By Kris Kotarski, For The Calgary Herald
Perhaps the only silver lining in the brutal police assault on 27-year-old Stacy Bonds is that the assault was so blatant and so revolting that even those who reflexively defend all police conduct had to pause and consider the meaning of what happened at the Ottawa police station on Sept. 26, 2008.
Without the video, the most common arguments in such cases -- that it wasn't so bad, or that Bonds somehow deserved to be stripped and beaten for some form of non-co-operation or resisting arrest -- are very easy to believe.
James Morton, a Toronto lawyer, Osgoode Hall law professor and past-president of the Ontario Bar Association, said as much himself, writing in the Calgary Herald on Saturday after the Ottawa Citizen released the video of the assault, that can also be seen at calgaryherald.com.
"I have argued cases where an accused, charged with assaulting police, claims to have been the victim of police violence," Morton wrote.
"Such claims have until now, I am afraid to admit, usually rung hollow with me. To be blunt, I did not believe them. I know that police have a difficult job. Police are often faced with violent, intoxicated individuals who have no regard for the truth and who will say whatever they think will get them out of trouble."
I have no doubt that Morton's view is the majority one, and I also have no doubt that the majority of Canadian police officers are good and decent individuals who are probably sickened to their cores by the video. Watching the video itself, I cannot help but feel sorry for every decent cop out there, not only because the footage tarnishes their profession, but because police officers often become police officers precisely because they dislike bullies of all types and watching their colleagues abuse an innocent woman must make their blood boil.
Those feelings aside, Morton asks a series of questions that make for a great departure point for a national discussion about Canada's police forces.
"How many 'assault police' charges are merely trumped up for the purpose of concealing official wrongdoing? Put otherwise, absent a video recording, would Bonds have had a fair hearing?"
"How could five police officers have taken part in the brutalization of Stacy Bonds and then allowed charges for 'assault police' to go ahead?" asks Morton.
"How could a Crown attorney have failed to stay charges on seeing the video?"
Morton suggests that there is malaise in the system. He is right. But it has to be stressed that the system in this case extends far beyond the police officers themselves, and includes our politicians and the Canadian public, many of whom consciously or subconsciously hold the attitude that the police can do no wrong.
Just last week another case of alleged police brutality wrapped up in Toronto where the special investigations unit in charge of overseeing police actions in Ontario declined to press charges against police officers for using excessive force at the G20 protests last June. The SIU found that even though officers used excessive force, they could not be identified. With no individuals to charge, no charges could be brought.
In a situation like this, there are two possible responses.
On the one hand, we have organizations like the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, which continues to seek a public inquiry to explain a situation which saw more than 1,000 people arrested, held in a detention centre and not allowed to call their families or a lawyer, with more than 900 subsequently released without charge.
On the other, there are people like National Post columnist Tasha Kheiriddin, who, during the G20, excused mass arrests of innocent people because -- in her words -- Canada had to become a police state for 72 hours to deal with the anarchists.
If attitudes like Kheiriddin's persist, then there is no hope of ever taking on the culture that led to Stacy Bonds' ordeal because such attitudes enable and excuse police impunity when some officers -- like all fallible human beings -- inevitably do something wrong.
Only by questioning authorities and holding them to the highest standards can we change the culture that leads to cases like Bonds's or that of Robert Dziekanski. Failing to do that is inexcusable, especially if we are interested in preventing such cases from ever happening again.
Kris Kotarski is a Calgary writer currently living in Europe. His column runs every second Monday
4 comments:
I'm not sure that the parallels between the Stacy Bonds assault and the G-20 arrests are strong.
Kotarski argues that we approve of the G20 police actions then then "there is no hope of ever taking on the culture that led to Stacy Bonds' ordeal because such attitudes enable and excuse police impunity when some officers."
Bonds didn't do anything wrong. The G20 activists did. They turned our city into an anarchist nightmare. Police vehicles were burned, bank windows smashed and storefronts vandalized.
Kim,
Um. No. The G20 activists were trying to press for all number of issues necessary to save our civilization and our species.
A minority of people committed acts of vandalism and the police (who had been paid over a billion dollars to prevent it) allowed it to happen. Then, to make up for their incompetence on the previous day, decided to arrest and brutalize 1,000 innocent people.
Hasn't it occurred to the Sheeple that some persons become cops just so that they can bully and get a pay cheque all at the same time?
No?
Re: ... police officers often become police officers precisely because they dislike bullies of all types and watching their colleagues abuse an innocent woman must make their blood boil.
I'm afraid I disagree with Kotarski on this. My experience has been that the majority of police officers I have known or interacted with have a distinct authoritarian streak - there are exceptions, some of them notable, but in my experience they remain exceptions.
If in fact this sort of incident, and so many others we hear about, make the blood of decent police officers boil, why do they not shun those who engage in that behaviour? Why are the offenders not ostracized? Why do those decent police officers not step forward and testify against the offenders?
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