Though there’s no way to confirm if this came from an actual police officer, the sentiments expressed within this letter ring true.
You’d tell me that the emergency services personnel I speak of are paid to do this job and chose to be there. You’re right. We give a damn about people we’ve never met and property that isn’t ours, that’s why we do what we do. You disgust us.
You’ll sleep soundly in your bed tonight because men and women like me will always be there to deal with your poor choices. You have no idea how fortunate you are, even after we arrest and charge you. Even though you disgust me, if you call for me in the middle of the night I’ll respond. I’ll protect your life and property because it’s right and it’s what I do.
Related: Discussion about a pre-teen who was involved in the rioting.
I read a few posts, then decided that I don’t care what anyone else thinks, especially those who disparage the police. Every time I have had occasion to deal with police, I have been dealt with courteously and fairly in my opinion; either as a plaintiff or as a speeder or as a perpetrator of other misdemeanors. I respect the police, and appreciate that they respect (or tolerate/deal with me fairly) me, and I presume anyone else they encounter.
Police are necessary, and law-abiding citizens have to have a good relationship with them. I will help a policeman whenever I can.
What is it exactly with the first few comments that upsets a few of the commenters.
Do they lie? Have they made things up?
It must be that their use of words does not have the finess or or advanced politicaly correct warmth of, lets say a police station, a doctors office any other such fine place.
As it is, the people choose to do a particular job are presumably willing to take on whatever situation and event requires them to do.
If someone asks for the services of those who provide it, more so a publicly funded services one expects that service to be provided.
Then of course as the newspeak goes, you prioritize, if some plebeian and some doctor ask for help, who gets it first 19 times of 20, regardless of severity and urgency.
A person in distress does not care about the feelings and history a certain policeman may have, it is totally irrelevant, a person, by paying taxes for the purpose of protection expects protection, it you don’t like it, maybe it is time to move on.
There is this feeling in the public service and they will remind you every chance they get, that they work hard, the sylogism would be that you are not and therefore they are superior.
It is true that the policemen in their vehicles follow orders. It is also true that those who give orders are the scum of the earth. They look only to advance their careers, mercilessly, without any other thought in their useless brain.
Some years ago there was some kind of gathering of police in Florida and one of those police up in the hierarchy said this to the journalist, parapharasing, “there is not police chief in the world that does not owe to the politicos.”
Now, those things are as they are, should the public, the people that go to work every damn day to make a living to pay taxes, expect for those that consume the said taxes, to work for them or not? Should those services be getting better with every tax increase, pay increase, benefit increase or should the plebians just suck it up?
This may sound somewhat harsh, it is though in response to those that think that somebody owes them, they can justify doing or not doing their jobs just because.
What you feel about yourself, how you feel about doing the job is of no consequence to a plebeian, he expects you to do a job that you get paid to do.
End of story.
It’s important to distinguish between cops who do the real work and higher-up administrative cop politicians. It wasn’t your average policeman who decided to let the rioters wreak havoc at the G20 a year ago and then started harrassing peaceful passers-by. It’s also not the Police’s fault that they have some very stupid laws to enforce.
I tend to support the police until I see that they’re allowing thugs and arsonists to have their way without arresting them toute de suite. By allowing the vandals carte blanche, they’re endangering the safety of every other citizen.
“Meet and greet” tactics have to go. ‘Absolutely ludicrous. Why would police have to meet and greet a rowdy, drunken crowd in the hopes that being “nice” to them will avert disaster. It’s not going to happen.
Thugs and bullies only understand force greater than theirs — and I’m talking physical force not verbal force: “Hi, y’all! Have a great evening!”
The citizens of Vancouver were badly let down the night of the 7th Canucks/Bruins game. The invitation to 100,000 “fans” to watch the game on giant screens badly placed for crowd control, the violence and vandalism, the stand down by the police, all reveal a society in decay.
Chief Police Constable Jim Chu should resign and Mayor Gregor Robinson should too. These two politicians (isn’t being a police chief a political appointment?) need to stop justifying the mayhem and own up to some extremely bad decisions. There has definitely been a dereliction of duty all up and down the line. Someone needs to take responsibility for this debacle.
Who’s it going to be?
The officer is on the OTHER side of the border, but I would ask him how his kind deals with the murderers of Vicki Weaver, Eric Scott, Kathryn Johnston, Jose Gurena, William Cooper, or the whole Waco crew? And if his response is like that of US pigs, I would damn him and his cohorts straight to hell as well.
Where to start – where to start?
Well Matt, there are very few people I know of that show up in a job without financial recompense. Taliban Jack and Gordon Campbell are more recent examples. Count Iffy is teaching at a taxpayer funded institution and has not declined any benefits such as an office with a fireplace.
Even lefties like their EI or welfare benefits for protesting this that or the other. The G8/G20 Black Hats are not an exception as someone is paying their travel expenses from country to country.
But to the point, law enforcement generally is not overly well paid (and Lev there is a vast difference between the USA and Canadian system).
Not overly well paid for the risks they and other like Firefighters, paramedics and prison correctional officers take on a daily basis.
They like everyone else really want to return home at the end of the workday with the same number of holes they had when they started.
Me, I hate having no cash or credit for fuel for my machinery so I can keep you and your ilk in Alfalfa seeds, Wheat and Rapeseed (Canola) and especially BARLEY.
Nobody had an opinion on how poorly or well is every one paid. Police or any other working person are paid what they are. To say they are not well paid, well, how so.
They and everyone else know what the pay is, you don’t like it stay out. Nobody owes an apology for your pay.
It would be rather good if the sob stories, how this or that group is hard done by, stopped.
As you go on from this day, think what you want to do and go for it, if it does not work out for you, stop bloody complaining and get on anew with something else.
Life for most people, even the wealthy, is an everyday struggle. It is up to everyone to get on with it. If there is someone around to help, so much the better, if not well, that is life.
A policeman, fireman and other such deserve sympathy as everone else, to be healthy, have a good life. As for their work, that is their choice, its up to them how they handle it.
Got to go now.
Remember folks when seconds count the cops are only moments away.
Oh and Bruce your rant is so much BS, if you really were/are a cop your the reason we don’t trust any of you.
….and the riot control training the C.A.F. provided me did not include standing around and watching people destroy property.
…there are very few people I know of that show up in a job without financial recompense.
Yeah, including the martyr Bruce. Makes the rest of his screed very suspect.
Cops are a reflection of society. Some good, some bad, lots in the middle. What else is new?
Re the G20 debacle—with, God forbid, a “Redux” in Toronto today with that idiot, DePape, in attendance—all the hullabaloo now seems to be about what the police did the next day. Yes, there was an over reaction. But, when I heard about it, I was more upset about the stand down on the first day, when, like in Vancouver, the police both watched their own cruisers being torched and allowed major vandalism and looting of businesses. The over reaction likely wouldn’t have happened if things had been handled properly from the start.
“Pleasing your enemies does not turn them into friends.” The police should know that. How come they keep acting like they don’t?
It has everything to do with our spineless politicians. Let’s hope someone like Rob Ford in Toronto starts to turn things around. (E.g., I totally support his decision to miss the gay pride parade, despite the crass bullying of the usual elites. Political correctness has everything to do with the stand downs. It’s got to go.)
It’s a bad thing for a society when the police actively treat a citizen as if they are a common criminal. Most citizens are law-abiding.
I stopped trusting the police in general when their uniforms switched from standard police-blue to the tactical-black, and their behaviour and tactics when serving search and arrest warrants changed from “knock, present, and enter” to “smash, abuse, and subdue.”
Police are not military. The two entities have very different purposes. Using military equipment and tactics on domestic soil against the citizenry is highly offensive, and the SERT/ERT/SWAT tactics should be reserved for those situations where innocents’ lives are imminently in danger.
The change in attitudes, equipment, and tactics seen in many police departments across Canada and the USA is likely one of the reasons you can see so much animosity expressed towards police in general, today.
To the police posting here: If you’re wearing the blue uniform, carry a side-arm, and still believe in “protect and serve”; If you call citizens “Sir” and “Ma’am”, even if you’re in the process of arresting them, then God bless you and keep you safe, and I thank you for your service. May your colleagues look up to you, and follow your example.
The comments are indeed surprising. To be sure, there are bad apples in every bunch. And when the cops get out of hand, or demonstrate poor judgement, or a bad apple among them shows his darker side, the results are pretty dramatic — and nasty, and newsworthy. But like Robert, my encounters with police have been for the most part very civil, even when I’ve been the one caught in the wrong.
My concern lies not with the majority of the front line officers, who I believe for the most part are genuinely interested in creating a safe, stable community, but in the administrators, politicians and judges who put the front line officers into an impossible situation in which there is a Kaffkaesque disconnect between responsibility and authority — “Stop the rioting, but you’ll be charged with brutality if any heads are busted.” “Natives get a free ride in terrorizing a community with guns and baseball bats, but show up in uniform in the vain hope this will have some magical sedative effect.” “We’re going to try a new tactic of ‘kettling’ rioters into concentrated masses instead of crowd control 101 of breaking them into smaller and smaller groups with undercover teams that will take down and arrest perps at the first sign of trouble.” “Don’t bother bringing ‘petty’ crooks into my court room, I’m just going to let them go — even after their 87th offense.”
I have no idea what the VPD’s crowd control training consists of but it didn’t seem to reflect anything I was taught in the armed forces many years ago — 1. control the rooftops; 2. overwhelming force; 3. read the riot act; 4. rapid dispersion; 5. rapid identification and suppression of the instigators; 6. mop up and stabilization, gathering of evidence etc. Maybe times have changed, clearly not for the better.
Keystone cops, keystone anarchists = liberalism in it’s maturity.
The meek have inherited the world, but they aren’t going to hang on to for much longer.
DrD, right on.
As a society—at least at the “upper” levels”, on which the rest of us are forced to rely— we’ve lost the will to protect ourselves: it seems that it’s more important to treat miscreants with every courtesy, to be sure their rights are protected—while they exercise their own, malicious intent of smashing the rights of the rest of us. It’s sheer madness. And that’s why reasonable people here and elsewhere, who are shoo-ins for supporting our police, are “mad as hell”.
I’ve had a few “up close and personal” contacts with police. And, yes, the officers have been professional. (I make sure to be very polite, but not supine!) However, the law-abiding citizen is getting tired because, as “low hanging fruit”, we get tagged and pay a price, while the worst are handled with kid gloves—if at all. E.g., I drove my mom to church one summer morning last year. On my way home, I turned right on to a small side street, into which I’d turned many times. Just after my turn, I saw a police cruiser a few hundred feet ahead: I didn’t have any qualms, so was gobsmacked when I saw an officer step out and wave me to the side. (After I got my ticket, I circled the block and checked the signs—not one, but two—and they were confusing: one could not turn right during rush hours AND on Sundays! In fact, there was so much text on the two signs that, without actually stopping one’s car in moving traffic, it was almost impossible to read and process all the information. Confusing signing is rampant where I live and it infuriates me—and others. (The officer could have given me a $120 ticket. When he returned to my car, before he handed me the ticket, I politely told him that what was happening was ludicrous, and that I’d definitely see him in court. “Check the amount,” he said. It was way less than $120 and—another infuriating affront to the citizen—officialdom makes it so difficult to contest a ticket, I just paid the amount. I call this kind of police action low level harassment.
Enough! And start going after the real troublemakers.
DrD, well said.
I’m really shocked at the comments here.
Any profession has it’s creeps. I know too many good cops to paint them all with the same brush.
In an earlier post Robert provided a link to an insider blog informing us about the politicians with rose coloured glasses interfering and ignoring police advice.
Front line cops have to take the brunt of this crap. It’s the politicians that messed up.
Bruce has commented here for years, is an insider and deserves some respect. What is happenning at this blog that I love? This is disgusting.
lookout and a few others…your comments are very reasonable and appreciated.
bluetech, I hear you—and it was good to hear from Bruce.
On the ground teachers and police officers are being sold out BIG TIME by their idiotic, PC superiors. As I said, it’s ILLEGAL for a teacher or cop to not follow orders. Sometimes we ignore the ones we can, but other times, there’s no choice. But this way of doing things is destroying the rule of law: it emboldens and shelters the miscreants and the criminals they often become while punishing the rest of us who are law-abiding.
This moral inversion, that Ezra mentioned, is an absolute travesty. At the least, we have to stop electing the most liberal, socialist politicians, who promote their counterparts in the education, police, and “justice” systems. The rot’s gone pretty deep and, as John Robson pointed out last night (in other words), it’s relatively easy to let the evil genie (incivility) out of the bottle but it’s quite another thing to put it back in. I hope it’s not too late.
Kyrie eleison.
It would be tough for me to be a cop-hater because 3 of my family have been police, 2 retired, one current. I’ve trained with police and have enough friends in or on the periphery of law enforcement to make hating them difficult. Like any group they are a mixed bag.
My beef is mainly that there seems to be a deep cultural rot in the RCMP, and no political will to change it up. If you think I’m being alarmist or excessive, please explain why the highest profile gangland slaying in BC history may go off the rails because one of the detectives decided to knock up a witness in the case.
Other things that burn my ass include (1) the police tendency to perpetuate the myth that they can protect people – which, IMNSHO actually endangers them.. (2) simultaneously watching a drug deal and a speed trap through the plate glass window while waiting in line to buy beer.. (3) the continued criminalization of legal gun owners while gangbangers skate – one example is a current loophole where, as long as a driver’s prints are not on the pistol, they are able to claim that the weapon belongs to someone else and was in the vehicle unbeknownst to them. (4) personal experiences where the RCMP have failed meet my (perhaps unrealistic) expectations.. (i.e. me, Joe Sixpack, once pulled a guy out of an upside down wreck in a ditch while 4-6 cops stood around on the road and watched for 20 minutes.. – there are other anecdotes that I’d rather not share but you should get the point of where I’m coming from)
To the question of why the general public seems to be pissed with the police.. I only speak for myself, but maybe the general public becomes less general as they are personally touched by crime. To the cops I’ve offended – it’s not personal. You have a tough job that I wouldn’t want to do.
Bruce, what you described is horrific and all the respect and admiration for doing your job. Dealing with the scum day after day would just wear anyone down.
At the same time I fully understand why so many of us are getting frustrated with the “justice” mentality and then focus on the front line officer with our anger when as has been stated time and again, Vancouver, G20, Caledonia, the Tamils reaffirm that the perpetrators walk and the innocent are punished as easy targets. The UK is well down this road we are travelling on of punishing those with the audacity of defending themselves. Read Blatchford’s “Helpless” to get and understanding of citizen’s abandonment by those sworn to “serve and protect”.
The long years of court prosecution and then laughable sentences just make us more dismayed and hostile.
Working at the G20 I spoke to an ETF officer on the Saturday and he told me, as the Black Bloc openly walked by after smashing a streetcar and News vans, that they were ordered to stand down and accept collateral damage so citizens were basically left to defend their own stores as happened in Vancouver.
With cowards like McGuinty, Miller and their ilk there is no political will to control these riots just a lot of hand-wringers hoping things wont be too bad as Mayor Robertson and PC Chu did in Vancouver. Would we Canadians ever see the courage displayed by the leader of Singapore where drug dealers are executed and Singapore’s drug usage fully controlled?
I have been one of the most hateful, here and elsewhere, towards “Law Enforcement”. And I will continue to be so. However, I DO respect those Law Enforcement officers who HONOR THEIR OATH OF OFFICE. Stateside, that includes an oath to “…preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution…” You know, that OLD document written by a bunch of pale stale white males which authorizes government in the United States.
Those who actually honor that oath SHOULD be admired. But looking the other way while screaming “I SEE NOTHING!” in your best Sergeant Schultz imitation as your fellow officers spit on that oath DOES NOT constitute “honoring” it. I put quotes around “Law Enforcement” when the people I am describing are NOT Law Enforcement honoring their oath while doing their duty, but are instead merely Thugs with Guns, posing as Law Enforcement while instead bowing and scraping before their Masters and then doing WHATEVER they are told.
The stench is overwhelming.
Put simply, there seems to be a consensus here that it is not the front line police that are to blame, but the leaders at the top that we collectively have elected.
We should support the front line police and work and vote for people that will change the system.
Here in the rural areas it is almost impossible to get them out to address our local concerns as they are too busy meeting and greeting or dealing with dysfunctional people in the trouble areas which I will not name.
@Ken = right on the money or casino as you will.
Like all things in rural Sask – law enforcement, government services, medical services including hospitals have all gone South.
Where there used to be 1 person RCMP detachments every 10 kms -now all we get is a 1-800 # or an answering machine.
Soon a Man’s “Castle doctrine” will come into effect simply by government neglect.
Cops, apparently, think we’re all stupid as well as pussies?
I’d like to be armed like you but that’s against the law.
Hey Bruce and the rest of you cops, when’s the last time you got a traffic ticket? You pay half the insurance I’m sure, the rest of us dumb schmucks are forced to pay because we’re not so lucky as to be able to exempt ourselves from the law we’re sworn to enforce.
Nice gig!
Hell I know cops that drove for years without having any insurance at all. Seeing cops talking on their cell phones, punch keys on their computer and drive all at the same time, while I miss another important business call on my cell doesn’t make me think we’re on the same team.
Retire at 50 is only an option for overpaid gubmint drones too.
Hey guys when’s the last time you let off some other cop, or cops friend, or cop’s family member from a traffic ticket?
Ask anyone who has had any dealings, ANY interaction at all with cops showing up for anything to do with the gun registry how cops work.
I called the police as I pulled garbage out of one of your abandoned cruisers during the G20 as it was being lit on fire.
You stood around the corner and screamed at me to “fuck off” when I approached to tell you that Queen street was on fire 10 minutes earlier.
Your rants only enforce my feeling you’re the pointy end of the spear of our biggest nightmare.
Could my comment please be released from the filter.
What an appalling thread.
For a time I owned a small business in a small town. My interaction with the RCMP was not very good. A few memories;
1) A fight in the alley behind our business as noon time. My wife calls the RCMP and their solution was that my wife go into the alley and ask the combatants to quit! Honest.
2) I young drugged kid causing a disturbance at our business by challneging customers to fights. Call the RCMP and their response was they don’t provide ‘private security’.
3) I’m having a conversation with a constable’s wife. She bemoaned the fact that her husband was asked to patrol a brezze way where young kids were skateboarding. This was in a well lit open area.
Not RCMP but I had a crown prosecuter deny to press charges on a staffer who we caught on video passing merchandise thru a window. His rationale was that this was ‘illadvised extension of credit!’ Honest.
EBD, with respect, what’s appalling: problems with the police—legitimate, BTW—or people commenting on it?
If it’s the latter, I think there have been many very reasonable criticisms of the police expressed. As many of us have pointed out, dissatisfaction with police (in)actions has a great deal to do with the politically correct politicians who give them—or not—their marching orders. Vancouver, Caledonia, the G20, Tamils being allowed to block city streets and major highways . . . the list goes on. I know that during the G20, calls to the police about their stand-down were met by the most unprofessional stonewalling, diversionary tactics—like giving wrong numbers and ridiculous information: “You must go to a police station, in person, to make a complaint”—and plain rudeness, like hanging up.
I certainly have sympathy for the police: their “under-the-microscope-with-the-Charter-and-hostile-MSM-hulking-over-them” job puts them between a rock and a hard place. They’re damned if they do and damned if they don’t.
The combination of Trudeau’s Charter and left-wing, gutless, brain dead judges has done a huge amount of damage to our society: the criminals nearly always win and the law-abiding are being turned into criminals.
That’s what the Liberals planned all along, it seems. Alfred Apps is the President of the Liberal Party. Here’s an excerpt from an article Kelly McParland wrote in the National Post: “Thus he [Apps] is able to lead a party which for three-quarters of a century has single-mindedly devoted itself to obtaining and hoarding political power for itself in the unshakeable belief that God meant Liberals to rule Canada, while making statements like “We believe … the primary ongoing role of the state should be to transfer power from the powerful to the less powerful.”
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/06/14/alfred-apps-put-positive-rights-into-the-charter/
Canadians need to elect more conservative politicians, who, in turn, one hopes, will stop appointing wussy, idiot, PC police chiefs, like Chu and Blair, and feminist, socialist, “equality of result” judges like Rosalie Abella.
Until the Charter culture is amended, our police culture is going to continue to suffer—and so will the rule of law and all law-abiding Canadians.