The Toronto Star is reporting that "A suspended Hamilton police officer fed drug traffickers sensitive information and favours in return for cash payments, a Crown attorney said Monday during his opening address to a Toronto jury. Craig Ruthowsky, a former member of the Hamilton Police Service’s guns and gangs unit, has pleaded not guilty to obstruct justice, bribery, breach of trust, trafficking and conspiracy to commit an indictable offence." Sounds like BC.
I like how they refer to them only as "drug traffickers". Like there's a whole bunch of different such organizations that do this AND cultivate sources within Law Enforcement....
ReplyDeleteMakes you wonder why they can't seem to do much against the HA in BC, doesn't it? They get the occasional piece of low hanging fruit, but there's crack, meth, and fentanyl
available on the corner every day. :Shakerz:
E-Pandora was what, 12-14 years ago? The only real bust since then is Skelator, and even that was 5 years ago or something. And yet as I say, the drugs are available every day....
The lesson one would get from this is, if you want to make money in the drug business, Canada is the place to do it. Not too high up of course, those slots are already spoken for, but enough to make a comfortable living? Yup, Canada. Even assuming they ever catch you, the sentences are a joke, these guys would all be doing 20-50 years down south.
The other thing to glean from all this is, there's some crooked cops out there working on their retirement fund. Time for a mole hunt. Where was this idiot in Hamilton? Oh that's right, the "Guns and Gangs" unit. That's where you start looking, they are the ones that work these "drug traffickers" and have the most contact with them. They are the ones who have the information that HA wants.
The problem is, the basic culture of policing in Canada
is corrupt and broken. Who could be trusted to run such an effort? Even if you used the RCMP to investigate VPD, who would you use to investigate the RCMP? CSIS? I think they're busy further up the food chain. At least we'd hope they are.
Someone needs to take a hard look at investigatory efforts and determine why it is they aren't succeeding.
even looks like a sneaky little rat
ReplyDeleteA picture is worth a thousand words so it is.
DeleteIt is said the eyes are the windows to the soul.
DeleteActually id say a weasel would be more fitting lol
DeleteFrom the tactical perspective, this guy was putting the lives and safety of his fellow officers at risk. If you know a raid is coming on one of your safe houses and the "drug trafficker" is enough of a psycho, it wouldn't be too hard to wire the place and take out the entire entry team doing the raid. When he gets sentenced, it should be with this in mind. Why any of his fellow officers showed up to support him in court I have no idea, other than that there seems to be a fundamental disconnect between a lot of Canadian cops and reality when it comes to that kind of thing.....blue line fever no matter what.
ReplyDeleteIt could be because they are in on it too, or something just as bad.
DeleteIt could be they want to put pressure on the judicial system (i.e. prosecutor/judge) to try to minimize any future investigations into this type of action.
Or it could simply be they support what he was doing ...
As corrupt as the culture of policing in Canada is, I'd have to say it's likely a combination of all three. "Membership Has It's Privileges". There's a lot of cops out there don't like being told they're no one special, and the privileges they imagine they possess have no basis in reality, that they're no better than any other citizen.
ReplyDelete"respect muh awe-thor-i-tay"......
It's a hard job and not everyone can keep their head straight while doing it. There needs to be a mechanism to turf guys who have been on the job for a few years but have let it go to their heads. Their "career" is not more important than the underlying principle of all being equally accountable before the law. If they've morph'ed into "them and us", they need to move on. If it's flipping burgers, so be it. No cop is better than a corrupt or dirty cop.