Another reader just sent this one in. A former Brantford, Ont., cop who was caught on police video smoking crack cocaine and snorting Oxycontin in his cruiser is fighting to get his job back or secure a financial settlement from the service.
Jeffrey Servos was a Brantford cop for six years. In 2009, he pleaded guilty to one count of possessing cocaine and was also hit with 16 Police Services Act charges.
He resigned from the force that year after a series of plea bargains rather than serve three months in jail. The police act charges were withdrawn after he resigned.
In March, Servos filed a complaint to the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal alleging "discrimination in employment on the basis of disability."
Servos claims a doctor told him "his employer (Brantford police) had failed in its duty to accommodate his drug-related disability" and there may be grounds for getting his job back or a financial settlement.
Wow. I had no idea it was that easy. Just start smoking crack and you can go on disability. What a broad precedent. No one will ever have to work again. He was also part of the methadone program and was investigated for shooting at a stolen van.
Again; on Global TV;
ReplyDelete"Seventeen-year-old Jamie Haller was repeatedly punched in the face while in the custody of the Williams Lake RCMP, says the girl's mother."
"My daughter…was punched and beaten by Cst. Yung, while her hands were cuffed in the back of a police car," writes Martina Jeff, Haller's mother, in an official complaint filed with the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP (CPC). "I witnessed this while other officers stood around."
http://tinyurl.com/654whw7
Just as this issue comes up;
"Ottawa is threatening to pull all RCMP municipal detachments out of British Columbia if the province does not sign a take-it-or-leave-it new policing contract by the end of November."
"B.C. Solicitor-General Shirley Bond said the federal government’s ultimatum leaves the province with no option but to begin investigating the possibility of re-establishing its own police force, something it hasn’t had since 1950."
"Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts blasted Ottawa’s threatened withdrawal."
“It’s outrageous,” she said. “They have basically walked away from negotiations and said: ‘You have to sign this, or we’re pulling all of our officers from the province.’ ”
"But B.C. municipalities have become increasingly agitated at the price of policing, and are demanding better cost-control measures from the RCMP."
"Ms. Watts said the problem is unpredictable, “somewhat mysterious” costs that arise simply from employing officers for their regular duties."
http://tinyurl.com/64zgnhj
The many hundreds of comments to that G & M story, show BC'ers are fed up with the RCMP and wouldn't mind them leaving one bit.
The problem with getting rid of the RCMP in B.C. is that it would not solve the problem. The officers to staff a provincial force would be former RCMP, or VPD, the instructors who would train new officers would be the current ones, etc. They would have to be certified to train police officers. There is a limited number of such people.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is law enforcement culture in Canada. As long as this culture produces officers who punch teenage girls in the face when they're in cuffs/custody, who drunkenly rob newspaper deliverymen, or commit any one of the dozens of other outrages that take place regularly, nothing will change.
Until citizen victims or their family are willing to take active measures against thuggish police officers, these things will continue. Quit being so damned polite and passive about this. These guys know they can get away with all kinds of stuff, and so they do.
I will say that if my teenage daughter was being punched in the face repeatedly while in handcuffs, or my son wound up shot in the back of the head in a cell and every expert said the official story was garbage, I'd be driving around in a very large truck (U-Haul has them) looking for someone. Crown Vic's gas tanks explode when they're rammed hard enough from behind. At 80-90 km/hr into the back of a stationary vehicle it wouldn't matter much anyway. Gas pedal stuck, OMG I blacked out behind the wheel, whatever. Just a terrible accident. Prove otherwise. Payback is a bitch. Cue bagpipes.....
trailrunner78:
ReplyDelete"The problem is law enforcement culture in Canada. As long as this culture produces officers who punch teenage girls in the face when they're in cuffs/custody, who drunkenly rob newspaper deliverymen, or commit any one of the dozens of other outrages that take place regularly, nothing will change."
Absolutely right, great to see your good posts on here.
There's no doubt, as you say, that BC cannot come up with a Provincial Police force over-night, we're in a real bind.
The municipalities, such as Ms. Watts here in Surrey, have come out vocally against the very high, and to her questionable, costs of the RCMP.
But you're right, that it's the PR problems the Force has here, that makes a continuance without further scrutiny so difficult.
I'm struck that in both cases, Police and Hell's Angels, we have people who are members of a group. Distinctively uniformed and armed at that. It's a given that a Hells Angel owes his allegiance to the club above all else. It's not supposed to be that way for the other "members". They owe their allegiance first to the law they swear to uphold above all other considerations, and as much as that, to the public they purport to serve.
ReplyDeleteWhen you have a law enforcement establishment that really answers to no one but themselves, it's not really a surprise that you have the kind of incidents we all know of that need no reiteration here. What is really telling is the fact of HOW MANY of these incidents happen, per capita. You can go to a major metro area down south and find nowhere near the amount of officer misconduct, alleged or proven, and that with much larger agencies. Why is that?
Two words. "Civilian Oversight".
That "member" who struck and killed a motorcyclist while DUI in Surrey and who left the scene of the accident to go home for a few shots to cover himself, would have been out on his ass down there. The fact that he couldn't even keep himself out of trouble for a year after being one of the 5 "members" who killed a Polish immigrant at the airport is what we call an "indicator" (known to civilians as "a clue") that he needs to be in a different career field. Just one of dozens of examples.
With the Hell's Angels on one side and the Police theoretically on the other, this would appear to leave the citizenry caught between the devil and the deep blue wall, as it were.
Do they deserve better? Of course. But there's also that saying that people get the government they deserve. More correctly, they get the government they're willing to tolerate. And this applies to police services as well.
Canadians have a well deserved reputation for politeness. :halosmiley: But everything has two sides, and the other side of being polite is a certain passivity. Guess what signal that sends to people who utilize aggression and the willingness to use violence as a components of their skill set?
Passive = victim.
If you do not have men who have honor, real honor, wearing a badge, you will have the kind of behavior we know all too well. Honor is not a group thing, in that it starts with the individual and their ability to resist group pressure when it comes to doing the right thing. Sadly, it appears that we have far too many "members" who espouse the values of criminals, who despise "rats" above all else.
You need only fear a rat if you're doing something wrong. Which begs the question of why both sets of "members" under discussion hate rats so much, although I will readily concede that the "blue members" don't tend to deal with the issue quite as severely as the "red & white members" do.