[BartSimpson]

PublicAnimalNo9 PublicAnimalNo9:

Not exactly sure wtf our gun laws have to do with these incidents or how armed citizens could have prevented them.

It isn't the gun that is the heart of my comment, it's the attitude.

In the US most of the cops I know support law abiding citizens having guns because they know that you can't be right there when a crime is committed and the citizen is on their own to defend themselves. "Trusting" their fellow Americans with guns is not a part of their thought process - it's actually the other way around - they are frequently aware that they are the ones being trusted.

Not that we don't have abuses, we do. But when they're found out we send people to jail. Careers end. There's repercussions for abusing the public trust.

It's a somewhat different world view. We entrust people with authority in the USA while in almost all of the rest of the world it's people with authority who wonder how much they can trust the average person...and their citizens and subjects blithely accept this as 'normal'.

To some degree, that's obviously the case in Canada when, as the story notes, average citizens assign a far different standard of conduct to the police than they do to everyone else.

[digerdick]

the mentality that allows this type of activities to happen , is a learned one from a feeling of superiority.

but the people who do it, were specially picked by police forces because of their ability to commit such acts with no remorse.

why should they care, when they know no matter what they do they will get away with it.

flame on.

[EyeBrock]

The Toronto Star. So wrong all the time. Ford won't win etc. Well, I'll leave it at that.

[Lemmy]

EyeBrock EyeBrock:

The Toronto Star. So wrong all the time. Ford won't win etc. Well, I'll leave it at that.

Come on, EB, this is a solid story, supported by statistics. This isn't liberal-biased election prognostication. This is good reporting.

[BartSimpson]

EyeBrock EyeBrock:

The Toronto Star. So wrong all the time. Ford won't win etc. Well, I'll leave it at that.

Respectfully, the story is well done and the admissions from the SIU support the story.

[EyeBrock]

Lemmy Lemmy:

EyeBrock EyeBrock:

The Toronto Star. So wrong all the time. Ford won't win etc. Well, I'll leave it at that.

Come on, EB, this is a solid story, supported by statistics. This isn't liberal-biased election prognostication. This is good reporting.

All these case have been reviewed by a provincial crown, if there was enough evidence to charge they would. Some of them resulted in police act charges as there wasn't enough evidence to charge criminally. I'm not saying it's jolly but these incidents were investigated. I know guys who have been charged by the SIU, some were convicted and some were not. Police charged go through the same justice system as all other Canadians in Ontario. The courts make the final decision after a SIU charge.

The SIU is a provincial and civilian unit under the Ministry of the Attorney General. Having dealt with the SIU a few times I can say that they investigate things properly. All these things are legislated under a Provincial Act. It isn’t cops investigating cops like every other province in Canada.

http://www.siu.on.ca/home.html

Just because cops weren't charged doesn’t mean it wasn't an equitable outcome. This is the Star just looking to jam it to the cops. They won't tell you about the guy who topped himself while being investigated. He was cleared the day after he killed himself.

The Star love to do this stuff and it's very interesting that it comes the day after they have been universally condemned for very biased reporting on the mayoral race.

[KorbenDeck]

The only people above the law are religious "minorities"

[PublicAnimalNo9]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

PublicAnimalNo9 PublicAnimalNo9:

Not exactly sure wtf our gun laws have to do with these incidents or how armed citizens could have prevented them.

It isn't the gun that is the heart of my comment, it's the attitude.

I went to school with a few guys that ended up being cops. Believe me when I say that the ones I knew with attitude had it as a pre-existing condition.

Now, here's what worries me. If people like that can slip through and become police officers, how easy would it be for them to obtain guns otherwise if they weren't cops and we had US style gun laws here? Y'all are concerned about police acting like this but have no issue that a private citizen with equal amounts of assholishness can heavily arm him/herself

[ASLplease]

obtaining guns is not hard by any means. I could make a zip gun with just about anything - including a paper barrel - because brass casing is strong enough to contain the pressure.

A friend of mine didn't believe me, so the other day, I showed him how you can google planes for a zip gun.....I even found a set f plans on how to make a machinegun out of hardware store materials with the fanciest tool being a drill press.

[CrazyNewfie]

andyt andyt:

bootlegga bootlegga:

$1:

Where civilians causing similar damage are typically prosecuted, cops walk.

Nothing new really, this happens in lots of places. There are cops here that have killed/seriously injured people with aggressive driving, excessive force, etc, yet in many cases the worst they got was relieved of duties with pay.

This problem is of course the stereotypical bad apple ruining things for everyone else. I honestly think most cops are good, honest people, but it's the ones that make headlines that create a label that sticks to all cops.

Somehow there always seems to be a few whackjobs that sneak through the system, be they alcoholics or control freaks, but as no system is 100% effective, it's to be expected. I agree that cops have a tough job, but IMHO, they should be held to a higher standard than regular joes, simply because we put so much trust in them to do their jobs legally and correctly.

While I have not heard the evidence in the cases mentioned in the article, if accurate, all of them should have had the book thrown at them IMHO.

If it was only the few bad apples, it wouldn't be a problem. The system would find them and weed them out. The problem is that the rest of the cops close ranks and too often protect these guys, so they don't get weeded out. And then you get cases where the bad cops is kept on the force and does it again, as we've seen in BC a few times. I'm less concerned with these cops walking from the justice system than I am that they remain on the force to repeat their behavior.

I was about to comment on your earlier statement about cops "being the law", and say something not so friendly. I thought it was a pretty stupid comment to make, seeing how they aren't the law and are supposed to be subject to the same processes.
But that said, I kept reading and read this comment, very smart and well said. If cops (and prosecutors, judges, etc) didn't always close ranks to protect each other it would be easier to weed out the bad ones. Then these f...ing people are allowed to return to their jobs "policing us" instead of protecting us.

[CrazyNewfie]

EyeBrock EyeBrock:

Lemmy Lemmy:

EyeBrock EyeBrock:

The Toronto Star. So wrong all the time. Ford won't win etc. Well, I'll leave it at that.

Come on, EB, this is a solid story, supported by statistics. This isn't liberal-biased election prognostication. This is good reporting.

All these case have been reviewed by a provincial crown, if there was enough evidence to charge they would. Some of them resulted in police act charges as there wasn't enough evidence to charge criminally. I'm not saying it's jolly but these incidents were investigated. I know guys who have been charged by the SIU, some were convicted and some were not. Police charged go through the same justice system as all other Canadians in Ontario. The courts make the final decision after a SIU charge.

The SIU is a provincial and civilian unit under the Ministry of the Attorney General. Having dealt with the SIU a few times I can say that they investigate things properly. All these things are legislated under a Provincial Act. It isn’t cops investigating cops like every other province in Canada.

http://www.siu.on.ca/home.html

Just because cops weren't charged doesn’t mean it wasn't an equitable outcome. This is the Star just looking to jam it to the cops. They won't tell you about the guy who topped himself while being investigated. He was cleared the day after he killed himself.

The Star love to do this stuff and it's very interesting that it comes the day after they have been universally condemned for very biased reporting on the mayoral race.

Some people just don't want to admit reality. Don't tell us it's not true, they may go through the same judicial process but they obviously are protected by their peers. If I beat the hell out of some 120lb accountant for no reason and "broke his arm" do you think I'd be in trouble? Apparently not the cop.

[PostFactum]

andyt andyt:

The cops are not above the law. THEY ARE THE LAW! And you'd better not forget it.

The law is law, they present Canada and Canadian society, which must protect the law.

[BartSimpson]

CrazyNewfie CrazyNewfie:

Some people just don't want to admit reality. Don't tell us it's not true, they may go through the same judicial process but they obviously are protected by their peers. If I beat the hell out of some 120lb accountant for no reason and "broke his arm" do you think I'd be in trouble? Apparently not the cop.

Precisely. The point of the article is that Canadian cops are not equal with other Canadians before the law.

As long as you have a badge in Canada you can get away with an awful lot.

I'm a LEO reservist in the USA and I can say that while we do have abuses here, when they're caught the cops in question sometimes face stricter sanctions than other people do.

[andyt]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

I'm a LEO reservist in the USA and I can say that while we do have abuses here, when they're caught the cops in question sometimes face stricter sanctions than other people do.

I dunno, the Rodney King case didn't seem to back that up.

[BartSimpson]

andyt andyt:

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

I'm a LEO reservist in the USA and I can say that while we do have abuses here, when they're caught the cops in question sometimes face stricter sanctions than other people do.

I dunno, the Rodney King case didn't seem to back that up.

The kicker in the Rodney King case was that if the cops in question had obeyed protocol the whole thing would never have been an issue.

King was, as he has admitted, on PCP and tasering him and beating him down was near to ineffective. Believe it or not, that was an act of restraint by the cops because protocol for LA is that when someone is unaffected by the taser you shoot them. You can see the whole video of the King takedown on YouTube and clearly see that King escalated the issue. What the media played, over and over, was the 90 second segment that looked the worst and gave them great ratings.

(Kind of reminds me of the people whose idea of WW2 history begins and ends with the US bombing Dresden, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki.)

Had they just shot King there'd have been no problem.

Trust me, every police agency in the USA took note of that and there's plenty of perps who get shot now because the cops don't want to risk their careers by trying alternatives to bring the perp into custody.