The best quasi cop show on TV

I have been absolutely addicted to watching “The Wire“. Its a TV show that used to be on HBO for 5 seasons. Its easily the most accurate (and wildly innaccurate) portrayal of cops on TV. Working in a harbour city, I could identify with a lot of the stuff on the show. Some parts of the show made me laugh so hard because it was so true!  It also follows an interesting concept of not just focusing on the police, but also drug dealers, politicians, courts, media, etc.

It’s First Degree Murder, not manslaughter. Ever.

Today, there was justice handed out in the trial for the man accused of killing NWT RCMP Constable Christopher Worden. I was astounded at first hearing of the beginning of the trial, when the accused tried to plead guilty to manslaughter for the murder, and still held that request throughout the trial. The accused’s lawyer was trying to say that although he shot Cst Worden 4 times, the third and fourth time were accidental and non-intentional during a struggle. NOONE should be able to plead guilty to manslaughter in the murder of a police officer. There should be no unintentional murder of a police officer, it just doesn’t compute. Anyone who kills a police officer, knows who they are and does so with intent.

In a final vindication for society, the NWT jury found Bulatci guilty of first degree murder in the death of Cst. Worden. As I read the headline, I thought, “thank god” as another attempt to set a precedent in a cop killing was rejected. Hopefully now, the family will have some closure.

Rest in peace Cst. Worden, your job is done.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2009/11/19/trial-mountie-verdict.html

Finally, an end to the sale on sentencing

A new law this week should bring to an end one of the more controversial aspects of sentencing in Canada.  For years now, judges were giving convicted criminals extra credit for the time they served in remand custody before their conviction.  In some cases where the criminal was kept in 23hr lockdown or triple bunked in a cell with other inmates during the pre-trial custody period, judges were giving them 3 for 1 credits on sentences once found guilty.  Thus, if someone was sentenced 3 years after their remand and spent a year in jail already, they could be set free by the judge.  This has lead to a whole host of problems, including overcrowded remand centres, delays in trials (due to the amount of people putting off trials for remand time) and a higher rate of remanded prisoners vs sentenced prisoners.

The change would ensure that criminals serve the sentences they obtain from the court despite their remand conditions.  Once this new law has the opportunity to work itself through the system, I think we should see a dramatic decrease in the amount of time between arrest and trial.  Prisoners will no longer decide to delay their trial to get credit for remand time, thus shortening the time between arrest and trial.  Strangely enough, this law was required to prevent prisoners from causing their own unreasonable delays in the trial process!

With policing, everything should be ‘premediated’

In closing arguments at the Braidwood Inquiry this past week, the lawyer for Poland suggested that the RCMP officers talked about using a taser before they arrived on scene to the incident. He called what they did a premediated action which resulted in excessive force.

What the lawyer fails to understand (even though he is an ex-police officer) is that it is vitally important to discuss with other officers your plans before you arrive on scene, especially for dangerous situations. If you are working with a partner, it is crucial to ensure that both officers understand what each other is thinking as they arrive on scene. For instance, “ok, if he does this, we’ll do this, etc. ok?” or “You take this side, I’ll take the other, if they exit, we’ll challenge them”. This communication protects the safety of the officers involved and often is a mental rehearsal or refresher for those attending of the safest way to approach a situation.

To say that talking about an incident before you get there is wrong creates an erroneous belief that we must be treating an incident like it is in court before police even attend (i.e. dont’ talk to other witnesses). In some serious situations, you don’t have the opportunity to have a huddle during the situation to figure out what you’re going to do next. You have to trust that the other officer is going to make the same decisions based on similar training or a pre-incident communication.

The four officers have taken lots of scrutiny during their testimony at the inquiry and it’s not my intention to add to that. However, when asked if they discussed using the taser before they arrived, they should have said “Yes. I discussed all options with my partners, including the most serious so we could be most prepared for the incident.” Of course in hindsight, we can say what should have been said, but all in all, officers should not be made to feel at fault for discussing and planning options for their courses of action before arriving on scene.

Other officer bloggers have similar thoughts…

Braidwood Recommendations

The Braidwood Inquiry is wrapping up in BC. For those that didn’t know, it is the inquiry into the taser death of a polish immigrant at the Vancouver Airport. A few months ago, the judge released some interim recommendations regarding taser use in Canada. Despite that the whole of the inquiry has been media sensationalized, there were some useful recommendations to come out of it.
http://www.braidwoodinquiry.ca/report/
One of the more useful recommendations is stricter standards on the use of tasers. In the recommendation, tasers should only be used in situations where bodily harm has been caused or is imminent. This would prevent the taser from being used in other circumstances (non cooperative people) which seems to develop the most public and media scrutiny. Police officers sometimes are their own worst enemy when it comes to decision making regarding the taser.

I do like how Braidwood acknowledges that the taser still has use in Canadian policing and that he also talks about how policing Canada’s streets is much different now than 30 years ago. Although critical of the nation’s police forces training, records keeping, rules of use and accountability regarding taser deployment, he still seems sympathetic to those who do the job and make decisions quickly to protect public safety.

I look forward to reading his final report. There do need to be changes in how the taser is used in Canadian policing. What is unfortunate is its villification by the media. I find it interesting that if someone is shot by the police and killed, it receives much less media attention than if someone dies after being tasered.
see: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2009/09/19/bc-fatal-police-shooting.html

Tasers unpopular? So what.

According to a recent news article, the old commish of the RCMP believes members shouldn’t use tasers.

Zaccardelli, how long has it been since you’ve been on the street? Obviously, he hasn’t worked the street in a long time — to say that for political reasons, we should get rid of a tool on the officer’s belt.  Perhaps we should ban handguns too, as what they do isn’t popular in the media.  Lets make officers duke it out with offenders without any tools other than a big billy club, just like the old days.  Zaccardelli, you’re retired.  Stop pulling down the membership with more decisions based on politics rather than practicality.  Tasers save more lives than they take and when used properly, are an integral tool to police the street.

Since when did politics and perception override officer safety?

Tropical Rain

A recent storm brought us some flooding.  It actually wasn’t all that busy for us at first, but once the weather cleared up it got quite hectic as everyone came out to see.

Needless to say, responding to calls was interesting to say the least.  We coulda used a boat in some places.

What an incredibly dangerous precedent

I’d have to say I’m a bit concerned with a recent decision in Quebec by a jury in what USED to be a capital murder offence. The case was the trial of a man for killing a police officer during a botched drug raid. Two officers were actually shot in the raid by this man, one died. The accused was charged with 1st degree murder, attempted murder, and drugs and weapons charges. With last weeks decision, all were acquittals or dropped by the crown. Upon hearing this on the radio, my mouth also dropped in shock. Here we have a dead officer, a maimed officer and the general public and police community in shock at the verdict.

What was it? Well, from media accounts, it was a dynamic entry of a SWAT team into a house executing a search warrant. In a dynamic entry, no announcement is made by the entry officers. Sometimes explosive or distractionary devices are used to surprise any occupants and prevent them from destroying evidence or escaping before an arrest can be made.

In this case, upon entry, the officers were faced with gunfire from the drug dealing occupant. In the trial, the defence argued that the defendant did not know the entry officers were police, thinking he was being robbed of his drugs and shot the officers as a result. The jury BELIEVED this argument and acquitted him of murder. Also, the trial judge ruled in camera that the search warrant was not valid. This however was not revealed to the jurors, who decided on their own. This decision sets an incredible precedent to any criminal — indicating they can shoot anyone entering their home, including police. I just don’t buy the argument that the accused did not realize the person entering his home was an officer until after he was on the ground, that is incredible. Also what is incredible, is that this man survived the ensuing entry team. I’m surprised there wasn’t just a fatality inquiry rather than a trial for this cop-killer.

To the crown, please please please appeal this case to the Supreme Court of Canada. We need to vindicate justice, if at least for the sake of the officer’s family. No one should be allowed to shoot a cop in ANY circumstance.

Hiatus

I apologize for the lack of posts lately as things have been relatively busy.  I recently moved my family across the country, to join a different police service for reasons of being closer to home.  It was a big leap to make after being settled in one job, city and lifestyle, only to start a job with a new organization, sell a house (well, not yet) and move everything you own 5,000 kilometres.

The new employer is great.  One good thing I realized before I left my last job was that policing is the same everywhere, just a bit bigger or smaller depending on where you find yourself.  Each place has the same type of calls, same type of people (perhaps with different accents), but generally, its the same.   So, in moving, I understood this and was able to handle the transition.  Of course, in every department, the paper work and surroundings are different — so I’m still getting used to that.  So here’s to the same career in a new place!

Its not about race, its about criminality.

Between the 1960s and 1970s, Jerome Skolnick wrote a couple of seminal books that have shaped sociological theories on policing. Skolnick’s theories were based upon field studies of American police officers. His recent work has focused on corruption, abuse of authority and excessive force — while his early work talked about the police culture and the daily work of police officers. I studied these theories as part of my academic studies and saw some of them play out in my own research while watching from an outsider’s perspective. More and more though, now that I’ve been doing police work for a few years, I’ve realized that the theory of symbolic assailant may have been applicable in the 1960s, but it now needs a bit of updating.

The best way to describe Skolnick’s symbolic assailant theory was: how officers associate a minority as a criminal. In Skolnick’s studies, he found that officers were more likely to single out a minority male as an offender (of some crime). However, from an updated perspective, I feel the symbolic assailant is now actually about characteristics and behavior. More simply, how officers find criminals and how officers categorize them for attention or future references. This translates into what police officers develop as a ‘mental shorthand’ or characteristic of those people that most relate to criminal activity. This is not to say that racism is absent from all policing, however, with the current standards of what’s acceptable in our society and Canadian culture, racism occurs at significantly lower amount than previously studied.

How does today’s symbolic assailant manifest itself? Whether by appearance, clothing or behavior, officers can identify criminal people from the rest of the citizenry. Although much different than other theories such as phrenology, I’ve found that officers do have a sense of ‘what a criminal looks like’ and develop cues based on their past experiences or clues learned from colleagues. These clues then make up part of an officer’s on-going investigative activities, basically how they look for ‘trouble’ in daily patrol. For instance, police officers often look for the people that stand-out amongst the regular public. Things such as dirty clothing, disheveled appearance may indicate someone who is living on the street. From there, inferences can be drawn from past experience that homeless people usually have some sort of substance abuse problems, which they turn to criminal activities such as minor thefts, frauds, etc, to provide for these addictions. Another inference may be drawn from someone with similar disheveled appearance with an over-abundance of tattoos, the sign of a rounder at local jails. All of these calculations are made over time through experience, but also occur in an instant — especially when confronting the particular person that has drawn your attention. I think it’s also important to make clear that identifying the symbolic assailant in my context does not involve a ‘race’ consideration. Although that may have been the case in the 1960s, nowadays, I would argue it is the characteristics of criminality that stand out to a police officer.

Moving away from people, the same inference can be drawn to cars for example. Police officers know that criminals use a variety of cars to do their criminal deeds. The wide majority of ‘crime vehicles’ usually fall into three categories: the shitbox, the stolen car and the gangster’s wheels. Each of these have their own characteristic giveaways, such as to name a few: the shitbox – rusted to the bone, plate falling off, parts not functioning; the stolen car – (sadly so obvious) 4 young adults in a Honda or Dodge product late at night; the gangster car – shiny wheels, jacked up, souped up engine, etc. All of these vehicles usually draw the attention of a police officer, whether the vehicle is stopped or checked — the clues are there for further investigation.

Sometimes, there are exceptions to an officer’s ‘symbolic assailant’. But, despite the outliers, with good learned investigative skills, having a good sense of what a criminal looks like can give you opportunities for good police work.

On the other end of the scale, I have heard about some departments where the symbolic assailant theory has been taken to a whole new level due to human rights complaints. In one department, contact slips must be completed with ALL encounters with the public, in order to disprove any potential complaints that officers are only targeting one specific minority group. This is obviously an extreme case of risk management on the part of the department.

In the climate of more and more charter of rights violation decisions, officers must articulate correctly their reasons for stopping to talk to someone, both to the court and the individual. Cops are excellent observers of criminal activity, lets make sure that we demonstrate that to the public.