Juno News - Let the cops do their jobs

00:00:00.000 We seem to have an increasing problem here in Canada where we're not willing to

00:00:09.360 let police do their job and communities are starting to suffer. You know it was

00:00:14.040 funny during the blockade crisis Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stepped forward

00:00:17.440 and said the politicians do not direct the police directly on what to do and

00:00:22.120 so forth with law enforcement matters. You go okay yeah I take your point I'm

00:00:25.880 glad we don't live in a country like that where you can personally intervene

00:00:29.400 and say go get this guy although there is an argument to be made that the Prime

00:00:33.300 Minister did just that in the Mark Norman affair but I digress. So yes the

00:00:38.040 politicians should not be doing that but what about the politicians telling

00:00:41.860 police don't do your job should they be doing that as well because we have been

00:00:45.900 seeing a whole lot of that of late. Now it can be argued that Justin Trudeau by

00:00:50.280 being really reticent about calling for the enforcement of law during these

00:00:54.000 blockades and calling for things like dialogue in the face of all of this

00:00:58.380 lawlessness that he was de facto telling police don't do your job until he changed

00:01:03.180 his tune and then waded in and said okay now you can do your job. That did seem

00:01:07.260 to be him basically admitting that yes he had been telling them to hold off. Lots of

00:01:12.900 frustrations for a number of Toronto police officers, a number of police

00:01:16.700 officers and forces across the country as they watch all of this mixed messaging

00:01:21.060 come down the pipes. Toronto in particular has a lot of problems with this

00:01:24.540 because for years now there's been this narrative that police are

00:01:27.980 discriminatory towards this group of people and that group of people and this

00:01:31.440 thing they're doing is wrong and that thing that they're doing is wrong and

00:01:34.140 they don't have a lot of people standing up for them. Now in some cases we have

00:01:37.540 particular officers who are doing bad things and they should face the

00:01:41.740 repercussions for it. They should not be doing those things so by all means

00:01:44.820 criticize them for that and police should be held to account and police

00:01:48.780 services boards should be representative of the people and they should

00:01:52.100 feel that yes the police work for us the police answer to us but the police

00:01:56.240 also work for all those law-abiding citizens out there who want to see the

00:02:00.320 laws enforced and I think that they are basically the silent majority out there

00:02:05.300 and politicians need to draw back from all these instant knee-jerk 1.00

00:02:09.560 criticisms of police that lead to a phenomenon known as de-policing where

00:02:14.780 police pretty much no longer feel that they can or should or are empowered to go

00:02:18.800 out and do their basic jobs. A lot of police have come forward and they've

00:02:22.760 spoken to me and my colleagues over the years about their frustrations with all

00:02:26.720 of this. Case in point a flashpoint that happened in downtown Toronto there was a

00:02:30.200 video that went viral of an altercation between Toronto transit enforcement

00:02:35.760 officers so sort of delegated cops who police public transit and one guy who was

00:02:40.880 seated on a bench on a streetcar. It was like a 12 second clip 12-15 seconds and

00:02:45.560 all the video showed was the police and this guy in a bit of a rumble he was

00:02:49.580 kind of there on the seat and they were wrestling him and pounded him and he was

00:02:53.660 pounding them back and so forth. What was going on here? We don't know we can't tell

00:02:57.260 you because there's no context there was not a lot of before there's not a lot of

00:03:01.040 after there was nothing. Aha but that did not stop a number of Toronto

00:03:05.120 councillors of course from wading in and saying this is wrong they shouldn't be

00:03:09.720 doing this training needs to be like this and hiring needs to be like that I don't

00:03:14.000 know how they can come to those conclusions after watching a 15 second

00:03:17.540 video. Now the mayor Toronto mayor John Tory who has been soft on a lot of these

00:03:21.600 things of light to his credit he acknowledged that hey this is something

00:03:25.400 where we don't have the full context so he was a little reluctant to do the sort

00:03:30.280 of progressive pylon which unfortunately he is doing way too often now when it

00:03:35.380 comes to a number of issues. Now later on that man was actually charged the man on

00:03:40.000 the streets car so clearly the broader video evidence because they have video

00:03:44.140 cameras on those street cars not just what the guy was filming that went viral

00:03:47.860 that showed a different story and the man was charged but think of those officers

00:03:52.180 who really felt the heat in all of that think of the people up the ranks who they

00:03:56.380 reported to how they would feel the heat on all of that the police board and the

00:04:00.100 police chief and so forth all because a lot of politicians and a lot of

00:04:04.480 activists are goading people into criticizing the police pretty much any

00:04:09.460 time they do their job so we're now in a situation where there's lawlessness

00:04:13.360 prevailing around our cities really frustrating to see this 14 year old boy

00:04:18.220 who was abducted in Toronto the other day on Thursday now thankfully he had been

00:04:23.380 found but there's this there's this impression this feeling that a lot of

00:04:26.740 people have particularly in the Toronto area that it's now the thugs and the

00:04:30.940 criminals who run the city and not the police I remember a piece from 2016 by

00:04:36.280 Joe Warmington where he was telling a story about how in downtown Kensington

00:04:40.360 Market very trendy area of Toronto there were these teenage gangsters they were

00:04:44.980 armed they had firearms they were walking around robbing people in broad

00:04:48.580 daylight with their weapons the police went to confront them these guys didn't

00:04:52.000 run they laughed at the cops they taunted them and they said guess you guys

00:04:55.000 didn't get the memo you actually don't control us anymore there's nothing you can do

00:04:59.020 you can't stop us the brazenness of this you know these kids were basically

00:05:03.700 picking up on what they'd heard in the media from politicians of chastising and

00:05:08.260 shaming the police and telling them there's a whole bunch of things they

00:05:10.660 can't do anymore now the cops said they could sorry that's not how it works and

00:05:14.200 they stopped them they arrested them and they took away their guns thank heavens

00:05:17.780 but we have a problem if that attitude is the one that's permeating right now a

00:05:21.880 lot of lawlessness out there right now Alberta released a report on the safe

00:05:26.180 injection sites that they're dealing with in their cities and part of the report

00:05:30.180 said unbelievably that in the Calgary sites part of the problem that they

00:05:33.920 have there because there's obviously a lot of lawlessness that proliferates

00:05:36.800 around these drug sites is that some of the workers at the facilities some of the

00:05:41.300 employees paid for by your tax dollars are also dealing drugs and the other

00:05:46.400 employees are okay with it they encourage them to do that now I'm sure you can

00:05:50.480 find me some sort of social justice master student to come on and tell me why

00:05:54.860 that's okay and that's actually true justice so forth but most of us look at

00:05:59.060 that and understand why that is absolutely totally ridiculous even if

00:06:03.420 you were full-on with the harm reduction agenda the employee should not be the one

00:06:07.640 dealing but if this made its way into a report I think that's what that tells us

00:06:12.100 is that a whole lot of people know this is going on the site workers the police

00:06:17.140 people throughout this whole harm reduction industry are well aware that they

00:06:20.580 have stuff like that going on and people are not saying we need to shut that down and

00:06:24.620 in fact police know and this is what that Alberta report said as well that they

00:06:29.060 are not welcome in these communities they are pushed away from the broader

00:06:32.900 communities where there are these harm reduction sites where are these drug

00:06:36.680 sites very alarming to see in so many different situations we're sending

00:06:42.000 signals to the police to not do their job it's not fair to them these mixed 1.00

00:06:46.340 signals and most of all it's not fair to victims of crime and it's not fair to

00:06:50.300 the regular good people of all walks of life walking the streets of our country

Juno News - March 07, 2020

Let the cops do their jobs

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