Tart Cider: The sign says "20 Minutes Maximum," punk

November 10, 2005

The sign says "20 Minutes Maximum," punk

Speaking of not trusting the police, holy crap. That is some pretty sickening video. (Dawg has more, and more on the Ottawa po-po in general.)

Personally, I've never had anything but minor quibbles with cops. I spent a couple of winters a few years ago in Fernie, a very affecting hardscrabble British Columbia mining town-cum-mid-range resort of 5,000 residents that must have the largest per-capita RCMP detachment in Canada. A few of us were walking to a party one night, causing no fuss but having a few road pops, and got busted fair and square by an acne-scarred young Mountie. We poured out our Pilsners on the curb as ordered.

"What's in your knapsack," he asked me. (I swear his voice cracked as he did so.)

"More beer," said I.

"Pour it out."

I laughed. "Come on," I said. "I'm not doing that."

I think he'd assumed we were under 20, Australian, stupid, or all three. It's a fairly safe bet in Fernie. I'm not sure whether his request was technically above board, but it was certainly unreasonable, and we easily negotiated our way down to him following us to the party — it was only another block or so — and a promise of good behaviour. My lasting negative impression wasn't of the young policeman himself, who's probably a fine officer by now, but of the training that seemed to have instructed him to get the most humiliation he could out of the people he stopped, the law be damned.

(Actually, I guess I do have one major quibble: you wouldn't believe how many phone calls it takes to get the SPCUM out at 4:30am, even when your upstairs neighbour is beating down your front door with an axe. Hint: tell them he says he has a gun.)

You'll never entirely get rid of a culture of impunity in a profession that by definition wields more authority than everyone else on the street, but the outrage over incidents like that in the Ottawa Tim Horton's needs to be de-politicized. We don't know what Danny Gauthier said to Constables Henderson and Nesbitt, but we do know that there was no earthly reason for Constable Henderson to beat the living tar out of Danny Gauthier. The sooner cop-haters, cop-lovers, politicians and cops themselves can agree on that, the sooner we can get rid of ugly incidents like these.

[UPDATE November 14: Il continue. Dawg demolishes an indefensible Ottawa Citizen column.]

Posted by Chris Selley at November 10, 2005 11:34 PM

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Comments

What's that old saw? A conservative is a liberal who's been mugged, a liberal is a conservative who's been arrested? Something like that...

Posted by: Bob Tarantino at November 11, 2005 10:22 AM

If this is the Danny Gauthier that I know, this has been a long time coming.

Posted by: Eric at November 12, 2005 12:37 PM

It amazes me how much deference and benefit of the doubt that Canadians give to the police. Its stuff like this that makes me sympathize with the pro-gun people. I understand why they love their guns now..... Its because it make the authorities and statists squirm... If we made our cops in Canada jump thru more hoops and brought them down to size (make them understand they are civil servants, the citizenry's bitch) we would have better policing.

Posted by: Tony at November 19, 2005 04:45 PM