Saturday, March 24, 2007

Here's a fun video for ya . . .
Let's have another fun look at what it is to be a Vancouverite, where everyone is always complaining about everything else about the city. Seriously, people hate bus drivers, tuition prices, gas prices, politicians, the US, noisy people on the skytrain, the Toronto Maple Leafs, protestors themselves . . . and of course, above all, cops.

Let's take a look at the most recent bit of conflict in British Columbia's Lower Mainland. Take a look, the video's only a minute or so . . .



So what is happening here? Obviously there's a brawl on the ground involving two men and two police officers. A third cop comes onto the scene using his baton. Firemen are standing in a circle around the incident. The cop with the baton later has some less-than-pleasant words with the firemen once the men are subdued.


Here's the rest of the story.

St. Patrick's Day, late night. There was a car crash in downtown Vancouver; three Vancouver police officers went to check it out, as did members of the Vancouver Fire Department. Once at the scene, they found a crashed SUV,two drunk men and a woman (who later turned out to be the driver at the time). The older man stated that he was a Vancouver firefighter; the younger man was his son. Several of the firemen recognised him. The son became confrontational and uncooperative, swearing at the cops and not answering the questions. The son eventually pushed one of the cops; the fight started from that point. The father/fireman jumped into the fight. The police called for back-up. The firemen stood around the fight, urging their colleague to calm down while also asking the cops not to hurt them too much. The policeman using the baton more or less ends the fight.

Oh yeah, that back-up the cops called for? The two police cruisers - one marked, one unmarked - ended up colliding in the rush to get there; two officers in one car suffered minor injuries, the other two sustained more serious soft tissue damage. All seven officers went to the hospital for treatment.

End of the day, the off-duty firefighter and his son face charges of obstruction and assaulting an officer. Further, in typical Vancouver panache, the firefighter filed a complaint to the police commissioner and is threatening a lawsuit against the city.

And while all that was happening, someone cracked out his cell phone in time to get a snippet of it all.


It hurts my head as I read through the comments on this video. I originally wanted to comment on it and leave my thoughts, but the more I thought about how I wanted to word it, the more I knew it was pointless. I say it often that no matter how well you argue a point, if someone has already made up his mind you're not going to change with with any amount of rational debate (let alone irrational). So yeah, to hell with 'em.

We as people often tend to think we're all quite clever, that we're so sure of our rights and our freedoms. That all are accountable for their actions, and that none are safe from such accounts. Thus, when a police officer pulls out his metal baton and uses it against an unarmed man (regardless of how much he resists, shouts or attacks back), that's clearly a misuse of force and the police officer is in the wrong. He's a trained official, after all, he should be able to handle it in a better way . . .

Let's look at it differently. We wanna be able to sue our police force like any other person in the city, huh? So let's say this: say these two drunk guys were mouthing off to any other sorts of guys in the downtown bar area, or that they decided to get aggressive. Would ANYONE be shocked if those men fought back and a big fight ensued? Would anyone be nearly as defensive about their actions if one of them had pulled a knife or something? No, we'd say the guys were shooting their mouths off, it's their asses and that the guys they pissed off had a knife was an unfortunate bit of fate.

But no, they're police officers! We wanna watch those corrupt bullies go down!

I find it hard to feel sorry for the guy that gets smoked with the baton. I mean, they're LAW ENFORCEMENT, they're not duelists; there ain't no fair honourable fights if you're gonna stir shit up in public . . . they want you to stop it and they warned you about it . . . but you didn't want to listen.

So likewise, there's all this other stuff about the firefighters standing around not getting involved. Some say the cops might've told them not to get involved, others say the cops were pissed that they didn't get involved. That's a whole other thing I'm not gonna bother getting into, as that'll probably hurt my head even more than this kind of stuff usually does.

It's a pretty safe bet to say that politely asking a large, drunk, pissed off man to calm down and stop fighting isn't gonna work - imagine what police forces would be like if they had to do that! So let's see, they have the extendable baton, pepper spray, tasers, and a .40 caliber pistol . . . well, we obviously can't use the gun because they aren't threatening life. We can't use the taser because there have been a small percentage of incidents where people died from those as well. Can't use the pepper spray, that has bad connotations. And of course, you DEFINITELY can't use the baton because DEFINITELY hitting people with anything is a no-no, and then they'll sue you later for it.


Do a google search involving "Vancouver police downtown fight", I bet you'll find all the news reports about that night. But hell, while at it you might as well see how else people complain about the Vancouver Police Department! Clearly they're all out of control and abusing their authority . . . because that's what cops do, right?

I don't know about you, but when I was convinced to walk around the absolute worst, seediest streets of Vancouver last Tuesday (for fun, no less), I felt more than comfortable knowing that a police car including officers was across the street as we made our way through the very concentrated group of people, some of which who were smoking substances inside plastic pen shells. Like, when you have a city that has to host The Olympics in three years, I'd imagine it'd look somewhat better to have people being taken down by cops than having people fighting in the streets freely.

Heh . . . and then of course when things happen, who are the first people people complain didn't do their jobs? Irony in there, I'm sure.


Vancouver Police have one of the hardest jobs in the world. No question.
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