A reader emails – “The article is practically a parody of itself. Naturally the Globe has forbidden comments on this gem.”
Brian Minchin said his son, Michael Langan, was as healthy as a horse, and used to walk four or five miles a day in pursuit of aluminum cans, trying to scrounge together enough money for some beer and marijuana.
He said his son may have been drunk or high on marijuana when he was confronted by two police officers in an alley close to the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg’s downtown core. Police say they ordered Mr. Langan to drop a knife, and when he refused they were forced to taser him.
[…]
“He was asked to drop the knife or something and he didn’t do it. I guess they asked him several times. Maybe he was drunk. He probably was drunk because he gets kind of crazy and brave when he’s drunk,” he said. “People think they’re Superman when they’re drunk, even adults.”
[…]
He said he doesn’t have many memories of his son, but will always cherish the thought of the day they spent together when the Grey Cup was last in Winnipeg. Mr. Minchin scalped half a dozen tickets and then went into the stadium to watch the game with his son. They smoked joints and drank beers at halftime, he said.
The fact is Mr. Minchin’s doing illegal drugs and alcohol with his minor son can reasonably have been seen to have contributed to the delinquency which cost his son’s life.
Mr. Minchin has admitted to a crime and he should be charged for it. Parents cannot legally in Canada smoke marijuana with their children.
Understood. You have a point especially given the context of Mr Minchin’s obvious quite general neglect of his son.
I can just see lefty social workers, however, with their penchant for over-regulating everything, bringing charges on responsible parents who, for example, share a glass of wine with the kids at Christmas or something, and bringing the charges just because they can.
That was November 19, 2006. I don’t know if Michael Langan was 15 at the time, or possibly had recently turned 16. Assuming this at least somewhat public smoking of joints and drinking of beers was the first time they had done this together, which is something I doubt.
Anyway, his son was young and the dad is smoking dope with him at halftime in 2006. Now the boy’s dead on what his dad believes was an alcohol and drug-fueled rampage, which he says makes his son “brave” and “crazy”.
I’m a prosecutor in the US. I work with cops nearly every day. From what I can gather on here, it DOES sound like Canadian police over-use their tasers. If this happened in my county, it wouldn’t have been “accidental death by TASER”: it would’ve been intentional death by multiple gunshots to the head, and rightly so.
Dave J, is there a case for prosecuting the father? Would you bring it or not?
Dave J,
Your country made such a mush of the law that just about anything is excusable. Your law is so screwed up by the decision of you SC that a normal person does not know whether they are coming of going. They could be charged and be in jail in no time flat or if you have enough cash on hand you are free, matters none how many you’ve killed.
A prosecutor in your country is a lawyer, which should say something. Here they are commonly referred to as the bottom feeders, this elevates them somewhat.
How nice: an entire family of losers.
Tase. Them. All.
from their ivory towers, the well educated, understand ‘street smarts” to mena, to be able to read a road map
in the “real” world, “street smarts” means knowing how to stay alive under adverse conditions
Lev,
That has to be the biggest waste of words on the post I’ve seen.
Dave J. offered a fair and reasonable comment to the topic and you turn it into some anti-US rant.
Is the US system perfect? Nope.
Is the Canadian system perfect? Hellllll no!
To claim some kind of moral superiority is ridiculous.
If our system is so great, why do we spend so much time tearing big steaming holes in it?
Lev, I said “my county,” not “my country.” I’m not pretending to say that’s what would happen everywhere in the US. I have no idea, though I can say I expect different places differ widely from each other.
The rest of your comments are just plain incoherent: I honestly and seriously have no idea WTF you’re talking about.
Nowhere in the post is a claim of superiority of anyone or anything.
In fact the constitution of the US is most excellent document created for the protection of population from the lawyers, you may note how they, the lawyers, try to twist and interpret it constantly to suit their purpose of the moment.
Dave J though, claims superiority of knowledge in the use of taser equipment.
It is understandable that he does not understand simple sentences that can’t be construed as to have other than stated meaning, he, after all is a lawyer. If claim of ignorance suits your purpose, go ahead, knock yourself silly.
Wow Lev,
If that was your attempt to clarify your position, I’m afraid you were not particularly successful.
My point was, seeing as our system is a screwed up mess, it is really hypocritical for any of us to criticize the US system.
You seem to have a real problem with lawyers. Any evidence to back up your claims, or is it just your expert opinion?
1) there are many cases where the police use tasers where they shouldn’t.
2) this was sure as hell not one of them.
This kid may not have had a chance in life due to the useless degenerate that leftards love to coddle and support but a cop shouldn’t have to risk death to take down a drug-addled psycho criminal just because he had bad parents.
You don’t drop the knife, the cops drop you. You die? You chose and Darwin weeds the gene pool.
Lev, I don’t claim any “superiority of knowledge” about tasers other than from the cops I know, all of whom have had to BE tasered themselves as part of their training, and who are both likely and I would contend justified in meeting the threat of lethal force in kind rather than having to tie their hands behind their backs. We’ve lost two officers in the line of duty in the past year (both of whom I knew, though not as well as I wish I had) and had another in the hospital only pull through by some kind of miracle. You pull a weapon on law enforcement and you are ASKING for them to choose between your life or theirs.
“…the constitution of the US is most excellent document created for the protection of population from the lawyers…”
Need I go into detail how about just how many of the Framers of the US Constitution were lawyers themselves? James Madison, the principal architect of the Constitution, did not draft this brilliant document to “protect people from lawyers,” but to create a national government that could be more effective than the impotent Articles of Confederation without endangering the liberty of individuals or the self-government of the several states. Before I was a prosecutor, I worked on the staff of the judiciary committee of a state legislature, so I will happily debate the Constitution line by line and word by word with anyone, though I hesitate to invite a battle of wits with the so obviously unarmed. Ironically, it does sound as though you are yourself asking to bring a knife to a gunfight.