eg the latest freezing all handgun transfers with eventual confiscation from widows and widowers is another example. Not so much the threat that these tools will be used against the police but that the availability of these tools helps the unanointed citizens (AKA “assholes”) protect their lives and property themselves in a timely manner thereby threatening the job security of the police.
Yes Virginia there is a Santa Claus. And one day the police will remember they are there to protect you and enforce the law. And the government will draw its power from the consent of the governed instead of delegated authority from the Governor General.
How many “uneventful” protests will it take before the “protestors” cross the line into actual physical harm, having been conditioned by police action allowing them freedom to say and do as they choose many times in the past?
I can appreciate the tactical decision to use a light touch to avoid escalating the situation. I’m sure if that guy was even approached by a couple of cops, things would have blown up, leading to a use of force investigation and the officer being publicly crucified for daring to lay hands on a member of a disadvantaged community. Cops know they will be thrown under the bus by management in that situation.
However, as we have seen with recent public order incidents from the indigenous protests where property and statues were damaged, the Ottawa street occupation and the Team Hamas protests, the light touch is escalating things as well by enabling anti-social behaviour.
What I fear the most is that if liberals won’t enforce the law, then the people will elect authoritarians who will.
This is spot on. Legally, the police have the discretion to enforce the law, maintain order and prevent crime. We saw that discretion being used in that video. As you point out, these officers also need to think about the ramifications of arrest in that situation, not just in terms of escalating the event but also professionally. Of course, failure to enforce the law also undermines the rule of law and arrest is a deterrent to many.
The point you make about the “assholes” interfering with what police think is their job is critically important and absolutely accurate. It applies not only on the street but all the way up to the top of their chains of command. I worked with police, especially RCMP, many times at the highest levels on major operations in Canada. It is their way or the highway. If you push back you are defined as an asshole. (First time I heard this description was in your article but it is clearly applicable.) I am at a loss how to successfully counter it though, without making their lives as police any harder than they already are.
It's a character and cultural issue. You can fight it. It's very very hard to permanently solve, not least because it's almost philosophical - if the law were structured such that the police didn't have to pick and choose when to enforce it, maybe we could just tell them "look, always enforce it unless it would be dangerous to everyone around to do so. Then enforce it once it's safe."
At what point can we start to question whether the work of police is as hard or dangerous as they claim? Statistics cited by police organizations from the University of the Fraser Valley show accepted injury claims of 30-37 per 1000 police officers. The comparable rate of *all* workplace injuries in Alberta is 61.5 per 1000 person-years - twice that rate! The average salary of a police officer in Toronto is $104,000 vs. an average *household* income (i.e. typically including more than 1 wage earner) of $78,000 for the same city.
With respect George, I think the difference is with police injuries they sometimes, and I have no idea how often, occur becasue of active attempts to harm an officer. There is a qualitative difference between, I slipped on a wet spot in aisle seven and twisted my back, and a guy at a traffic stop tried to run me over with his vehicle.
I concede the point, but it's still telling that the statistics are telling us that police officers have been able to reduce their exposure to that sort of intentional risk to a level that's lower than workers dealing with far more predictable and controllable hazards.
The role of police forces interaction with people who are having the worst days of their lives, everyday. When other workers can refuse service to difficult/dangerous customers, police are the ones who deal with the worst as part of their regular duties. Rate of occurence is only half of the risk calculation, the other half is severity of the hazard or threat. If you want high quality people to volunteer for a job with exposure to severe hazards or threats (car crashes on highways, drugs/narcotics, violent people who may also be armed, etc.), you'll have to pay a premium. You also need to pay enough to keep corruption unappealing.
I respect all the points above and think they are sound. I don’t want you to take my next comment as a rebuttal. Just an observation. Years ago I was drinking with a senior cop for a large Canadian force. We were quite a few cups in. I asked him about this issue. Recruiting the best people and deterring corruption. And he agreed. But he also said there was a trade off: for some people, being a cop might be the best-paying job that is within their skillset and educational attainment/ability. And he worried that some of the officers coming in were coming in for the money. And they would treat the duty accordingly: put in their hours. In his day, he commented, he knew the job would be bad and the pay average. He joined up anyway. It was his calling to serve.
It's a valid concern. I also think about this a lot, albeit in the context of the CAF. I wonder if there was a time when the social status, prestige, or honour afforded members of uniformed services offset the comparatively low compensation. So a kid with a Grade 10 education and nothing else going for him could join the Army, put in his time, and earn respectability. Someone might cynically call that narcissism, but offering a legitimate "path to honour" can turn angry young men towards pro social ends. These days, neither the police nor the military are held up as particularly honourable professions in polite society. Police applicants are expected to have at least a college diploma, be fit, empathetic, and willing to perform stressful (and often dangerous) work under intense public scrutiny. You're going to need an extra nudge to gain and retain quality people under these conditons. Anecdotally, I've seen better pay, unions, and geographic stability draw lots of CAF members into police work. The call to serve gets people through the door, but it doesn't pay the bills.
Personally, I think this is just a subset of people, and not even just people in government, to be averse to doing the “right thing”.
And the problem is not so much laziness, it’s that there is no more “right”.
If you thought morality was just a hang-up of uptight religious folks, no, morality is the basis for the law. Once upon a time, most people didn’t need the law to tell them to not do something criminal, because they knew right from wrong. The law was there for people who didn’t, or wouldn’t. This is what happens to society when you jettison morality.
This is deeply cynical and subversive and it’s brilliant.
I have very little faith and confidence in the police forces across Canada, having watched their repeated impotence in the face of growing violent radicalism. I think Canadian police are behaving like police do in a regime state, where they are arrogant pr1cks who protect and legitimize extremists and the corrupt.
The bottom line is the optics fcuking suck. People want an end to the reign of terror.
We need more assholes grinding cops like this video did.
Think broken windows syndrome. Thanks to police inaction, we now know it's possible to block a railroad, shut down a city, ignore court orders, and intimidate Jews and members of the general public if one is part of a large enough crowd, preferably masked and possibly armed. Authorities need to act not only to enforce the law in a specific instance, but to ensure that the law is respected in future, without fear or favour.
I understand that couple of undermanned officers may legitimately have feared that an arrest could have sparked a riot in a large mall filled with "civilians". But just as US authorities made January 6th arrests after the fact, I hope ours make arrests now, using available video footage.
The masks make the threats and intimidation tactics even greater and encourage those making coded genocidal threats believe they can act with impunity. ("From the river to the sea" = "Jews will not replace us.") I would not like be a Jew in Canada right now, knowing that police are either unwilling or unable to protect me and my family from harassment and lord knows what else, even for something as simple as stepping outside to visit Santa at the mall.
To the extent that to 'police' something literally means to control it so that things proceed in an orderly fashion, this article isn't wrong. But it's incomplete. A dictator who intimidates a population through thuggish use of military force is maintaining order, but we would not regard this as a legitimate example of policing as we understand the term. Words have connotative as well as denotative meanings, and for us, police officers are public servants whose specific task is law enforcement. To the extent that we also expect the police to function as managers of social order in crisis situations, we are not "assholes" for insisting that they do so in conformity with the law whose representatives they are, and from which they derive their authority.
The irony is that police can only succeed in performing the tasks assigned them in societies that are basically law abiding and self-policing to begin with. A society in which every citizen instantly breaks the law the moment his neighbours' backs are turned cannot be policed. We expect our neighbours to be trustworthy, and for the police to protect us against the minority of anti-social individuals who don't merit that trust. Only in this kind of environment do police officers have a fighting chance; and since in Canada this is essentially the kind of society we have, the country is policeable. A society in which every person's hand is turned against the police and everyone else isn't.
Perhaps this, in microcosm, is essentially what was being demonstrated at the Eaton Centre. An unruly mob can't be policed, and the best the police can do when faced with mob behaviour is acknowledge its immunity to rational appeal, while doing their best to contain and slowly de-escalate. The police are also right to distinguish between genuine, illegal attempts to do harm and 'threats' that are simply bluster on the part of people who, however much they may be inflamed by the passion of the moment, do not intend for their words to be taken literally ("I'll knock your head off, you moron!"). Expressions of hostility are rarely polite, but only in the most exceptional of cases should they also be deemed illegal.
The police, in turn, would be smart to recognize the extent to which their ability to discharge their responsibilities depends on a largely law abiding citizenry, and not be so undiplomatic as to dismiss as "assholes" those who complain when they believe laws are being broken. People who respect the law and get upset when it is disregarded are a police officer's natural allies; and why make life harder for yourself by offending allies?
Mark, you write, "An unruly mob can't be policed, and the best the police can do when faced with mob behaviour is acknowledge its immunity to rational appeal, while doing their best to contain and slowly de-escalate."
Respectfully, Sir, bollocks.
At what point does that approach allow a mob to, oh, say, storm a store, attack a (Jewish or otherwise) person? There was already a person threatening death - presumably to police officers. The first thing that the cops needed to do was to get many more folks on site then surround and arrest the worst of them. At the very least they could have grabbed the one guy and put him in cuffs. A French phrase occurs to me: Pour encourager les autres. And if that didn't encourager the autres then bring out your night sticks, cops.
Maintain order? Huh! They were not maintaining order but were protecting bullies, antisemites and actual criminals.
Clearly, these police were not maintaining the values of much of the community but only of the group favored by our worsers.
"The first thing that the cops needed to do was to get many more folks on site..."
...because an unruly mob, being beyond rational appeal, can't be reasoned with. That's the claim, the truth of which you're tacitly acknowledging, albeit without seeming to realize it. The claim isn't that Toronto's police are incapable of assembling a larger, better-armed mob of their own and brutalizing the first mob into submission. That kind of forceful reaction is the norm in many parts of the world; but, traditionally, Canadians have not wanted their police behaving in this fashion. Would you really be happier if police at the Eaton Centre had "controlled" the crowd by surrounding the protesters and inflicting physical harm on them? That's the inevitable outcome whenever groups forcefully collide in the manner you're suggesting.
In the end, no one was hurt by the watch and wait, contain and de-escalate strategy the police adopted. Possibly you don't count this as a plus, but it accords with our community values as I understand them.
Thanks for your excellent comment. I’m realizing how little understanding of the actual role of the police there is. Discretion is vital. They do not take orders from the government. De- escalation is the current approach to potentially volatile mob scenes in public when the subject is highly emotional as is the case here.
De-escalation is an effective tool/method prior to laws having being broken, after which it is necessary for enforcement. If not enforced then the laws and the mechanisms (the police, the courts and the ‘lawmakers’) by which they are applied are seen as arbitrary or biased or politically motivated and thus become at best, ineffective and at worst, incendiary.
Today, where every aggrieved, offended and entitled social justice warrior, (armed with a camera and a mask) is of the opinion that they are the exception to the rule, it is more important than ever that equal (not equitable) application of the law is applied and may thus be respected.
Well done Mark. Your words speak for a lot of reasonable Canadians. I deliberately waited a week to read this article and all the comments. If it was possible I would give your composition many likes.
Or, to put it another way, the police have become a self-serving entity beholden only to themselves. They avoid any encounters which involve putting themselves at risk and are increasingly averse to any heavy lifting. In short, they are no longer effective at what most people consider to be their job - enforcing the law and being seen to be enforcing the law. In many ways, they have become the assholes.
This is why there is a “Blue Line”. Officers are too often protected from doing wrong because it considered that it was an ‘asshole’ who made the complaint. Being under the British model where police are not under direct civilian control, again unlike US TV where the cops are always being told what to do by some out of control mayor, it is the cops that decide what needs enforcing. Neither works well when under stress, but police independence is probably better than having local ego driven mayors having their own ‘army’.
This is absolutely the case. However the British, at least initially, very much had a view of policing where the police were also civilians. Canada very much does NOT have this. This is probably not ideal for a whole bunch of reasons.
Can you expand more on the British model and what you mean by civilian control? As far as I know, the police in Britain are controlled by a policing and crime commissioner, who is directly elected by constituents and answers to another semi-civilian group/board. In Canada, we have mostly impotent police boards that generally have some municipal council representation balanced with unelected civilians.
Having worked with them and watched how they are required to handle all of society’s problems, I would not want to do their jobs day in and day out. It has become an unbearable job for many which is why you see high rates of PTSD and early retirement from the police.
I think there is also an illusion of power and control at play. The cops are ultimately out numbered. If they grab the one guy mouthing off, that has a non zero risk of all hell breaking loose and short of the cops drawing guns and shooting people, they are going to be outnumbered and a lot of people, cops included, are going to be hurt. There are tradeoffs here for sure. As you point out, it sends the wrong message to not intervene. But intervening has a risk of far worse outcomes. And like you point out, when its people we dont agree with we get quite upset. But if its our ingroup doing the protesting and breaking the law (eg vandalizing 'bad people' statues etc), we see it differently and justified.
Yeah, no, we don't all see it differently depending on who's doing the law-breaking. Protest = wonderful. Break the law = not so good. Full stop. And I don't think Andrew is saying we all see it differently.
There's a lot of poorly thought out and poorly drafted laws, if nothing else. It is notable that the decision for whether or not to prosecute a matter is up to the test of whether there is a public interest in doing so. And sometimes there isn't one.
Also "officer discretion" is a recognized part of law enforcement and honestly when Parliament takes that away from officers you get results that are even worse. Zero tolerance domestic violence policies, for example, waste a pile of police time and energy and result in people on conditions (that may not reflect reality well) for months for charges where there is little or no evidence.
I am sure some people see the Eaton's Center as breaking the law, others see it as a "righteous and legitimate expression of anger" blah blah blah. The majority of us are very good of rationalizing post hoc.
Andrew might be seeing it as a case of a pure abstract legal question. I am saying reality does not afford that. People see these situations very differently and the cops dont always have the power to do what he thinks they should do.
Seeing the thuggish protest tactics that have been all the rage of late - and not just for the so-called "pro-Palestinian" cause - reminds me of a quote from a famous Canadian, one whom our current PM might know.
"It's a well-known technique of revolutionary groups who attempt to destroy society by unjustified violence to goad the authorities into inflexible attitudes. The revolutionaries then employ this evidence of alleged authoritarianism as justification for the need to use violence in their renewed attacks on the social structure." - Pierre Trudeau, October 16th, 1970.
I take your point Andrew but ... at what point do we lose public confidence in the whole legal system and slip into anarchy (for want of a better term). Having been threatened with physical violence and being told by the police that 'we can't do anything as no one heard it' was understandable BUT when there are videos of the threats being made and police officers standing around then a line has been crossed. At the least, the perpetrator should have been cuffed and led away even if no charges were laid - a message would have been sent 'if you can't settle down then we'll give you a time out as this is not appropriate behaviour'.
I believe that society is based on generally agreed principles of fair play, respect for one another, respect for rules and the over riding 'treat others as you would want to be treated' rule. If we lose that system and it becomes 'I can say whatever I want and threaten anyone I want with imunity' then we errode the society and encourage people to take the law into their own hands or we slip into tribalism where we look after our families/group and to heck with you. THAT is not my vision of Canada and it is certainly not the Canada I grew up in nor the Canada that I want my grandchildren to live in.
Defusing situations is fine, maintaining the peace is fine but only to a point. At some point we need to stand up and take action against the folks who burned churches 'in protest', who spread anti-semitism 'in protest', who block highways or railways 'in protest' wo block construction projects 'in protest' and so on. When do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one?
The laid back approach by the Ottawa Police Service backfired right from the beginning of the Freedom Convoy. By abdicating a critical police function, overseeing the orderly movement of motor vehicles, the truckers got the upper hand. Intransigence followed and then serious overreaction and legal overreach by the federal government, which was used as much as a punitive “we’ll fix you” as an efficient way to end the protest.
I’m waiting for a punitive reaction to the protests and anti-semitism that is running out of control in parts of Canada. Perhaps arresting a thug hiding behind a mask uttering threats in a shopping mall could send a message? The silence from politicians while these stunts are occurring is appalling and if there is no leadership at the top, what are police officers supposed to do?
Absolutely right on both counts, Darcy. However, I'm afraid that what we're seeing right now DOES reflect leadership at the top.
Andrew, I appreciated your article but I'm not sure about the conspiracy theory of policing. Absent an order to the contrary, it would only be expected that police would be motivated to make their lives as simple as possible.
Mary, are you meaning that simple = don't arrest wrongdoers? Because I think that that is your meaning and I, unfortunately agree that our cops are that simplistic.
Certainly seems so, anyway.
Thanks Ken. That certainly seems to be what happened--or failed to happen--in Toronto. I have no background in law enforcement, but I think "simple" can mean "avoid escalation", and again this was Toronto. Sadly, avoiding escalation on the one side is avoiding consequences on the other, and no justice for the victims. What all of this says to me is that no one with authority directed the officers to engage.
No one should have to tell them to do their job.
Mary, you write, in part, " .... avoid escalation .... "
To me that is an absurdity. In certain cases the issue is sufficiently egregious that the authorities need to come down on the malefactors with both boots, in order to, you know, "Encourager les autres."
Of course. I'm sorry, I thought I was clear: there was nothing acceptable about police inaction in Toronto.
Seems the rule now for cops is fuck it i didnt see anything and drive on.
Thanks for a wonderful article which is right on in terms of the police doing whatever they please. “Assholes” in my view are anybody that threatens the police’s position of authority and job security. (A trait shared with certain ( the majority of?) civil servants whose main function is to invent rules of behavior that enhance their status and job security). When I lived in Toronto several moons the Star would refer to the police FIdo rule (F@@k It, Drive On) when dealing with black on black street violence. Somehow the police interpretation of Canada’s motto “Peace Order and Good Government” has become “Population Control through Givernment”.
Canada’s inexorable disarmament of the population is another step in the control exercise eg the latest freezing all handgun transfers with eventual confiscation from widows and widowers is another example. Not so much the threat that these tools will be used against the police but that the availability of these tools helps the unanointed citizens (AKA “assholes”) protect their lives and property themselves in a timely manner thereby threatening the job security of the police.
Yes Virginia there is a Santa Claus. And one day the police will remember they are there to protect you and enforce the law. And the government will draw its power from the consent of the governed instead of delegated authority from the Governor General.
How many “uneventful” protests will it take before the “protestors” cross the line into actual physical harm, having been conditioned by police action allowing them freedom to say and do as they choose many times in the past?
I can appreciate the tactical decision to use a light touch to avoid escalating the situation. I’m sure if that guy was even approached by a couple of cops, things would have blown up, leading to a use of force investigation and the officer being publicly crucified for daring to lay hands on a member of a disadvantaged community. Cops know they will be thrown under the bus by management in that situation.
However, as we have seen with recent public order incidents from the indigenous protests where property and statues were damaged, the Ottawa street occupation and the Team Hamas protests, the light touch is escalating things as well by enabling anti-social behaviour.
What I fear the most is that if liberals won’t enforce the law, then the people will elect authoritarians who will.
This is spot on. Legally, the police have the discretion to enforce the law, maintain order and prevent crime. We saw that discretion being used in that video. As you point out, these officers also need to think about the ramifications of arrest in that situation, not just in terms of escalating the event but also professionally. Of course, failure to enforce the law also undermines the rule of law and arrest is a deterrent to many.
The point you make about the “assholes” interfering with what police think is their job is critically important and absolutely accurate. It applies not only on the street but all the way up to the top of their chains of command. I worked with police, especially RCMP, many times at the highest levels on major operations in Canada. It is their way or the highway. If you push back you are defined as an asshole. (First time I heard this description was in your article but it is clearly applicable.) I am at a loss how to successfully counter it though, without making their lives as police any harder than they already are.
It's a really, really complicated problem to resolve. Joe Heath has a great article that confronts it, but is equally at a loss about how to resolve it: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jopp.12313
It's a character and cultural issue. You can fight it. It's very very hard to permanently solve, not least because it's almost philosophical - if the law were structured such that the police didn't have to pick and choose when to enforce it, maybe we could just tell them "look, always enforce it unless it would be dangerous to everyone around to do so. Then enforce it once it's safe."
At what point can we start to question whether the work of police is as hard or dangerous as they claim? Statistics cited by police organizations from the University of the Fraser Valley show accepted injury claims of 30-37 per 1000 police officers. The comparable rate of *all* workplace injuries in Alberta is 61.5 per 1000 person-years - twice that rate! The average salary of a police officer in Toronto is $104,000 vs. an average *household* income (i.e. typically including more than 1 wage earner) of $78,000 for the same city.
With respect George, I think the difference is with police injuries they sometimes, and I have no idea how often, occur becasue of active attempts to harm an officer. There is a qualitative difference between, I slipped on a wet spot in aisle seven and twisted my back, and a guy at a traffic stop tried to run me over with his vehicle.
I concede the point, but it's still telling that the statistics are telling us that police officers have been able to reduce their exposure to that sort of intentional risk to a level that's lower than workers dealing with far more predictable and controllable hazards.
The role of police forces interaction with people who are having the worst days of their lives, everyday. When other workers can refuse service to difficult/dangerous customers, police are the ones who deal with the worst as part of their regular duties. Rate of occurence is only half of the risk calculation, the other half is severity of the hazard or threat. If you want high quality people to volunteer for a job with exposure to severe hazards or threats (car crashes on highways, drugs/narcotics, violent people who may also be armed, etc.), you'll have to pay a premium. You also need to pay enough to keep corruption unappealing.
I respect all the points above and think they are sound. I don’t want you to take my next comment as a rebuttal. Just an observation. Years ago I was drinking with a senior cop for a large Canadian force. We were quite a few cups in. I asked him about this issue. Recruiting the best people and deterring corruption. And he agreed. But he also said there was a trade off: for some people, being a cop might be the best-paying job that is within their skillset and educational attainment/ability. And he worried that some of the officers coming in were coming in for the money. And they would treat the duty accordingly: put in their hours. In his day, he commented, he knew the job would be bad and the pay average. He joined up anyway. It was his calling to serve.
I think about this a lot.
It's a valid concern. I also think about this a lot, albeit in the context of the CAF. I wonder if there was a time when the social status, prestige, or honour afforded members of uniformed services offset the comparatively low compensation. So a kid with a Grade 10 education and nothing else going for him could join the Army, put in his time, and earn respectability. Someone might cynically call that narcissism, but offering a legitimate "path to honour" can turn angry young men towards pro social ends. These days, neither the police nor the military are held up as particularly honourable professions in polite society. Police applicants are expected to have at least a college diploma, be fit, empathetic, and willing to perform stressful (and often dangerous) work under intense public scrutiny. You're going to need an extra nudge to gain and retain quality people under these conditons. Anecdotally, I've seen better pay, unions, and geographic stability draw lots of CAF members into police work. The call to serve gets people through the door, but it doesn't pay the bills.
I think people need to realize that the police are not your friends.
john, you're not my friend either, that does not mean you are not performing your job.
Personally, I think this is just a subset of people, and not even just people in government, to be averse to doing the “right thing”.
And the problem is not so much laziness, it’s that there is no more “right”.
If you thought morality was just a hang-up of uptight religious folks, no, morality is the basis for the law. Once upon a time, most people didn’t need the law to tell them to not do something criminal, because they knew right from wrong. The law was there for people who didn’t, or wouldn’t. This is what happens to society when you jettison morality.
Here endeth the lesson.
"Here endeth the lesson."
I respectfully disagree in that I think this lesson is so obviously needed to be stated, restated, re-restated, re-re-restated .......
This is deeply cynical and subversive and it’s brilliant.
I have very little faith and confidence in the police forces across Canada, having watched their repeated impotence in the face of growing violent radicalism. I think Canadian police are behaving like police do in a regime state, where they are arrogant pr1cks who protect and legitimize extremists and the corrupt.
The bottom line is the optics fcuking suck. People want an end to the reign of terror.
We need more assholes grinding cops like this video did.
RS, I wish that I didn't agree with you but I absolutely do.
Think broken windows syndrome. Thanks to police inaction, we now know it's possible to block a railroad, shut down a city, ignore court orders, and intimidate Jews and members of the general public if one is part of a large enough crowd, preferably masked and possibly armed. Authorities need to act not only to enforce the law in a specific instance, but to ensure that the law is respected in future, without fear or favour.
I understand that couple of undermanned officers may legitimately have feared that an arrest could have sparked a riot in a large mall filled with "civilians". But just as US authorities made January 6th arrests after the fact, I hope ours make arrests now, using available video footage.
The masks make the threats and intimidation tactics even greater and encourage those making coded genocidal threats believe they can act with impunity. ("From the river to the sea" = "Jews will not replace us.") I would not like be a Jew in Canada right now, knowing that police are either unwilling or unable to protect me and my family from harassment and lord knows what else, even for something as simple as stepping outside to visit Santa at the mall.
Allan, you write in your last paragraph, "... police are either unwilling or unable to protect me and my family ..."
I respectfully re-write that bit as follows, "... police are simply refusing to protect me and my family ..."
To the extent that to 'police' something literally means to control it so that things proceed in an orderly fashion, this article isn't wrong. But it's incomplete. A dictator who intimidates a population through thuggish use of military force is maintaining order, but we would not regard this as a legitimate example of policing as we understand the term. Words have connotative as well as denotative meanings, and for us, police officers are public servants whose specific task is law enforcement. To the extent that we also expect the police to function as managers of social order in crisis situations, we are not "assholes" for insisting that they do so in conformity with the law whose representatives they are, and from which they derive their authority.
The irony is that police can only succeed in performing the tasks assigned them in societies that are basically law abiding and self-policing to begin with. A society in which every citizen instantly breaks the law the moment his neighbours' backs are turned cannot be policed. We expect our neighbours to be trustworthy, and for the police to protect us against the minority of anti-social individuals who don't merit that trust. Only in this kind of environment do police officers have a fighting chance; and since in Canada this is essentially the kind of society we have, the country is policeable. A society in which every person's hand is turned against the police and everyone else isn't.
Perhaps this, in microcosm, is essentially what was being demonstrated at the Eaton Centre. An unruly mob can't be policed, and the best the police can do when faced with mob behaviour is acknowledge its immunity to rational appeal, while doing their best to contain and slowly de-escalate. The police are also right to distinguish between genuine, illegal attempts to do harm and 'threats' that are simply bluster on the part of people who, however much they may be inflamed by the passion of the moment, do not intend for their words to be taken literally ("I'll knock your head off, you moron!"). Expressions of hostility are rarely polite, but only in the most exceptional of cases should they also be deemed illegal.
The police, in turn, would be smart to recognize the extent to which their ability to discharge their responsibilities depends on a largely law abiding citizenry, and not be so undiplomatic as to dismiss as "assholes" those who complain when they believe laws are being broken. People who respect the law and get upset when it is disregarded are a police officer's natural allies; and why make life harder for yourself by offending allies?
Mark, you write, "An unruly mob can't be policed, and the best the police can do when faced with mob behaviour is acknowledge its immunity to rational appeal, while doing their best to contain and slowly de-escalate."
Respectfully, Sir, bollocks.
At what point does that approach allow a mob to, oh, say, storm a store, attack a (Jewish or otherwise) person? There was already a person threatening death - presumably to police officers. The first thing that the cops needed to do was to get many more folks on site then surround and arrest the worst of them. At the very least they could have grabbed the one guy and put him in cuffs. A French phrase occurs to me: Pour encourager les autres. And if that didn't encourager the autres then bring out your night sticks, cops.
Maintain order? Huh! They were not maintaining order but were protecting bullies, antisemites and actual criminals.
Clearly, these police were not maintaining the values of much of the community but only of the group favored by our worsers.
"The first thing that the cops needed to do was to get many more folks on site..."
...because an unruly mob, being beyond rational appeal, can't be reasoned with. That's the claim, the truth of which you're tacitly acknowledging, albeit without seeming to realize it. The claim isn't that Toronto's police are incapable of assembling a larger, better-armed mob of their own and brutalizing the first mob into submission. That kind of forceful reaction is the norm in many parts of the world; but, traditionally, Canadians have not wanted their police behaving in this fashion. Would you really be happier if police at the Eaton Centre had "controlled" the crowd by surrounding the protesters and inflicting physical harm on them? That's the inevitable outcome whenever groups forcefully collide in the manner you're suggesting.
In the end, no one was hurt by the watch and wait, contain and de-escalate strategy the police adopted. Possibly you don't count this as a plus, but it accords with our community values as I understand them.
Thanks for your excellent comment. I’m realizing how little understanding of the actual role of the police there is. Discretion is vital. They do not take orders from the government. De- escalation is the current approach to potentially volatile mob scenes in public when the subject is highly emotional as is the case here.
De-escalation is an effective tool/method prior to laws having being broken, after which it is necessary for enforcement. If not enforced then the laws and the mechanisms (the police, the courts and the ‘lawmakers’) by which they are applied are seen as arbitrary or biased or politically motivated and thus become at best, ineffective and at worst, incendiary.
Today, where every aggrieved, offended and entitled social justice warrior, (armed with a camera and a mask) is of the opinion that they are the exception to the rule, it is more important than ever that equal (not equitable) application of the law is applied and may thus be respected.
Well done Mark. Your words speak for a lot of reasonable Canadians. I deliberately waited a week to read this article and all the comments. If it was possible I would give your composition many likes.
Great comment.
Or, to put it another way, the police have become a self-serving entity beholden only to themselves. They avoid any encounters which involve putting themselves at risk and are increasingly averse to any heavy lifting. In short, they are no longer effective at what most people consider to be their job - enforcing the law and being seen to be enforcing the law. In many ways, they have become the assholes.
This is why there is a “Blue Line”. Officers are too often protected from doing wrong because it considered that it was an ‘asshole’ who made the complaint. Being under the British model where police are not under direct civilian control, again unlike US TV where the cops are always being told what to do by some out of control mayor, it is the cops that decide what needs enforcing. Neither works well when under stress, but police independence is probably better than having local ego driven mayors having their own ‘army’.
This is absolutely the case. However the British, at least initially, very much had a view of policing where the police were also civilians. Canada very much does NOT have this. This is probably not ideal for a whole bunch of reasons.
Can you expand more on the British model and what you mean by civilian control? As far as I know, the police in Britain are controlled by a policing and crime commissioner, who is directly elected by constituents and answers to another semi-civilian group/board. In Canada, we have mostly impotent police boards that generally have some municipal council representation balanced with unelected civilians.
Having worked with them and watched how they are required to handle all of society’s problems, I would not want to do their jobs day in and day out. It has become an unbearable job for many which is why you see high rates of PTSD and early retirement from the police.
I think there is also an illusion of power and control at play. The cops are ultimately out numbered. If they grab the one guy mouthing off, that has a non zero risk of all hell breaking loose and short of the cops drawing guns and shooting people, they are going to be outnumbered and a lot of people, cops included, are going to be hurt. There are tradeoffs here for sure. As you point out, it sends the wrong message to not intervene. But intervening has a risk of far worse outcomes. And like you point out, when its people we dont agree with we get quite upset. But if its our ingroup doing the protesting and breaking the law (eg vandalizing 'bad people' statues etc), we see it differently and justified.
Yeah, no, we don't all see it differently depending on who's doing the law-breaking. Protest = wonderful. Break the law = not so good. Full stop. And I don't think Andrew is saying we all see it differently.
There's a lot of poorly thought out and poorly drafted laws, if nothing else. It is notable that the decision for whether or not to prosecute a matter is up to the test of whether there is a public interest in doing so. And sometimes there isn't one.
Also "officer discretion" is a recognized part of law enforcement and honestly when Parliament takes that away from officers you get results that are even worse. Zero tolerance domestic violence policies, for example, waste a pile of police time and energy and result in people on conditions (that may not reflect reality well) for months for charges where there is little or no evidence.
I am sure some people see the Eaton's Center as breaking the law, others see it as a "righteous and legitimate expression of anger" blah blah blah. The majority of us are very good of rationalizing post hoc.
Andrew might be seeing it as a case of a pure abstract legal question. I am saying reality does not afford that. People see these situations very differently and the cops dont always have the power to do what he thinks they should do.
Seeing the thuggish protest tactics that have been all the rage of late - and not just for the so-called "pro-Palestinian" cause - reminds me of a quote from a famous Canadian, one whom our current PM might know.
"It's a well-known technique of revolutionary groups who attempt to destroy society by unjustified violence to goad the authorities into inflexible attitudes. The revolutionaries then employ this evidence of alleged authoritarianism as justification for the need to use violence in their renewed attacks on the social structure." - Pierre Trudeau, October 16th, 1970.