Scotty

Blah, blah blah said the man who knows nothing whatsoever about what happened, is too lazy to investigate, and is reflexively defending the police no matter what they do and no matter who they do it to. Thanks for adding so much insight to the discussion.

They were incompetent, much like the Toronto police, who stood back and let rioters burn things, then hammered innocent, peaceful protesters the next day.

We didn't act badly. And I notice you avoid answering my question. What exactly were we to do with prisoners? Shoot them?

Moral equivalency at its intellectually bankrupt finest.

You think any political party which has principles are stupid ideologues?

del

I pretty much agree with this. I saw no point at all in the protests, and didn't even agree with much of what they were saying. But the violence and utter disregard for law shown by the police really pissed me off. It really brought to light for me how poorly trained, poorly disciplined, and poorly led the police are, and how casually willing they are to commit acts of brutality, and to break the law, as long as they think they can get away with it. And again, we're not talking about police beating up pimps or gang members like in the old days, when the police were notorious for 'having a talk' with troublemakers (cherry beach express) back in the old days. We're talking about perfectly law-abiding citizens being beaten and abused by police here, for no particular reason.

Omar Khadr and his entire family can go piss up a rope as far as I'm concerned. I don't care what's done to them. And Afghanistan is a shithole full of corrupt barbarous people. The whining of the leftist set about what happened to prisoners after we turned them over to their own government has always struck me as ludicrous. What were we supposed to do, bring them to Canada? That whole society is in the toilet from the top down. There's no one and no organization there which can be trusted in any way, shape or form.

Nonsense suit? Apparently, based on zero evidence, August, you've already decided that there's no substance to his complaints. This sort of attitude helps explain why the police in Quebec are so out of control, and do whatever the hell they want. I wonder if you'd be so casual if you were jerked out of a car, arrested, stripped and paraded around naked in front of all and sundry, female or male, then thrown into a cell naked. All to be released after a dozen hours with no charge.

That would be tough, except of late, I see little evidence of this 'self-control'. What I see is if you backtalk a cop you're going to wind up getting a beating, then taken down to a cell for strip searching.

The salary for a 1st class police constable in Toronto was just raised to $91,000. And virtually all police get scads of overtime. Prior to the raise, 1300 police officers in Toronto made more than $100,000 last year. Police require 12-24 weeks of training in Canada. Hairdressers require 45 weeks in community college.

I think they knew very well they were breaking the law. Witness how many of them removed any identifying name tags prior to the start of the day. Witness that in several cases where investigations tried to find out who arrested people it turned out the arrest sheets weren't signed, or that there were illegible scrawls instead of signatures. In the case above, he was interviewed by two police officer who refused to give him their names, and now, according to police, they don't actually know who those men were, even though they're on camera. REcall the Robert Dziekanski case. All four mounties, before they even knew there would be any kind of big issue, lied about the arrest, falsifying their reports. As if that were the routine thing to do for them. Then they perjured themselves on the stand. In the G20 investigations, we've seen numerous cases no police officer could remember who that guy was who was standing with them for hours at a time. "Huh? Gee? Was there a cop there who beat a guy? I didn't see nothing. I have no idea. No clue. Sorry."

Who is it who's got no idea what life in a prison is like again? For an average middle class person, prison would be a horrible experience. If, on the other hand, you're a street punk, particularly a gang member, then it's no big deal. Instead of hanging around with your gang in some low-rent roach infested hovel downtown, you're hanging out with your gang in a nice clean prison. The violence is probably no better or worse. And you get to have your 'ho come and visit you for conjugal visits.

It stops the guy from killing again. The problem with the whole capital punishment exercise is its uncertainty. You might be caught, and if so, you might be convicted, and if so you might be sentenced to death, and if so it might actually be carried out - some day - maybe in ten years or so. Criminologists say that effective deterrence is best achieved by swift, sure punishment. I.e., you're caught robbing a bank, you're sentenced the next day to ten years in prison. Instead, what tends to happen is you're released on bail, then over the following year or year and a half the lawyers dance and argue and negotiate, and then at some point in time you'll get some sort of sentence, and then decide how much of it you might actually have to carry out. "Hmm, three years, so I'll probably only serve about nine months or so."

And do you have the slightest evidence, or have you ever bothered to even look to see if there is any evidence that "rehabilitation" works? Ever? I'm betting... noooooooo.

I know you didn't read those stats. You've been rather proud on many occasions of saying you don't ever bother to read reports or statistics. At best, you seem to prefer to have someone give you a summary of the summary. In point of fact, according to the Stats Canada victimization survey, fewer and fewer people are bothering to report crime to police. And so, presto! The police say that there is less crime being reported! What a shocker! That doesn't mean there is less crime, of course. And even 'police reported' crime is many times higher than it was in the fifties and sixties. I've posted that information before, but of course, reading is so difficult for you, especially when it doesn't support your rock-solid preconceptions, that you never bother to look such things over. In fact, there's precious little evidence any of that EVER works. Prison is a very unpleasant experience - largely due to the company - and so serves as a deterrent. Still, the recidivism rate is at 37%. Stronger punishment would serve as even more of a deterrent.

They do nothing of the sort.

So if I beat you into a coma and you wind up institutionalized for the rest of your life, you think two years in jail would be a proper, just punishment?

You mean "police-reported" crime rates. Even Stats Canada is careful to call it that, to point out it merely means what is reported to police. Except the same number of people are not 'not reporting'. As both the recent and previous victimization survey show a drop in how many people are bothering to report crime to police. And once again, my complaint was over the injustice of lax sentencing. So far the argument has been something like this. "This guy beat a man nearly to death and got a really weak sentence, and this happens too often." "Oh well, I think crime is dropping, so I don't care." What the hell kind of argument is that anyway? It's the argument of someone who could not possibly care less about issues of justice or injustice, but is just trying to reflexively score some kind of arcane internet debating point, if only in his own mind.

You realize most people reading this are just snickering at you, right? You can find whatever internet stats you want and no one with more than half a brain is going to accept that Russia and Mexico have less crime than Finland and New Zealand. But go ahead. Keep making yourself look like an idiot.

Those people are doing nicely, and their employer wants to now roll back wages, roll back benefits, increase contribution rates, etc. You think the NDP ought to be okay with that?

It can be, but isn't every job in demand like that? If you have a job which is in demand and a thousand people apply, well, what are your odds? The above looks like a clerk job. If it's not in a city which has a large government base then they probably only need 1 or 2 people. But what exactly is your complaint? Should the NDP ignore workers once they have passed a certain threshold of income?

The NDP didn't pick this for strategic reasons. The NDP has always supported labour. It would be unthinkable for them to not oppose a sudden, heavy handed back-to-work demand by the government brought out because Canada Post locked out its workers.

The more of this stuff I'm seeing, from Toronto, from Ottawa, from BC, and Alberta, about police misbehavior, about police attacking and assaulting perfectly innocent people with impunity, the more I feel we really need to reign in police. And I'm coming tot his conclusion from a perspective which has always been "Support your local police". I find the incompetence, dishonesty and violence of poorly trained, highly paid police to be grossly out of kilter with what we, as a society, expect. Too many police officers seem to have become thugs in uniform, blithely lying on reports, making up information, or using violence on the slightest pretext, then hiding behind the 'blue wall'. And I think the rot starts at the top. We need to go through the senior ranks of some of these police forces: RCMP, Toronto, Ottawa, with a chain saw, and then impose draconian new punishments for police officers who abuse their office. As an example, from the videos I've seen and stories I've heard hundred of police involved in the fiasco of the G20 ought to be fired, and many prosecuted for assault. Certainly that includes Toronto's police chief, and every senior police officer involved in the incompetent clusterfuck that was the G20. Toronto Star

Less crime reported does not mean there is less crime.