FyreStorm wrote:The society of which I speak is called Canada.
All Canadians deserve the RIGHT to travel in safety. You should not be harmed going about your daily business because other chose to flaunt the laws leading to your injury or death.
This is exactly my point we do have a RIGHT TO TRAVEL period. It is stated quite clearly in the Bill of Rights. Not Flaunting of laws applies to both public servants and to the people.
I think all traffic fines should go to charity, that way once and for all people would stop thinking that traffic enforcement is about the city getting $$ (they don't control enforcement activities, well maybe bylaws)...
Why do you think fines will solve the problems you mention? We probably differ with our opinions... as I tend to follow the Bill/Charter of RIGHTS insofar as we as people have a RIGHT to travel unhindered. Traffic court is a business that trades on the stock market as do the police depts. I could explain further but have been warned against posting the rights of the people that conflict with the HTA. You say that some police officers abuse their authority? I agree 100%.
When I grew up we were taught to fear the police, and out of that fear came respect.
Actually where I grew up we were taught to look for a PEACE officer to help us and protect us...but that is no longer the case, due to the fact that police have now become policy enforcement officers instead of peace officers.
I know there is a perception that we are all a bunch of heavy handed thugs, funny though, complaints of excessive use of force by police make up less than 0.2 percent of complaints against police. Assaults against police are statistically at an all time high.
Yes funny that isn't it ? I wonder if the fact that the complaints dept is situated WITHIN the actual police station itself causes people to doubt its neutrality ? Also when people are faced with judges that often side with police officers no matter what, I doubt that places much faith in a system that is somewhat bias in favour of police officers.
I think all people should be civilly suing any cop who steps out of the line of duty (which is to serve and protect them) and if this happened each time they breached their oath, they would soon smarten up and realise that they have rules to follow and they have a duty to protect.
Again I'm not here to point fingers but to hear objectively what the solution is.
It's easy as an officer to be complacent, to trust everyone, not to do your job, dodge traffic enforcement, no go looking for drug deals late at night, not to be in control of situations, to just soak up the abuse day after day, treat everyone like they're Mr. Rogers or Stuart Smalley...
We all know officers like that, I can show you where some of their graves are.
Yes we hear this a lot don't we...about officers putting their lives on line.... The fact is, being a police officer is not even in the top ten most dangerous jobs.Yet we never here anyone standing up for fishermen or miners in the way they do for cops Frankly, every call we go to is a gun call, every calm situation can get volatile in an instant...I've been to call where the abused wife calls 911 for help, you split them up and once you put the cuffs on him, she charges from the kitchen with a knife or a frying pan (the frying pan thing actually happened to me...not as funny as it sounds, there was hot oil in it.)
Yes I am sure there are such cases as you mention...just as there are cases where a son is beaten by a cop or a man tazered to death for not speaking English and not being understood.... I don't think these cases are that funny either... do you ? and there are many more of course...
Good honest citizens would marvel at why we do things the way we do...I expect most of your are, cause being a bad driver or getting a few tickets doesn't make someone a criminal or a bad person.
I personally believe that getting a ticket does not make you a bad driver... or traveller. Many tickets are false and I can vouch for that myself. People are not usually clear on their rights and this leads to them being easily ticketed and without recourse due to their lack of knowledge of their rights and how to interpret the real laws.
When you see what we see insofar as criminal gangs teaching their members how to act sweet around police to get our guard down, to shmooze in order to gain a tactical advantage...how many officers have been killed by not seeing it coming?
How many innocent victims have died or suffered abuse at the hands of those who are employed to protect them ? How many officers follow people and hunt them down after those people have dared to stand up for their rights?... I also understand people think police have to much power...so what's the solution? No police? More controls? My God we have more policies, legislation and rules than ever. Everybody and their dog has a video phone and news media of police impropriety on the other side of the planet can make the local news.
Yes police have been given too much '''assumed''' power in my opinion. I think once the job went from being peace officers to policy enforcement officers the whole system went into decline. You cannot serve two masters... ie./ Either peace officers protect and serve as was the original purpose for 'the people' asking for protection.... or we simply have policy enforcement officers and bring in martial law government overuling people... which is treason. How would you do the job?
There is not enough time for me to answer this question as I would like..and I would be banned from forum for my opinion. ( no free speech anymore) Yes we are armed, cause at any time our lives can be on the line.
Any one of our lives can be on the line at any time, yet the de facto government 'orders' us to be disarmed. I've heard comments that police have an unfair advantage...well "Hello! It's not a contest!" This is not a hockey fight. In the real world if you go down, the bad guy might finish you off, forever. So if we are arresting someone and they are turtling and laying on their arms, we can't assume he's just resisting...in an exercise at the police college, armed with a simunition (paintball gun), placed in that scenario, 24 of 27 officers who attempted to arrest that individual where shot first before they were able to react to realizing the accused was armed.
This is a big issue and I have many things I could say...but I cannot do that here.... all i will say is how many times has an officer fired shots into a residential neighbourhood and not been penalised for his dangerous and careless and deliberate action? Only recently 19 shots were fired in such a manner.... Tell Cst. Pham's widow he was one of those heavy handed cops...church going soccer coaching hero who's gun never made it out of the holster when he was struck in the neck by a high powered rifle round.
I belive the shooter knew this officer...and I am not privy to the full facts to make any determinations...but I do not hold with violence of any kind from police or otherwise. I've worked in this profession for 22 years, I've swear I've always felt I've been fair, but you hear too often how I wasn't. I reduce tickets and have the defendants come to court to fight the break? Makes you not want to give people breaks...especially when it happens often, but if you give someone a tickets then you should have given them a break...I used to write 72 hr notices, but too many times the next week they had the cars remoded back to illegal....
What do you mean back to illegal? Maybe you should look into whether the car was unlawful..as the two are very different... You as a peace/policy enforcement officer are trained to only see things from a legal/business perspective and I believe you lose sight of many things due to the requirements you are expected to reach to sustain your depts.
We actually know several officers and I have to say for the most part I am not all that impressed with the types that currently man the streets. I hope you are one of the better ones...because the people definitely need some of those !
Think we are cynical?
Maybe you should stop wasting all your energy complaining about police and sign up, then you can speak from a perspective of enlightenment.
Again there are 29,000 police in Ontario, if you are saying we are all the same, then maybe it's cause we need to be to survive.
I would not work as a peace officer for a corporation only for the people.
Yes, they pick aggressive assertive authoritarian types...what else would fit the job? We are mostly university / college educated, involved in our communities and trust me if we didn't care, there are others job that don't take you away from your family, friends and other loved ones every other weekend, too many nights to count and most Christmases and other holidays.
There are many many jobs that take you away from your families on a regular basis,,,including nights weekends and holidays. I myself have worked in such a profession.
Have I met a few bad apples? Sure. But we have multiple levels of police complaints system and a court system to make sure people get a fair deal. But the 99.9% of the officers I've worked with care a lot more about you than you will ever care about them.
I think people would really like to have more respect for those who are supposed to protect them, people would really love not to be harassed for things that are not unlawful. To be treated respectfully instead of a potential villain. To not be arbitrarily detained randomly at ride programs when they are going about their daily business.... the list goes on...but until people are treated as the masters and not the servants the situation will rapidly decline and freedom as we have known it, will be lost.