They’ve done a good job of making moderate people critical. I tend to give police the benefit of the doubt, and I was one of the people thinking, “well it’s not an easy task” last week, but the way complaints have been handled (i.e. not) since then is deplorable.
Both the police and people in all levels of government seem fairly confident that the letter of the law was adhered to, but that isn’t enough. Their faith (or gamble) in technicalities leaves two wounds festering:
- our perception of police
- our awareness of the police’s perception of themselves
On the first point, their performance last week has diminished what many of us think about their competence, courage, and trustworthiness. I don’t even live in Toronto, but I find my attitude towards police very different than it was two weeks ago…
On the matter of competence, the property destruction that was allowed to occur and the hundreds of innocent citizens who were arbitrarily detained makes the cops look clownish. I was dumbstruck watching events unfold at Queen & Spadina Sunday night. And the fact that nobody could provide any explanation of what was happening might be tactical (being unpredictable and withholding information can be effective… or so I gather from TV), but those tactics work best when there’s, like, real opponents; but used against an non-cohesive group of sightseers just looks moronic.
On the matter of courage, I don’t doubt that there are many brave cops, and I don’t forget that they risk their lives every day — not knowing if the next car they pull over or the next domestic disturbance call might be deadly — but last week we saw police take every possible precaution to protect themselves and virtually no risk to protect Torontonians in their own neighbourhoods. The only time police didn’t outnumber everyone else in their radius were the few times that police were actually needed, and then they vanished.
In one video I saw a couple of security guards challenge a guy trying to throw a magazine box through their building’s front window. All it took was one lunge and the guy went scurrying away. Likewise, some random samaritan with a camera around his neck tackled a punk coming out of the Bell store. After kind of laying on him for a few seconds they both looked like they didn’t know what to do, so the samaritan got up and the punk dragged himself away in shame. Imagine what those brave souls could have accomplished with riot gear and hundreds of others able to provide backup almost instantly…
And the cops lied, which makes it harder to trust them. It’s going to going to give conspiracy theorists and overboard state-haters some extra room to play with — e.g. I won’t be surprised if I see more tweets like, “The chief of police says they didn’t interfere at polling stations on behalf of the fascist agenda of global capitalism… WHY SHOULD WE BELIEVE HIM?! #policestate”
All of this affects their ability to do their job. I expect they’ve bought themselves an increase in the number of “I know my rights” smart-asses with cameras they’ll have to deal with.
As for what we know about what police think of themselves, we know they think they’re above all of this — as if none of this matters.
People make mistakes, and sometimes plans go badly — even the best plans. It happens to everyone, in every institution. The people who can’t say “we can do better” are the people I worry about. If professional athletes can say it, public servants can say it too: Toronto, Ontario, and Canada deserve better. [Update: speaking of owning up to mistakes, that last "can't" was originally pubished as "can." My bad.]
It’s wrong of me to paint all police with the same brush like this. No doubt a lot of cops performed their duties last weekend with discipline, integrity, and courtesy. Unfortunately the good ones have to feel pressure from critics too. Hopefully they pass it on to those who deserve it and need to change.
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