Juno News - Police officers deserve our respect

00:00:00.000 We're seeing more and more of a pushback of this anti-police narrative that's taking place

00:00:09.560 all across North America. It was interesting to see that the city of Toronto, after councillors

00:00:14.080 put forward a proposal to defund the police, it was only by 10%, that actually was nixed.

00:00:19.720 Two-thirds of council did not support that proposal, so that's interesting to see. We've

00:00:24.680 also seen a former deputy commissioner of the RCMP write an open letter denouncing Prime

00:00:29.760 Minister Justin Trudeau for taking a knee at that protest, saying it was humiliating, and

00:00:34.600 he pointed out, hey, we were actually protecting you since you were a baby, because of course

00:00:39.220 Justin Trudeau, he was born in 24 Sussex Drive when Pierre Elliott Trudeau and Margaret Trudeau

00:00:44.000 were living there, and the cops say, the Mounties say, we've been protecting you your entire

00:00:48.300 life, and you want to say that there's some serious problems with us? We don't take too

00:00:52.680 kindly to that. But here's some interesting facts coming out of New York right now that

00:00:57.080 suggest this is not just about a conversation being had on social media, this is having real

00:01:02.720 world impacts. NYPD has had to stop receiving applications for retirement after a 400% surge

00:01:11.560 in retirement applications just in the other week. Yes, way more NYPD officers are saying,

00:01:16.780 you know what, why do this job? Let's get out while we still can. One of the top reasons

00:01:21.460 they cited for getting out of there, lack of respect. Basically, the job has become one where

00:01:26.500 you don't get respected by really anybody out there, by the public, and not by the politicians

00:01:31.680 and the people on the police services board. And I guess that's the thing that's frustrating them

00:01:35.840 so much. If they go out and they do their job, pretty much willing to risk their lives every day,

00:01:41.120 they're still going to get incredible criticism from politicians out there in ways that they think

00:01:46.180 are unfair. Look, I'm an advocate for holding police to accountability. I'm a supporter of the

00:01:50.820 boys in blue. But at the same time, they're still public servants. They answer to us. We pay their

00:01:55.220 salaries. We pay the bills for all the police. So I never liked the idea that we just sort of have to

00:02:00.180 do what the police say, give them endless amounts of money and so forth. Big fan of people holding them

00:02:05.440 to account. And by all means, if there's an incident of police brutality, and we've seen a number of

00:02:09.480 them, let's crack down on that. And a lot of police say we want those things to be cracked down on as

00:02:14.280 well, because we know that those incidents do not speak for the vast majority of us. But if you make

00:02:19.800 statements, if you do activism, that does besmirch all of them, the vast majority of them, the entire

00:02:25.460 organization, you shouldn't be surprised when you see some of them saying, all right, we're done with

00:02:30.420 this. And what message does that also send in terms of our ability to get good people to join police

00:02:35.960 forces all across North America? We should be attracting good people right now and sending the signal

00:02:41.420 that this is a job that politicians and the community will respect and that they will get the

00:02:47.320 respect that is deserved for doing the good job. Right now, I guess they feel like they're damned if

00:02:51.680 they do, damned if they don't. And that's why so many of them are bailing out.

Juno News - July 12, 2020