Violent Force: An alternative

[Northern Light]

There are existing threads which touch on this, but I decided on sticking this in its own thread.

Recently, the National Post carried a story about an off-duty, Swedish, female, police officer, making an arrest of a suspected, homeless (but young and able bodied) thief.

What makes this of note, and doubtless the reason it was a widely distributed story.......

Is that the officer in question was w/friends, on the beach, wearing nothing but a bikini.

Interesting.....and all............but I think the sensational element of the coverage completely misses an interesting point.

The officer was not only female, but un-armed, w/no illusion to the contrary given her attire. She didn't even have footwear.

YET, she took down a young, male, able-bodied suspect.......who due to his attire could not be assessed for being armed or not.

She did so w/o the ability to summon back-up, and did so effectively, yet w/o causing the suspect serious harm.

It immediately struck me that this is the sort of behavior that would inspire great confidence in one's police.

Gutsy, courageous, effective, efficient and non-lethal/seriously harmful.

All done w/o any armament, not so much as a baton or cuffs.

Perhaps material worthy of study in North America by our police, and not merely to admire the officer's physique.

http://news.nationalpost.com/news/world/bikini-cop-takedown-arrest

 

[Armour]

What man would fight back when a fit woman in a bikini takes him to the ground? The guy probably felt like he won the lottery.

 

[Northern Light]

What man would fight back when a fit woman in a bikini takes him to the ground? The guy probably felt like he won the lottery.

I shouldn't.........but I will.

This is the most immature, nonsensical response I could imagine.

Aside from denigrating discussion of a serious issue; it doesn't even make sense.

What thief would voluntarily submit to arrest and retrieval from him/her of the property just stolen?

Right.

 

[Armour]

I shouldn't.........but I will.

This is the most immature, nonsensical response I could imagine.

Aside from denigrating discussion of a serious issue; it doesn't even make sense.

What thief would voluntarily submit to arrest and retrieval from him/her of the property just stolen?

Right.

It's called a joke. There was no need to respond in such length or take my comment seriously.

What discussion is being denigrated? No one else has bothered to respond.

 

[riffraff]

It's called a joke. There was no need to respond in such length or take my comment seriously.

What discussion is being denigrated? No one else has bothered to respond.

A more than bad joke. You have also denigrated women elsewhere in this forum, been called on it and just don't get it.

 

[Armour]

A more than bad joke. You have also denigrated women elsewhere in this forum, been called on it and just don't get it.

Oh, relax. Just because you didn't like the joke that doesn't mean I'm denigrating women. And where have I done this elsewhere on this forum? Some of you people are far too touchy. Do you not understand that a joke is not meant to be taken seriously? I'm basically making fun of people that actually do see women as objects.

 

[Transportfan]

Oh, relax. Just because you didn't like...

Don't take it to hard. I've been lambasted by the thinskins on UT too.

 

[Northern Light]

Oh, relax. Just because you didn't like the joke that doesn't mean I'm denigrating women. And where have I done this elsewhere on this forum? Some of you people are far too touchy. Do you not understand that a joke is not meant to be taken seriously? I'm basically making fun of people that actually do see women as objects.

Has it occurred to you that 'jokes' are meant to be funny to the reader?

Not just you? Not the odd reader, but at the least, the majority of readers? Don't get me wrong, we all say the odd impolitic thing privately, but this is a public forum.

If you read my original post, I went out of the way to say

"but I think the sensational element of the coverage completely misses an interesting point."

Which I think could be construed as .......... please don't reduce this to being about a woman in a bikini...........

Which you summarily did.

Please note when justifying this, the number of 'likes' your post rec'd was zero.

Which doesn't, itself, make it bad............

I'll grant you, my post got less interest that I would have hoped............but yours (in the form of that post) I could have done without.

What I was looking for, was engagement on the issue of police using excessive force, particularly with guns and using a simple, easy to understand example to illustrate how this often (not always) not required.

That some mixture of training and courage will do wonders, without jeopardizing life.

I'm not thin-skinned about the virtues of women in bikinis (or less)..............nor do I see that, when properly expressed in the right way, at the right time, as a bad thing.

Rather, I would argue this thread was not the right place or time...............that there was an attempt to discuss a serious issue and a desire clearly expressed 'not to go there'.............

And you summarily went there, right away, ignoring the substance of the thread all together.

That's fine, if that's your personal level of discourse; but please take it elsewhere.

If you're better than that...........I'll take you at your word, but please post accordingly.

 

[riffraff]

I appreciate that this thread was meant as a way of having some serious discussion of a serious issue. I'm somehow not surprised that we are now arguing about "jokes". Perhaps starting the thread with the recent report of TPS spending 5 hours talking down an obviously distressed bus rider to a peaceful conclusion might have been a better place to start, particularly given the impact of the Judge's findings in the Sammy Yatim case Or the public consultation meetings coming out of the Mayor's reform initiative, or the province's review of the Police Act.

There's a separate thread on police reformation in this forum that seems to have gone dormant and there seems to be a reluctance to talk about issues of police accountability in this city as the major crime rate is again rising along with the steady annual increases to police budgets and the decrease in public confidence in the force.

The public needs to be educated in alternative approaches that produce better results in policing, but policing doesn't exist in a vacuum. Starting at the top, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada recently decried the shortage of judicial appointments to fill vacancies resulting in serious backlogs and delays in our courts. Since the courts, judges and juries, interpret our laws they also have an overview of how our laws are being enforced by the police. Recent decisions have ruled that "rough justice" (illegal traffic stops/profiling) and entrapment (BC "terrorism" case) are not acceptable and in these cases the criticism extends to prosecutors who determine which charges should go ahead.

Excessive Force seems to be in the purview of the SIU which, under citizen pressure, seems to finally have taken a small step toward transparency in the Loku case, so there's another angle to be noted as a vehicle to restrain police violence in the Provincial review.

I am hopeful that there are a number of forces at work presently that will be effective in restraining police excesses (that would involve effective discipline) though I have little faith that TPS, Chief Saunders and Mayor Tory will be at the forefront of this change.

 

[Northern Light]

Thank you riffraff !

In respect of how the thread might have been started, the points are well taken, though the recent (positive) handling of a disturbed person by police was reported after this thread was started.

I simply ran w/a topical article at the time.

There is also a separate Yatim thread here, which I wasn't sure this article fell into directly.

Though the case could certainly be made for that.

You raise a host of issues worthy of further examination in this or other threads.

 

[riffraff]

The problem generally seems to be that threads break down with positions seen as police boosters and police bashers and so never get around to discussing stuff like standards, processes and expectations of police behavior. I think that issues of police power and police culture are difficult because the cops like things just as they are and have a long history of resistance. They collect but do not share data with even the TPSB, complaints about police behavior have to be made by individuals to the police at a police station. Law suits against officers get settled with confidentiality clauses, which I understand, and human rights complaints take forever to be heard. In spite of regular media reports of civilian abuses such as in today's Star our municipal politicians will not commit to any action to redress the balance of power but pass off platitudes about supporting *our* officers.

NOW magazine has a trove of historical reports including on how the *Service* has targeted TPSB members who had the temerity to raise concerns about them. Every now and then we get the "few bad apples" jargon which is transparently dismissive of structural and systemic problems. We have a heavily armed force on our streets that lacks the disciplinary powers to reign in or dismiss "bad apples". These are cops who are now willing to embrace "community policing", whatever that means to them. I fear it means that instead of SWAT-style units swooping down on communities they are going to move into them, create "hubs", hang a few basketball nets and up-talk their new found co-operative approach to each other. I know there's good cops on the force who want change but the test will be what happens if the community identifies "bad apples".