Image via WikipediaI'm afraid I actually laughed out loud when I read the comment, "I'd rather call the Bandidos for help."
The writer was referring to the Ontario Provincial Police, a group someone else had called "the biggest gang in the province".
This hysteria was in response to an article about the release this week of the 2008 jailhouse video of the wrongful arrest of Stacy Bonds.
If you saw it, you'll know the video was chilling - so many police officers and one small woman.
She was charged with assaulting a police officer.
According to the reports, Ms Bond had been visiting a friend that night and was walking home along an Ottawa street after having had a few beers.
The police stopped her and ran her name through their computer. When they found nothing they told her to go home.
And that seems to be when she made her mistake.
She went back and asked them why she had been stopped. Maybe she felt targeted because she was black. Maybe as a law abiding citizen she just felt outraged.
Unfortunately her question seems to have enraged the officers. They arrested her for public intoxication.
The rest you know. She was beaten, strip searched and humiliated, left topless in soiled pants in a jail cell for hours.
The judge dismissed the case against her.
He called the whole thing a "travesty", an "indignity toward a human being..."
At this point it is important to note that the province's Special Investigations Unit has already started to look into the behaviour of the police officers in question. The officer who appears most at fault has been banned from working with the public.
So let's get a grip.
Bandidos.
The guys who like to murder their buddies and leave them in car trunks in the countryside.
Jeesh.
1 comment:
There seem to be a lot of stories lately about police officers behaving badly.
Each time this happens, the moral authority of police everywhere is eroded. This is not a good thing.
The problem, I believe, is leadership, or lack thereof.
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