So, the Montreal police would like a by-law to enforce respect for them, especially at those nasty hours in the middle of the night when the clubs let out. It must be a harrowing experience to be called bad, bad names by inebriated citizens. My, my, my.
Sorry buddies, insult is a component of a free society. As George Orwell wrote, liberty means the freedom to say things that will irritate others.You chose public service. You serve us. The public. For better or worse. You don’t get the right to bend us to your will.
Police officers are worthy of respect. Most are vigilant, diligent and intelligent. But we Montrealers don’t need another set of fines to reform our behavior. That’s not the way to do it. But here are a few suggestions that would lead to a bettering of the condition between citizens and the law.
Get out of our faces. We don’t need pimply faced police cadets at the corner of Peel and St-Catherine sticking their hands in our noses so we don’t cross against red lights. Not your business, police officer. Don’t protect me from me.
Stop setting up traps to check if we are wearing seat belts. Partiucularly those at the exits off highways like Decarie and Ville-Marie. It’s real irritating to see that finger wagged at your windshield and it can cause accidents. My private domain is not the state’s affair. Read section 7 of the Quebec Charter of Rights.
Stop hassling taxi drivers if they, or a client, is smoking. It’s not a threat to the public good. If Quebec wants to ban smoking in public places, let the province enforce it. Being the guardians of the nanny-state does not enhance the image of police.
End your obsession with control. When an officer gave a $300 ticket to a student sitting the wrong way on a concrete enclosure in Parc Emilie-Gamelin, it cost the force a PR campaign’s worth of respect.
Police exist to protect the citizenry from violence and to maintain public order.Police should never be the agents of state control freaks that think up ridiculous laws to control every aspect of our lives just to demonstrate that they are doing something. Your union argues with the city on so many issues. Let it tell the administration that you are not babysitters or agents of behavior modification experiments.
But most importantly of all, stop over-reacting to citizens of colour.
Stop drawing weapons on the Gemma Raeburns who are just moving boxes from her garage to her house and is suddenly confronted by cops with guns because a neighbor of hers in suburban Pierrefonds assumed she was a thief because she was black.
Don’t encircle the Courtney Bishops and put guns to their faces just because you got a call that this student, walking with his friends, had a gun. Especially when you were told that by a doorman who refused to admit Bishop to a club because he was black. Ask questions first. You are not judge and jury.
And for justice’s sake, train your spokesmen not to answer like Laurent Gingras, who told reporters after the Bishop incident that “We will take no chances with the public’s security.” The “public’s security” is not just a matter of protection against physical harm. It is also a matter of upholding individual rights. The automatic assumption on the part of the police at the scene should not have been that just because a caller says something it must be true. Are our police going to be used and manipulated by random callers to be hammers against someone whom we find irritating? Of course not.
The officers should have approached Mr. Bishop, in force of numbers, and confronted him with the accusation. But when they heard his story, they should also have accompanied Mr. Bishop up the street to the pub and confronted the doorman with both the falsity of his accusation and questioned him on Courtney’s charge of racial bias. Not only would that have restored Courtney’s dignity, but it would have sent a strong message – from the police themselves – that they understood the broader community responsibilities in their mandate to keep the peace.
Stop enforcing the obsession with conformity. We have become a society that not only confuses conformity with security, but has abdicated to government the power to demonize the citizenry in a misguided belief that our ills will then be cured. It is a mindset reminiscent of the worst of our retrograde past and its time it stop.
Character should never be profiled into caricature. And respect is a two way street. It must be earned. It doesn’t come automatically with the donning of a uniform and a position in the thin blue line.
