THROWING THEIR BADGES IN THE DIRT
What the hell is going on?
A 47-year old man is trying to support his family. He is delivering newspapers at 2:30 in the morning.
Was he a surgeon is his country of origin? A physicist? Who knows?
What we do know is that he has claimed - and there is considerable evidence to support this claim - that three off-duty police officers with no apparent provocation attacked and beat up and robbed this man.
We are told that the three officers, each from the burbs, each with very few years under his no doubt considerable belt, each drunk, yelled racial insults at this newsy and threatened him further with the famous taser treatment ... which, given current realities, is not much different from saying, "We're going to kill you."
Nice.
Vancouver Police Chief, James Chu, thankfully breaking the usual closed-mouth protocol, has spoken publicly to assure us that some legal process is now at hand.
How many more examples of dreadful police behaviour can Canada bear these days?
Have the leaders of these teams not addressed their ranks lately and urged them to carry their tasks and their shields with pride and honor? Has no one taken charge and advised officers across the land to clean up all and every bad acts?
Last weekend, we made the mistake of trying to engage a police officer in a conversation.
We stepped off the curb at a four-way stop intersection and the police woman simultaneously and in no apparent urgent hurry looked right at us as she drove in front of us at a crosswalk.
When we saw her a few moments later, we dared ask her, "If then police don't respect the rules or regard pedestrians, how can we expect any one else to?"
She didn't apologize. She ranted on about how "no harm was done," apparently not seeing the harm in bad public relations.
Soon, one of her colleagues joined the circle and glared menacingly at us. We expected drawn tasers at any moment.
We thanked her for her time and offered the Safeway Universal, "Have a nice day."
I have been a fan and supported of the police all my life, and in theory, I continue to be so.
But loyalty is being strained daily by these shenanigans.
As if the YVR story is not sorry enough, now we have three drunk rogue cops beating up on "brown people" at Georgia and Burrard. They were stopped by the interventions of passers-by.
Do the police forces of the land really want to keep such representatives in their uniforms?
Yes, give them their due process.
But when the truth is told, show them the door and ask more of the next batch of recruits.
Ask for civility.
PHOTO: Phil Khan, father, husband, 3AM newspaper delivery man on a cold January night, and victim of random attack by 3 men who brag that they are cops
