And in the twinkling of a national broadcaster’s eye, civilian oversight of police becomes inappropriate;
Documents obtained by CBC News show just how much pressure the Mounties were under to justify to their political masters the decision to seize firearms from evacuated homes at the height of the Alberta floods last spring. The emails paint a picture of a police force trying to juggle the demands of policing in an emergency with public and political criticisms.
The G20 seems a lifetime ago….
During the Calgary Flood, every decent able-bodied man or woman was
helping with the flood cleanup. The RCMP were out in High River,
breaking and entering homes and stealing firearms (and who knows what
else).
In consequence, I so far have not made a contribution to the CPC.
See the comments at CBC …. plenty of people correctly calling the RCMP criminals.
Also John Lewis …. The break ins and gun theft was directed by the RCMP brass and backed by Redford. Alberta has a new 20 year contract with RCMP for police services.
But go ahead ad try to conflate RCMP crimes with the Conservative Party.
What a moroon …
The comments at the CBC are SO disappointing,but hardly surprising, most of them pro the RCMP’s thievery.
My MP never did respond to my inquiry about the HR gun seizures, nor has anyone answered the question as to why the Cumberland Indian Reserve adjacent to High River was not entered by the RCMP and guns seized there.
I believe governments of all stripes approve of these actions,as they are a good test as to how far they can push people when they want to.
There were a couple of mild statements of disapproval by the Federal government, but I’ve never heard of any official censure of the Officers involved.
Everything was planned to re-institute the Alberta Provincial Police including a new police college at Fort Macleod and then the idiot Redford signed on for another 20 years of abuse of power and cancelled the whole deal.
Read the stories John Lewis. There’s a good juxtaposition here.
The left is having heart palpitations because conservative politicians in Ottawa and Edmonton were phoning the RCMP to ask what the hell was going on with the gun seizures.
At the G20 when the cops became a little heavy handed because their stuff was getting trashed all of a sudden the cops are the bad guys.
It’s business as usual for the left, no consistency.
The fact that the RCMP confiscated weapons from private residences in the Wildrose leader’s neighbourhood yet not the indian reserve, is totally unacceptable.
Political payback?
Different laws for different folks?
Heads need to roll.
At the G20 when the cops became a little heavy handed because their stuff was getting trashed all of a sudden the cops are the bad guys.
Excuse me? The cops were not ‘a little heavy handed’. They were grossly abusive and then they lied about it afterward. After first allowing a few thugs to do as they please. The cops have always been bad guys. The Egyptian army had more professionalism during the 2011 revolution.
I so far have not made a contribution to the CPC.
The correct action.
This High River incident is indeed an outrage.
It was also predictable.
Once the Harper Conservatives decided to retain 98% of the Liberals C-68(1995)/P.C.(1991), that simple possession of a firearm was to be a criminal offence, the RCMP saw open season on licensed gun owners had been declared, and by 4 Prime Ministers in a row.
A government declares illegal only those things it wishes to suppress and eliminate.
Our ancestors fought, bled and died to save us from the kind of actions taken by the RCMP in High River.
Should they even be allowed to attend Remembrance Day ceremonies, for that seems a desecration to the memory of our fallen?
“Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands, we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.”
-Col. John McCrae
Your excellent post puts truth to the partisan contard lies that there was nothing Harper et al could have done about High River and that the LGR repeal was a huge deal.
The police planted the cop cars and allowed them to burn during the G20.
There was absolutely no risk of harm for even a single cop to walk up, get in and drive them away.
I pulled fire starting garbage out of one of them and argued with the idiot vandals after they had their windows smashed and they were being stripped by a few skinny punks. The cops stood around the corner in a line and watched it happen.
They wanted car fires to justify suspending individual rights.
They are not our friends.
My comments on the CBC blog.
Why can’t people face the facts? We are supposed to have a Charter of Rights. That does not mean we cherry-pick the Rights that seem Politically Correct at the time. No Provincial Emergency legislation over-rules The Charter. Firearms ownership is also a Charter Right. It is a Right via the British North America Act, which The Charter acknowledges.
“Guns in our streets” was a political campaign cry by a failed politician. Crooks do not want 4 foot long (1.3m) guns to commit crimes with. They do not want 16 inch (38cm) handguns either. They want small compact pistols. If the opportunity arises they may steal long guns but only for resale.
Or perhaps you want a country run by the Hysterical Politically Correct?
And at any rate, the community was under RCMP guard.
From the article:
In total, the documents show the Mounties seized 542 firearms, 93 of them coming from a single residence.
93 firearms?
That’s guy’s wife must love him a whole bunch. Mine thinks I’m nuts for having a couple of Cooey 60’s.
Hey, for all we know, the wife’s a collector of vintage firearms. Somebody’s gotta love ’em a whole lot — just the paperwork that one has to do when you own that many firearms is a great flaming PITA. You’d have no time left to actually use one of the things.
93 firearms – it’s called collecting. No more dangerous than 1.
Again, no one brings to light the town was in ‘lock down’ mode, with cops, helicopters, and military folk all over the place.
As well, if someone DID bust in and steal a rifle, how do you get away with knee deep water without being detected?
So what was the justification again of busting down the doors?
Is that a pistol sir, or are you happy to see me?
16 inch (38cm) handguns
that’s an unusually long handgun, who makes it?
4 foot long (1.3m) guns
like the .45-110 Sharps rifles?
So what was the justification again of busting down the doors?
Probably because they could. There are too many cops with a ‘nobody but us should have guns’ attitude.
How quickly the people of Toronto forget, eh? Liberal government engages, then, in “the most massive compromise of civil liberties in Canadian history.” Now, vote Liberal for “Accountability and democratic renewal”, as the survey says. And the people of downtown Toronto do exactly that, right on cue.
Nevertheless, a couple of things strike me about all of this, quite apart from the CBC journalistic hypocrisy and malpractice which Kate has identified and which you correctly point out also, to wit:
1. The lack of clarity in the High River case over federal versus provincial accountability: despite what has been asserted elsewhere on this thread by the usual suspect, it is self-evident to me that if the RCMP was acting as a provincial police force, the rules of engagement ought to have been explicitly set out by the province. In the event, however, both the federal government and the provincial government both seem to have been clueless before the fact (not acceptable) and basically on the same page afterward, although the federal government appears to have been more assiduous in pursuing the matter, actually. And the RCMP, the poor babies, seem to have been a bit pouty at the inquiries (also not acceptable), which leads to…
2. The similarity between the respective attitudes of both the TPS and the RCMP in the respective cases: both seem genuinely of a mind that they are somehow above, or immune to, accountability to civilian oversight and review mechanisms; recall that we got a similar dose of attitude from Chief Bill Blair over the Ford investigation.
As a matter of pure liberal philosophy, I am of a mind that the TPS acted much more correctly, on the ground, in the case of the G20 chaos than the RCMP acted in respect of High River. But that is only one element of the subject.
Garth Wood wrote —
just the paperwork that one has to do when you own that many firearms is a great flaming PITA
If they are all non-restricted, there’s no paperwork. Is that correct, or does there start to be paperwork when a non-restricted collection reaches a certain size?
If a significant number of those 93 are restricted, then yeah — they guy’s going to need staff.
Scar wrote —
93 firearms – it’s called collecting. No more dangerous than 1
I beg to differ. The weight of the cabinets needed to display that many would put undue stress on the guy’s floor joists. His floors would be in danger of collapse.
I kid, I kid.
My point was not that having 93 was dangerous to the public in any way. My point was that me having 93 firearms would be dangerous to me, personally, should Mrs. Lickmuffin find out we had that many. And even then, it’s only a matter of finances and not weaponry.
While Mrs. Lickmuffin has told me to stop bringing things home and hiding them in the basement, she is open to me bringing home a Ross with full military stocks, if I can find one.
I do wish folks could get their facts straight. The RCMP broke into homes and stole weapons at the behest of their political masters aka THE PROVINCIAL PROGRESSIVES. I refuse to even put the word Conservative in the same sentence.
If anyone has half a synapse that functions more than 25% of the time they might remember the Prime Minister saying that what the Progressive party’s horsemen did was a disgrace and enjoined those horsemen to return the stolen goods.
To the brain trust at the CBC, what happened at the G-20 was Important because it happened in Toronto to people they knew and liked. What happened in High River was not important, because it happened to a bunch of rednecks Out West.
You people who live Out West don’t experience the reality of Toronto attitudes the way we do who have to listen to them all the time. They believe anyone residing west of Highway 427 is lower class. Anyone fool enough to own a gun should have it taken away from them for their own good. This is the -educated- Torontonian.
That’s why I live out in the sticks. Can’t stand the stuck-up sons of beeotches.
The ‘seizure-in-the-name-of-public-safety’ premise must surely be valid. I mean, in addition to seizing guns, I’m sure that our ever-diligent officers also perused pharmacy records, and without doubt must have ‘secured’ buckets-full of dangerous substances such as Oxycontin and Ativan from all those abandoned homes. Wouldn’t want that stuff getting into the wrong hands either, would we?
It doesn’t really make much difference how the RCMP and the Alberta government try to spin this activity, the outcome is, quite simply, that gun owners now know that the police and government cannot be trusted. And THAT is a very serious development that the better understand. In one swoop, they have blown decades of good will right out the window.
// The G20 seems a lifetime ago…. //
+
Not to worry. Your memory is about to be refreshed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqi10bYQGBE
&
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/new-snowden-docs-show-u-s-spied-during-g20-in-toronto-1.2442448
That the RCMP mendacity would be so ad hoc and amateurish
must have come as a shock even to those willing to give them
lots of leeway at the start. It would be interesting to know if all
this excessive gun concern and the repeated house break ins
were on authorized overtime or just on daily routine patrols.
So mothercorpse is schilling for the police state – not surprising – in their tiny scope of reasoning this is a good thing because the “progressive” elite (AKA socialist statists/globalists of the gated communities they pander to) are supposedly at the helm of the police function policy enforcement – but things change – and heaven forbid the police function should become a state entity more influential ( powerful) than the political elite who mandate its policies – and heaven forbid it ever becomes a primary estate of government above the gated community social engineers – I mean the police function in martinet politically correct statist regimes has never gotten of the leash before has it? nawww, that can never happen in the revisionist dreamscape of progressia broadcasting.