Tag: police

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Fabulous Fantino!

The chief of police in the City of Toronto is Julian Fantino. Fantino is a fabulous guy. He has fantastic ideas about everything.

Fantino thinks it is contemptible that the police actually have to answer to a committee that includes civilians whenever they kill or injure somebody. The police know better than anyone else when someone gets in the way. Why should outsiders have to come in and ask questions that the police haven’t already thought of, like, “what can I charge this guy with after I beat him up for dissing me?”

Fantino thinks the police need an increase in their budget every year, until, I think, the police budget is at least ten times the budget for everything else combined. There can never be too many police officers. Not even when a RIDE (drunk driving) program in Scarborough only catches one person in one year. Money well-spent! It’s the visibility of the police that keeps those drunk drivers from getting into their cars! If that’s the case, I suggest we use Lastman’s ideas for moose and put fiberglass officers all over the city. There can never be too many moose.

The City of Toronto is facing a $300 million shortfall this year. Premiere Harris must be giggling in his downtown love-nest or from his vacation in Florida or some golf course somewhere about the civic politicians being forced to give up their limos and research assistants and cut the wages of those lucky working stiffs that get to subsidize millionaire athletes when they’re not being pulled over by the RIDE program. Everybody in the city is going to have to “bite the bullet” and give up their wage increases. Except for the police. The police demanded a 7% increase. The Police Services Committee, rightly embarrassed, decided to only ask for 3%. But you see how bargaining works: ask for something obscene and then settle for something absurd.

What’s odd about this is that even during the years of recession, when everyone else was taking pay-cuts or getting laid off, the police forces continued to grow and their budgets continued to grow. Meanwhile, in spite of Fantino’s nonsense, the crime rate has actually declined. If anyone is in a position to take a budget cut, it’s the police.

The police desperately want a helicopter. The city was reluctant to fund one, so they got some corporate sponsor to donate the money to rent one for six months. I presume the corporate sponsor was able to write off his donation as a charitable gift. Which means that someone else has to cough up that deduction to make up for the missing tax money. Which means you and I, brother. Then the police tried very hard to make it look like the helicopter was helping the save lives. The trouble is that officers on the ground routinely beat the helicopter to where-ever it was police helicopters go. If you watch U.S. television, the role of police helicopters is to video-tape the chase thereby proving how dangerous the reckless offender was driving, which justifies the gap in the tape between the point at which the officers drag the hapless evil-doer from his car and the point at which they lift his handcuffed comatose body into the back of the patrol car.

When the Supreme Court of Canada– I’m getting to my point– ruled that a pair of Canadians could not be extradited to the United States for trial until Canadian authorities were assured that they would not face capital punishment, Fantino weighed in immediately with his pronouncement that Canada would now become a safe haven for wanton murderers and terrorists from all around the world.

First of all, the comment is idiotic. The Supreme Court ruled that Canadians cannot be extradited to the U.S. to be subject to the death penalty. The ruling does not apply to foreigners. It might, in the future, if someone brings a case involving foreigners before it, but it doesn’t now. (In fact, a few years ago, the Supreme Court did send Charles Ng back to the U.S. to face the death penalty, because he was a U.S. citizen.)

Secondly, the Canadians in this case can still be tried for murder in Canada and sent to prison here. They likely won’t be because the U.S. will probably agree not to seek the death penalty.

And thirdly, who asked you? You are a police chief, not the Minister of Justice. You are not a democratically elected official of the government, and you seem hardly accountable to anyone. What’s with your big mouth on the front of the newspaper every two days? Why don’t you shut up and train your officers on the etiquette of strip-searches?

Fantino is one of the most obnoxious police chiefs in the country. What he really wants is to be in the news every day. He loves to hear himself speak. He is loyal to his officers no matter what they do. He seems to have a vision of some kind of police state in which cops can do pretty well whatever they want to. And if you object? He’ll tell you, well, that’s the price of law and order. You want us to sick the Hell’s Angels on you? Now shut up and bend over.

Now listen– I’m not one of those people who thinks we can do without the police. But I am one of those people who thinks that being a cop is a privilege. And I think that if you want to be a cop in our society, and get paid for being a cop, and get respect for being a cop…. there is one trade-off: we have very high expectations for you. You have to be self-disciplined. You have to have self-control. You have to understand the law and know how to apply it fairly and equitably.

You have to demonstrate a fundamental respect for the fact that it is the role of our democratically elected institutions to make law, and your role to enforce it.

And sometimes, you have to shut up.

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Software Police

All over the civilized world, the software police– at taxpayer’s expense– are invading homes and the offices of Internet Service Providers, warrants in hand, to shut down those evil, pernicious, dangerous, malevolent software pirates.

That’s the way the world works. The lawyers for a big company like Microsoft or Lotus calls the police. They say, “arrest that man– he’s stealing our software!” The police say, “yes sir!” and throw on their flak jackets, arm themselves to the teeth, hop into their paddy wagons, and go racing out to courageously fight for justice and truth and all that.

It should tell you something about the nature of our economy and our politics that if you called the police and asked them to arrest Microsoft or Lotus or Compaq, for the same crime, they would laugh in your face. You just know, don’t you, that the police would assume that a lawyer for Microsoft represents the forces of justice and truth, while a mere consumer represents… well… the average person. And the law, my friend, has become a tool of the rich, by which they exploit you and me.

Case in point. Do you own a computer? What does it mean to own? If you own your couch, that means that no one can sit on it without your permission. If you own a house, in the U.S., that means you can pretty well kill anybody who tries to enter it without your permission.

You own this computer. So why is your hard drive loaded with parasite programs that suck the breath out of your CPU? Why is your e-mail flooded with SPAM? Why can’t you delete certain directories like “My Documents”? Why does Office 97 exterminate your copy of Office 95, without giving you a choice? And when Windows crashes for the umpteenth time, costing you hours and hours of precious work, why is nobody accountable for it? Why is Compaq allowed to sell laptops with fake modems? Why can a software company sell a check-writing program that doesn’t work and refuse to give the purchaser his money back?

This is theft, of your time and your property.  It is robbery.

 

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Unreported Crime

The chairman of the police services Board in Toronto doesn’t believe her own eyes.

New reports show that the crime rate in Toronto has declined by a hefty 8% in the past year. Some types of crime have decreased by 15% or more.

Every single time the statistics show that crime has gone up, the Chairman of the Police Services Board has climbed onto her gold-plated pedestal and proclaimed that the taxpayers better fork over some more money for police services.

The Chairman never says: Oh oh. We’re doing a lousy job. Instead of reducing crime, we’re making it go up! Nor does she ever say, “Oh, those statistics are due to changing demographics—we’re doing just fine, really. Put that money into shelters for the homeless instead.” And she never says, “Those statistics are not true. I don’t believe them.” Not when the statistics say that crime is on the increase.

But when these statistics come out and show that the amount of crime in the city of Toronto has gone down, she says, “I don’t believe those numbers. All of my friends say crime is going up. They are all more afraid of crime now than they used to be.”

This is about as stupid a thing as a responsible person in an official position can say. She is saying, I don’t care about proof or facts or truth. I don’t care about the fact that my personal experience is a completely meaningless measure of how widespread crime in a city of 2 million people is. She is saying, it doesn’t matter what the reality is: we are going to ask for more and more money every single time the budget comes up for negotiation.

I think we should give her the increase. Give her another 10, 20, 30 million dollars. Why not? And the next time the statistics come out and show that crime is going up, we’ll tell her: We don’t believe those statistics. We feel that the crime rate is going down. No soup for you.

 

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14 Years

On March 16, a man in Panama City, Florida, was sentenced to 14 years in prison for putting his 6-year-old daughter into an empty swimming pool in the back of his pick-up truck and driving down the highway. The pool was blown off the truck with the little girl in it and into the path of oncoming traffic. The girl, Catriona, survived the initial fall, but was killed when she was struck by a following car.

Jeffrey Sakemiller had four previous drunk driving convictions, his license had been suspended, and he was legally drunk at the time of the incident. His wife, the mother of Catriona, said “I hope he rots in jail”. Her comment made me wonder if he had kidnapped the girl. I know that what Jeffrey did was incredibly stupid and destructive, but if I were Catriona’s mother and Jeffrey’s wife, I wouldn’t say what she said out loud. I’d say something like, “This is the saddest day of my life.”

Fourteen years is a long time. If I had been the judge, I don’t think I would have given him 14 years. He didn’t murder the girl deliberately in a drunken rage. He was certainly criminally negligent, but our society usually makes a distinction between stupidity and evil. The judge was rightly appalled. But 14 years?

Stupidity is causing a death through bad judgment. Like Bush invading Iraq. Evil is when you knowingly do something that causes death. Like fudging the intelligence on Iraq.

Victor Robichaud of Paris, Ontario, did something fairly similar. He tried to pass a car illegally on a hill one night in 1997, and ran head-on into a car driven by Caius Jupan of Kitchener. Jupan was killed and Robichaud was charged with dangerous driving causing death. He received an 18-month sentence. This was considered pretty stiff, by Canadian standards. Both Robichaud and Sakemiller did something very stupid that resulted in the death of an innocent person. Neither of them intended to hurt anyone.

The difference is, Robichaud still has a chance to live a meaningful life.

The cigarette companies have also been accused of causing the deaths of innocent people. But the cigarette companies are not persons: they are corporations. In the U.S., several states have taken them to court. The tobacco companies negotiated a settlement. They paid a big fine. But who, really, is “they”? Management? Don’t make me laugh. Shareholders? Are you kidding? “They” turns out to be you and me! As a corporation, Phillip Morris and R. J. Reynolds and the gang can simply pass their fines on to us in the form of higher cigarette prices. Nobody goes to jail. Nobody even pays a penalty. Just us corporations here. Oooo. Owww. That hurts.

The difference between Jeffrey Sakemiller and the corporations that produce cigarettes (and the corporations who produce herbicides and genetically re-engineered food and bovine growth hormone…) is that the corporations, in many cases, deliberately produced harmful products for the purpose of material gain.

Jeffrey should have incorporated himself and hired a lawyer. He could have claimed he was a manager for a company that produced thrill-rides for little children. He could have claimed that his own research showed that the pool was safe on the back of the truck and anybody who thought otherwise was a liar. He could have complained bitterly that without tort reform, bold entrepreneurs like himself are discouraged from growing the economy.

He would still have been sued. He would still have lost. But then, at least, he would not have gone to jail. You can’t put a corporation in jail. Even if the plaintiff had won millions and millions, Jeffrey could have just closed up shop, walked away, and started a new business somewhere else.

The judge wanted to send a serious message to society. The message is, “don’t be so stupid”. Is that a helpful message? I have a hard time imagining that anyone dumb enough to put a child into a swimming pool in the back of a pick-up truck and then drive down the highway would be smart enough to read the newspaper and get that message.

In New York City, a dumb social services worker allowed a child to return home to her mother even though she had been charged with abuse and reckless endangerment several times. The child was killed. I don’t think the social services worker was even fired.

In the same city, four cops, looking for a man suspected of carrying a weapon, fired about 40 bullets into an innocent stranger. Republican Governor Giuliani defended their honor.

I think I would have given Jeffrey Sakemiller about two years, and I would have taken his license away for fifteen years, and instructed the local child welfare office to see that he is never permitted to look after young children again. I would also have given a good tongue-lashing to somebody: what was someone with four drunk driving convictions doing on the road at all? How could he even own a pickup? Who entrusted an incorrigible drunk driver with the care of a six-year-old girl?

Did the child’s mother, Rebecca, know he was driving around drunk with Catriona? Was she so angry because she wanted a break from the demands of an active child and and insisted that Sakemiller take her with to the store?

The news reports don’t say how old Jeffrey is. Let’s say he’s about 25. He’ll have to serve at least 85% of his sentence under U.S. judicial rules, so he’s going to be in jail until he is 36 or 37, at least. If he is a young man with any potential for any good at all, that will surely be driven out of him by then.

Obviously, he didn’t have a very good lawyer. If you were rich and did something really stupid that resulted in someone’s death– like Ted Kennedy, for example– you wouldn’t serve any time at all. O. J. Simpson. William Calley. Klaus Von Bulow. Oliver North. There are different laws for the rich. The first law is that all of that constitutional business about equality before the law is pure hogwash.

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A New Jersey State Police officer who pulled over a 52-year-old black woman who was driving a Porsche, and spat at her and assaulted her, didn’t get punished at all, though the state government had to pay her $225,000. If you’re a taxpayer in New Jersey, you might want to ask why the government is paying out $225,000 if the police, as they claim, didn’t do anything wrong.

All the NRA members and Baptists and Republicans will accuse me of being soft on crime. I’ll be turfed at the next election. I’d say, “Fine. I’ll go live in France.”

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The Naked Truth About Police Chases

A 46-year-old woman in Indiana decided to go for a drive. Naked. A policeman spotted her.

Okay, let’s say you’re a cop. You see this woman drive by, and she appears to be naked. You immediately realize that this naked woman is a serious threat to public safety and security and MUST BE STOPPED. On go the lights. On goes the siren. Maybe you even make little “woo-woo” sounds with your mouth as you wheel your muscular Chevy Malibu 360 degrees and step on the gas. Maybe your trigger finger starts twitching: what if she’s got a concealed weapon? Well, all right. What if she has a gun on her lap? You think back to police school– what did they teach you about handling naked women drivers? Should you call out the SWAT team? You get on the radio, anyway, and call for assistance. From the looks of things, could be trouble. “Naked woman in a car. Am proceeding to apprehend.”

Five different police departments respond to your call.

This naked woman doesn’t want to stop for you. She steps on the gas. Soon, she is driving 160 kilometers per hour (110 mph).

Well, now you have a threat to public safety.

At least five other police cars get involved in the chase. Let’s say it takes them about 30 minutes to join the race, catch up with the woman, pull her over, sort out who gets to lay charges, and then get back to other duties. That’s probably about $1000.00 for the officers alone, benefits included. Then there’s the cars (fuel and maintenance) the paper work, the processing time for the charges, the court appearances, the District Attorney and his assistants, and so on. I’ll bet by the time you’re done, it’s going to cost the taxpayer over $5,000.00 to deal with this naked woman. What if one or more of the police cars had been damaged in the chase? What if a child had been hit by one of the speeding cars?

Sometimes I think privatization might be a good thing. Suppose I was an ambitious businessman and I owned my own police force and I contracted my services out to the State of Indiana. Suppose one of my employees radioed in that a naked woman just drove by and he wanted to pursue her.

Come on. Are you nuts? I’d tell him to go check to see if a bank is being robbed somewhere. I’d tell him to go to a pool hall and cover a few games for a bunch of teenagers. I’d tell him to park his car downtown and take a walk and chat with at least five merchants. I’d tell him to find a school basketball court, take off his tie and gun, and play three-on-three with whoever’s hanging out there. I’d tell him to go to a liquor store and get himself onto a first-name basis with the proprietor. I’d tell him to go find a milk carton and see if he can memorize the faces of the missing children.

If I was really conscientious, I’d have one of the receptionists from the office get into her Toyota and see if she can find the naked woman, follow her around, and see if she’s in some kind of trouble. I pay her $15.00 an hour and cover her mileage. Net cost: $25.00. No lives lost. No cars damaged. No big deal.

* * *

Just read today that the police in Mildmay, Ontario, found out that a local Radio Shack dealer had purchased some parts from a cruise missile at a flea market in Ohio. Oooo! SWAT team for sure. On May 13, 1997, they invaded his store with 15 flak-jacketed camouflaged armed commandos (I am not making this up), terrifying the law-abiding owner, an electronics hobbyist with plans to take over the world but who was not charged with anything for four months. I’ll bet this operation cost more than $5,000. I’ll bet the Ontario Provincial Police ask for–and receive–more money next year, to handle this epidemic of terrorism: naked ladies and Radio Shack managers.

I would have sent that same secretary in her Toyota. Let’s have a chat. I’ll give you a thousand bucks. (According to the owner, he would have accepted less than that, if they had only offered.) Maybe we can work this out.

But the, what would the police do with all those flak jackets and commando gear? Paintball?

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More Keystone Cops

A police officer in St. Thomas, Jeff Dreidger, was recently charged with drunken driving. Several officers (four) witnessed him consume at least 6 drinks and he was administered two breathalyzer tests which both showed positive. Nevertheless, the Judge let him off, declaring that, in spite of all the evidence in front of him, in his humble opinion, “his ability to operate a motor vehicle was not impaired by alcohol”.

Funny–then how come he ran his pickup truck into a sign post.

The Judge’s name is Greg Pockele. If you ever appear before him charged with drunk driving, be sure to mention it’s okay because you were with your good buddy Jeff Dreidger.

Kudos to the officers, three OPP and one from St. Thomas, who arrested the jerk. The judge should be dismissed.

Oops
An officer in Toronto called a fellow officer, whom he had never met, to discuss a recent arrest. During the conversation, he referred to the suspect as a “nigger” and “ape”, unaware of the fact that the officer he was speaking to was black. The officer was reprimanded. Shouldn’t he have been fired?

You Never Know…
In Nova Scotia, another man charged with murder is released after DNA testing proved he didn’t do it. The Crown “stayed” charges– meaning they wish to be able to charge him with the same crime again within a year– instead of dropping them.

You Can’t Have too Much SWAT
In Mildmay, Ontario, 15 police, including a SWAT team, and officers dressed in camouflage and carrying automatic rifles, invaded a Radio Shack Store to recover some military parts which the owner had lawfully purchased at a Flea Market in Ohio. What’s going on here? Playing at war, are we? Oh boy, we get to dress up like the army and pretend to invade Red Square. Isn’t that what the “RS” stands for?

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Keystone Cops

The Toronto Star recently reported that 99% of the complaints made against the Metropolitan Toronto police force are resolved in favour of the police, according the “objective” civilian complaints review process. That means that either Toronto has the greatest police force in the world– truly, the most amazing, perhaps, in history– , or the biggest liars. An officer responsible for handling complaints against the police force, with a straight face, actually insisted that the police really are in the right 99% of the time.

What kind of a person are you that you would say something so preposterous to a journalist, on the record? What do you really think of the people out there, that would make you believe they would believe you?

Now, even if you support the police (and with the level of paranoia in our society as high as it is nowadays, that’s quite likely), and even if you believe the Metropolitan Police force to be the best trained and most well-behaved in the world, it is statistically impossible that they could be right 99% of the time. It simply cannot be true. This kind of statistic is reminiscent of the old Soviet Union, when year after year, “record breaking” crops were harvested, proving the superiority of the Soviet system, while the people continued to starve.

When you think about it, it’s pretty scary that the police can get away with pulling this stuff. How dare they claim to be right 99% of the time? Who’s making this judgment? Who is in control here? Is there no civilian authority that can call this guy up and say, “What? Are you out of your mind? Don’t you realize how stupid that figure sounds? Do you want people to think you’re delusional? Withdraw the figure immediately and come up with something more credible, like 70%.”

Let’s get real. Would you believe that 99% of the customer complaints against Walmart were false? Would you believe 99% of the complaints against a surgeon were false? Would you believe that 99% of the allegations of sexual abuse made against boy scout leaders or priests were false?

I don’t know what the actual number of legitimate grievances against the police force should be. The Toronto Star didn’t have any difficulty finding at least two representative cases that made the police look pretty bad but which the police resolved in favour of the police. (The investigating officer decided that the two police officers, who corroborated each others’ stories, were more believable than numerous civilian witnesses, who right out of the blue, for no reason at all, decided to make up a bunch of lies about two officers beating up an innocent civilian.) The point is, that even if you think the police are doing a great job, a terrific job, it is simply outside of the realm of human experience that they could be right 99% of the time, or that an honest judge would even think they were right 99% of the time even if, incredibly, they really were.

It’s like those leaders in totalitarian nations that receive 95% of the vote.  Right.

What this number really means is that if an officer pulled you over by mistake, dragged you out of your car in front of family or friends, kicked you and beat you with a club, and then tossed you into jail for a day or two until the mistake was realized…. well, who’s going to stop him? If he has any hesitations about exceeding the limits of “reasonable” force, they are swept away by his acute awareness of the fact that you have only a 1% chance of success in filing a complaint. This, my friends, is about the same percentage of success you could expect in a police state.

Or you might believe that there is virtually no chance that such a thing could happen, because our Toronto police are better, and more honest, and more virtuous, than any other police force in the world.

Some cops–and some civilians too—believe that we need to give the cops more latitude to deal with those hordes of criminals out there. They believe that most law-abiding citizens have nothing to fear. Right. Like Guy Paul Morin, Donald Marshall, Damien Echols, and David Milgaard. Anyway, the fact that a victim of excessive police force might be innocent is beside the point. The idea that police can use excessive force on anybody, criminal or not, with impunity, is repugnant to a democracy.

The solution is simple: a civilian review board should be set up to handle all complaints against the police officers. Appoint smart, fair, and dedicated people to the board. Tell the police that because we know they are competent and professional, we expect few complaints, but that even the most competent and professional people in the world make a few mistakes, lose their cool, and do stupid things sometimes. And if the police were smart, they would welcome the increased public confidence in them that would result from a fair and impartial review board.

Unfortunately, this is pretty well exactly what they did do a few years ago. The police complained so bitterly about actually having to be accountable to someone else that the Harris government, ever concerned about civil rights (ha ha) disbanded it.