The Written Word: Rafe Mair December 11th
By Rafe Mair
The Robert Picton case is about as satisfying as a kid getting a broken toy for Christmas. The gesture was there but the job didn’t get done. As a former lawyer I simply cannot understand how the jury didn’t nail the bugger with First Degree murder.
But there’s a more important point here. Canadian police forces are looking like the Keystone Kops. We have the three “M”s, Milgaard, Morin and Marshall, all convicted by police bungling and perjured evidence. We have the Mindy Tran case where the police played their old game – find a suspect and stop looking anywhere else. There’s the Air India Disaster where it was just one screw-up after another. And now Picton.
I’m not a police basher though I am anti-establishment. I want to be proud of my police forces.
I don’t know what the answer is but anyone watching the CSIS-RCMP hatred or the devastatingly low morale with the Vancouver PD knows that there’s a problem. Though I don’t know the answer I have one major suggestion – get the Commissioner of the RCMP out of the Solicitor-General’s office where he is now a Deputy Minister thus answerable to the politicians and make him/her a servant of Parliament.
Much of the problem we see now stared when the RCMP took their orders from then Prime Minister Jean Chretien for the disastrous APEC Conference in Vancouver in November 1995.
It would only be a start but it would be a good one.
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Posted by: Bridge on December 11 2007 9:15 AM
The basic problem with policing - and the pathology of the tunnel vision that Rafe reports - is that cops reject the rule of law, which puts police in the role of servants where citizens report crimes, in favour of occupational-cultural imperatives. The usurpatious LOYALTY-CODE dictates that once someone in cop authority targets, everyone falls into place. Exculpatory evidence that falls on non-targets is ignored.
Paul Bernardo murdered 2 women after a Detective pronounced that he wasn't the kind of guy who would murder. Even after that exclusion, a woman gave Bernardo's description and licence plate number, after she saw him videotaping her. Again, police refused service until political pressure broke the LOYALTY-CODE, and they allowed Bernardo to be a suspect. After Bernardo was arrested, cops omitted to properly search his residence, and inculpatory videotapes were not discovered. Why? The LOYALTY-CODE dictates that once a cop has made a search, then it must be treated as comprehensive. The above should convince doubters that policing - as it is - voids public purpose. They act as if they are above the law.
I attended Toronto sessions of the hearings into the wrongful conviction of Guy Paul Morin, and lawless cops repeatedly admitted deference of common sense judgment to cop dictators. In that case, the judiciary fell into place. Judge James Donnelly ordered the jury to consider 47 instances of "consciousness of guilt," nominally acted out by an innocent man. The Bernardo' prosecutor - Susan McLean - was later made a judge; Donnelly now leads the Ontario Racing Commission.
http://www.wrongfulconviction.ca/Papers.htm
Police do not serve; police do not protect.