Friday, January 29, 2010

Sorry is the Cheapest Word


I have friends who are police.

I like the police.

I am getting tired of watching the police disgrace themselves.

Here are two headlines from this morning's press:

Man beaten by Vancouver police to sue


Second Surrey Six Mountie investigated

The two stories are unrelated in specifics, but they are united by an unhappy common theme - police are straining our necessary sense of trust and good will in their motives and behaviour on and off the job.

I appreciate that police are human and like me and you they make mistakes every single day.

I appreciate that as police you are often, more often than not, dealing with garbage and crap.

Probably it could be safely argued that your job is tougher than many other employments.

O.K.

But please...let's get you out of these kind of headlines.

By the way, in the first case quoted...mistaken identity. Oops, we're sorry may not cut it.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

David, I have mixed feelings about all of the negative news as of late re the police. VPD RCMP and many other forces all seem to behave in ways that I find offensive.

So I thought is it me or is it them. Im in my fifties and grew up in an age where you were taught to respect authority. All authority. I dont think that todays system teaches kids to respect authority to the same degree we were. Things have CHANGED.
The kids are from varied back grounds. Many come from cultures where the police are feared. The criminals have CHANGED. When I was younger the bad guys seemed to have a respect for the laws that they broke. They certainly had a lower profile in the news. They also seemed to care a bit about the inocent public. Todays bad guys are more likely to be armed with powerful weapons. They also seem to be more apt to use the guns. Better shielded from police bullets by vests and armor plated cars.

I guess what I am trying to say is as much as I dont like the new police attitudes I dislike the new criminals even more. The cops are up against a hyper violent type of bad guy and perhaps in order to combat these new bad guys they must respond in ways that people my age find offensive.
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Anonymous said...

Unfortunately, in these cases, beating up the 'wrong' guy and cheating on your wife to sleep with a witness in a major murder trial, and committing fraud have nothing to do with the new kind of bad guys and everything to do with serious bad decision making. But I agree with David, I like the police. I respect them. Thank god they are here! They have a thankless job much of the time and yet they are able to rise to the occasion and handle things with calm and diligence in the face of horrific situations. Their professionalism, courage, protective instinct, good characters, and consideration to those they help rarely makes it into the news. It's unfortunate the police don't get enough credit in the media for the zillions of things they do right, which I imagine is daily. If they did, perhaps the public could be a tad more understanding when they screw up.

Anonymous said...

What I find most interesting is that one of the VPD officers is assigned to desk duty and the other one is still working.
Did one officer overstep his authority and the other one tell the truth? We pulled him out and my partner punched him.
Only time will tell.
The RCMP case is a whole different story.
He's an IDIOT.