Why is Police Accountability Important? How Can We Achieve It?
INTRO
The Canadian Awareness Network has been labeled anti-police and has had police officers rant on articles and videos ever since this organization has began doing reports about police officers committing crimes and/or using excessive lethal force when not needed. As stated before by Terry in previous reports, we are in no way shape or form anti police, in fact we are pro “peace officers” if you will.
Just recently I released a positive story about a police officer who chose not to shoot a man who had a samurai sword on King St. Hamilton and was a danger to the public. The courageous officer took the man down by tackling him and all done without having to discharge a firearm or electricshock weapon, not even peppery spray. We still had negative feedback from police officers who follow this site.
Perhaps that courageous officer thought twice about his actions because he did not want that mans life to be on his conscious or to be in the investigative spotlight by this this organization and the like. Since there is barely no police accountability the only way to get justice is to do real journalism by exposing discrepancies and expose the names of the officers if possible. Those officers may have gotten away with the crimes they’ve committed but at least this way their names are out in the open for the public to take note of.
It is totally apparent that there is barely no justice in the legal system when it comes to convicting police officers of crimes they’ve committed. The Special Investigations Unit (SIU) is a policing agency that investigates alleged crimes committed by police officers in Ontario and determines if the officer should be charged or not and the statistics speaks for themselves. An article published by the Toronto Star, three years ago, states that in the 20 years of the SIU’s existence, of the 3,400 investigations they conducted against police officers committing crimes only 16 have been convicted of a crime and only 3 out of those 16 have sat behind bars. So less than 1% of officers that commit crimes in Ontario sit behind bars. Does the fact that 87% of the SIU are former police officers have anything to do with those statistics being so low?
An excellent article published by Susan Clairmont from the Hamilton Spectator goes into detail how cops avoid being disciplined for their actions, excerpt is below:
“….Ontario legislation … makes it mandatory for cops to be paid while suspended,…
…
Many officers facing criminal or police act charges remain suspended for years, using loopholes and stall tactics to stay on the payroll as long as possible before resigning or retiring.
Officers convicted criminally are still paid, unless they are incarcerated and can’t report for duty, because only a police act conviction can lead to termination.
For years, Ontario’s police chiefs have called for a change to the police act that would allow them to use discretion when deciding whether to pay a suspended officer. Everywhere else in Canada, chiefs or police boards have that discretion.
No politician has championed the amendment. Doing so would challenge powerful police unions…”
~ SOURCE
Robert Chinnery, whose son was shot and killed by Const. McNaughton of Hamilton Police , said to us in an interview: “You gotta take the commonalities of these cases. The commonalities of the way that these people (cops) get off is having a shared lawyer and people are wrong when they think that practice doesn’t … occur … They’re all represented by the same lawyer, they get the same story together because their lawyer has to share the information with the clients that’s the law. So all of them can arrange their story, they might as well (all) sit at a board room with the lawyer (and arrange the story together).”
SO WHY IS POLICE ACCOUNTABILITY IMPORTANT?
Well if a regular every day citizen commits a crime they are charged, usually found guilty and are convicted. When a police officer commits a crime they are usually NOT even charged, suspended with pay and proven by SIU statistics they are not convicted and cleared of charges. The more and more police are not held accountable for their actions the more of a message it’s going to send police officers minds that that type of behavior is okay and acceptable. Messages like “It is okay to shoot a person, even if less lethal force tactics can subdue that person just shoot and don’t worry about it.” It sends a message to officers that they can basically do what ever they want and their names will not be disclosed to the public and they will be cleared of any charges.
In my opinion officers that break the law should be convicted and punished more heavily than a regular criminal because it is way more inappropriate for law enforcers to break the law than a regular citizen.
If police accountability doesn’t start being enforced I see a future that is very ugly. There might a time in Canada where police can assault citizens and abuse their power in the form of it being totally legal for them to do so without repercussions. Anyone who has eyes to see can see that it is pretty much already there! The laws are just getting harsher and harsher as the globalists perpetuate their new world order and there will be a time for police officers to decide if they want to keep going down a path ‘policy enforcement’ or if they want to get back to the routes of being a ‘peace officer’. There will be a time where they have to decide to speak out against police being cleared of charges when they know they are guilty and try to charge those officers themselves because essentially it is their duty to uphold the law. Just because someone is in a uniform does not mean the law doesn’t apply to them, or at least that’s how it’s supposed to be under the Rule of Law.
HOW DO WE GET MORE POLICE ACCOUNTABILITY?
Well obviously changes need to be made to the Police Services Act and people in Ontario has to start thinking about if the SIU should even exist or not since they’re not really doing a good job at investigating crimes proven by Norm Dorr’s Reenactment of SIU report for the Mesic case. Police accountability in this country is very hard to achieve but there are ways to reduce the statistics of police brutality by acquiring police to wear bodycameras.
According to the New York Times, the police department of Rialto, California required half of its patrol officers to wear body cameras each week of the year of 2012. It stated:
“Rialto is one of the few places where the impact of the cameras has been studied systematically.
In the first year after the cameras were introduced here in February 2012, the number of complaints filed against officers fell by 88 percent compared with the previous 12 months. Use of force by officers fell by almost 60 percent over the same period.”
Continue Reading…(www.nytimes.com)
Police bodycameras have been implemented in the Canadian cities of Calgary, Edmonton and Victoria. The city of Winnipeg is also talking about doing it. Perhaps Ontario should consider doing this as well, that is why the Canadian Awareness Network has been trying to lobby city councilors and police board members by informing them of this info to make it mandatory for police to wear bodycameras. In Hamilton they are spending tens of thousands of dollars on new CCTV cameras, why not spend it on something that has been known to reduce police brutality by up to 60% and to add on top of it it helps with the investigations of crimes. Please send this article or information to your city councilors and police board members. Could big brother be a solution to police brutality?’
And on an extra note, I just want everyone to know that it is 100% legal to video record your interactions with police. Even if it’s a simple peaceful interaction don’t be afraid to record. It’s there for your protection. That being said I’m not saying bad things will happen to you, what I am saying is having a camera present statistically shows it protects you.
Amongst the tragedies of excessive lethal force in 2013 two big victories occurred because of cameras in Ontario. Sammy Yatim’s tragic death was caught on camera which was enough to charge Const. James Forcilio with murder. Click HERE for chronological full report. And then Norm Dorr’s Reenactment of the SIU report for the Mesic case shows how the SIU either accidentally or intentionally covers up and distorts stories of incidents where police commit crime to let them off. These two things are hard hitters when it comes to exposing corruption within the establishment.
