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Today, the world news tells of shooting in Palestinian villages, peace talks in Ireland
that are going now where and everyone in Toronto (which considers itself the whole
world) holding their breathe to see if the Olympics will be in China, Toronto or
Paris.
The Saskatchewan local news is leading with follow up of a story from yesterday afternoon,
where we learn of the expansion of Capital punishment in Canada. As all of us know
we have dispensed with Capital punishment in the 1960s, but in recent years the police
have decided to take over as judge, jury and executioner.
It is so easy to turn on the police and bash them for their misdeeds, not because
they are obvious, but because their misdeeds seem to be normal operating procedures.
Ensign has been publishing daily since May of 1998 and during that
time I have to say that I am appalled at the numbers of people who are killed each
of these three years by police.
- The crimes for which police kill people are as follows:
- Being an Indian
- being drunk and disorderly
- holding a knife in your hand and making a threatening gesture
- taking to many pills
- and adding to the list was yesterday's case of having a seizure.
The two cities in this province have redefined the role of police from maintaining
order and keeping the peace, to being adult bullies who occasionally kill Indians.
Let's consider Regina first,
as yesterday's case occurred in front of a charity mission where the thirty-two
year old Indian man suffered a seizure. Everyone has seen someone suffer this horrible
indignity and it is essentially a misfiring of the brains programme causing the individual
to flop around, froth at the mouth and often loose control of bodily functions. Paramedics
were attempting to restrain the victim when a policeman arrived, the flailing individual
was out of control and hit the policeman and for that he was killed. The policeman
attacked the semi-conscious man with pepper spray and he was dead in minutes. His
police chief said that though he knows that pepper spray sometimes kills people,
the officer acted properly.
This is the same city where a deeply troubled teenage boy was surrounded by four
policeman and a police dog, he had a knife in his hand and in front of his terrified
mother, the police put four bullets through the kids heart.
This is the same city were a distraught and truly upset young woman staggered out
into the street with a pistol in her hand and was gunned down by Regina city police.
In Saskatoon
there is more than ample evidence of the police force operating a death squad
that routinely took Indian people out of town and left them to die in the dead of
winter, or took an intoxicated individual and release him to die on the streets in
the cold.
It was from Saskatoon that a frantic and distraught Indian man drove his pickup into
the country to be stopped by the RCMP, who have shown themselves to be the willing
assistants of the Saskatoon police force by whitewashing their investigation of the
death squad operations, helped out by shooting the man to death and his widow announced
this morning that she is suing the RCMP for wrongful death.
Not one of these incidents listed above resulted in any prosecutions, all of the
officers involved had killed with immunity. We might call it the 007 "licensed
to kill" mentality that pervades Saskatchewan law enforcement. The two Saskatoon
police charged with one of the attempted murders in Saskatoon were only charged with
unlawful confinement not attempted murder, their victim survived so it is doubtful
if they will even lose their jobs for their work, because there is every indication
that they were just doing what Saskatoon policemen do.
I look out on this beautiful morning and realise the horror of living in a society
watched over by killer cops and I know why. Unfortunately so do you, we all know
why this is happening. The wonderful world of the sixties gave way to the brutal
poverty of the eighties and nineties, crime seems out of control in the high unemployment
cities and the police see things that we can not imagine. Poverty is horrible stuff
and these police people, each having entered their career because they are highly
motivated and almost every one of them driven with a need to be "in control"
to be "assertive" arrest people who will not come to trial for a year and
will get off because the jails are full and killing a few seems like a good idea,
if not a good idea, it might just put the fear of police in the poor people's minds
and if you live on control and assertiveness, that's what you want.
Take any police officer and ask him or her about any of these cases, including the
one on the street in Regina yesterday and you will see that person put up a plausible
defense, give rational explanations and look with disdain upon you for even bringing
the matter up. Police see the world as "we" and "them", civilians
are not police officers, they are not law enforcement officers, they are to be subjugated
and controlled, and yes folks, sometimes killed, just to let them know who's in charge.
Think about it this way, who is a threat to you, yes, you personally, a baggy panted
youth that needs a shave and hair cut, or a person wearing an armoured vest, gloves,
carries a loaded handgun and drives a big fast car with a shotgun between the front
seats and knows that he can do anything he wants with total immunity?
It could have been a great day, but then for the man who had the seizure his life
ended yesterday and I can still get up and take a picture of the sunrise and belly
ache about things.
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At five in the
morning the news, the daily litany of events from this trouble world are still not
into the morning mode as CBC's first daily news cast is the comprehensive 0600 news
and that seems to set the theme for the day as news writers set their quests for
the day's happenings and go hunting down the stories that will be on the following
morning.
