Coming home one night this week I saw a police helicopter with search lights circling slowly, flooding parking lots and school years with light.
I considered what the police were doing.
Such an effort -- at least 45 minutes circling -- meant the police were looking for a dangerous individual.
How would they catch such a person? What dangers did they face directly? Maybe the police in the air were safe but the police on the ground were not so protected.
My sense is (and nothing showed up in the media) that whomever they were seeking got away. But the danger the police on the ground faced was real enough.
It's easy to be maudlin about police ('Our cops are tops') or to go the other way ('police are racist oppressors') but the truth is police have a difficult and dangerous job protecting us from ourselves. Much police work is dull tedious stuff. Some police treat civilians with a whiff of arrogance. But almost all police are decent people doing a demanding job that is 99% boredom and 1% terror.
Not a job for everyone.
And the helicopter reminded me of that.
James Morton
1100 - 5255 Yonge Street
Toronto, Ontario
M2N 6P4
2 comments:
Let me get this straight. The police were circling the neighborhood in a helicopter shining there big fascist spotlight into the yards and homes of innocent civilians chasing a criminal who it turns out wasn't even newsworthy and your worried about the safety of the police? I would suggest that the cops weren't even looking for a specific criminal but instead doing surveillance big brother style. They have been doing it in the poor part of town in American cities for decades. Locals call it a "Ghetto bird" I guess Canadian cops figure they can get away with it in your neighborhood. With apologists like you on their side I guess they can. I hope the poor police weren't hurt by the big, bad criminal. Give your head a shake.
re militantliberal's comments:
I think YOU are the one who needs to give your head a shake, not the blogger.
First of all, the neighbourhood where the blogger lives could hardly be compared to a ghetto. It's a rather nice middle-class suburban neighbourhood where I'm sure the shine of York Region police helicopters is a rare event.
From my point of view, I'd happily put up with the noise and bright lights of a helicopter a few times per year if it means a safer community. If they got the guy scaling the fence into YOUR backyard, wouldn't you be glad?
I'm sure the police have better things to do than randomly spy on law-abiding taxpayers. The helicopter is expensive to take out and I'm sure they only do so under very specific circumstances (land search would be too dangerous, limited by lack of roads in wooded areas, etc).
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