Decades and decades later the police are still covering up for their own again and again but the police are not the only bad professionals who do this these days as well, so do the Hospitals, doctors, nurses, civil and public servants, governments…
Royal Canadian Mounted Police Told Not To Aim Tasers At Heart, Chest AHN -Taser International advised the Royal Canadian Mounted Police not to aim their electronic stun guns at the heart and chest due to links of the weapon hit with cardiac arrest. Instead of the two body parts, the Mounties were advised to taser their targets on their abdomen, legs or back. RCMP officer safety committee chairman Scott Warren expressed surprise at the Taser International’s advice because it decreases their target zone. It also warned the Mounties to avoid using the Taser when their target is on elevated platforms or other places where a fall could result to more injuries.
At the risk being blacklisted or visited by the police, I would like to voice my grave concern over RCMP investigations of friends and acquaintances of peaceful opponents to the Vancouver Olympics. I am particular disturbed by B.C. Attorney General Kash Heed saying the RCMP has a duty to “check out” the information they get. Since when do people who disagree with a government policy automatically need to be investigated? I fail to see the line of reasoning that starts from dissent and leads through to security threat. And more importantly, should the country’s police forces have the arbitrary right to make that equation? Will authorities one day place under surveillance anyone opposed to the federal budget or the war in Afghanistan, or the RCMP’s handling of the Dziekanski affair? This already happened in the U.S. when J. Edgar Hoover was FBI chief. Canada is on a very slippery slope here and the public needs to be vigilant. Fred Sengmueller, Toronto http://www.thestar.com/comment/article/708813
Anti-Olympic signs could mean jail: rights group.. A proposed B.C. law would allow municipal officials to enter homes to seize unauthorized and possibly anti-Olympic signs on short notice, civil libertarians say. Violators could be fined up to $10,000 a day and jailed up to six months, the B.C. Civil Liberties Association said Friday. The proposed law was introduced Thursday as a bill to amend the Municipalities Enabling and Validating Act. The government said in a statement that the changes will “provide the municipalities of Vancouver, Richmond and Whistler with temporary enforcement powers to enable them to swiftly remove illegal signs and graffiti during the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.” “Telling people who exercise free speech that local authorities may barge in, rip down signs inside your property, fine you or throw you in jail will underscore the growing impression that our governments care more about their own camera appearances at Olympic events than about people’s rights,” The B.C. Civil Liberties Association earlier this week, the association helped two anti-Olympics activists launch a legal challenge of Vancouver’s 2010 Olympics bylaw in B.C. Supreme Court, claiming it was an unconstitutional restriction on free speech. Wow, this is Canada? Welcome to the People’s Republic of Canada. Welcome to Canada: Where our Government doesn’t want us to have free speech either! Does anyone still believe we live in a democracy? Yet another reason to totally dislike the Olympics. Now it turns any city in infects into a fascist dictatorship. What about democracy and our rights to demonstrate when we do not agree with the government. This law is a total disregard for human rights. What is the government afraid of? Police state is getting closer. I think I finally understand the reason some are anti-Olympics. This is truly disgusting. http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2009/10/09/bc-anti-olympic-sign-law-bccla.html
Olympic security follows protester’s friend, A Langara College student says she was shocked to be approached outside class by Olympic security officers and questioned about her friendship with a high-profile opponent of the 2010 Winter Games. Danika Surm says she has nothing to do with the Olympic resistance movement, and her only connection is a friendship with protester and UBC professor Chris Shaw. Surm said she was on her way to class at the south Vancouver campus last week when she was approached by two plainclothes police officers with the Integrated Security Unit, the force in charge of Olympic security. Opponents of the Games have been complaining for months that they and their families, friends and employers are being harassed and intimidated by the security unit. We complained about human rights and lack of democracy in China, and seem to trying to perpetuate that condition here in our own country. It is not a crime to oppose the Olympics, and it is not a crime to protest them either. Freedom of speech is a right in this country. Now we have “Olympic security officers” harassing citizens. What is this, the Soviet Union ? People died for opposing the Nazis and other regimes, helping put in place the laws of free speech which are now being trampled! Do not go down this slippery slope! Do not let our rights erode away! http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2009/10/06/bc-olympic-security-protester-surveillance.html
It will also be interesting to see what becomes of a Halifax Police Department probe into last winter’s shooting of a Wagmatcook man by an RCMP officer. John Simon was shot dead at his home by the Mountie after a 911 call from a family member. The family and Wagmatcook officials have serious concerns with the way the RCMP handled the situation. Indeed, the band is now attempting to have its policing handled by the Cape Breton Regional Police as a result of the incident last December.. The RCMP says its report on the force’s investigation into the shooting has been handed over to the Crown. The Crown says Halifax police continue thier investigation. There are calls for a public inquiry into the shooting. http://www.halifaxnewsnet.ca/index.cfm?sid=293866&sc=612
New police complaints office fails to address cops investigating cops: critics Mon Oct 19, 9:58 PM TORONTO – Ontario’s new civilian agency to deal with police complaints fails to fully address the key problem of police investigating their own, critics said Monday. Police investigating themselves tends to be merely masturbation again and not real justice..
Protecting confidential sources Lawyers Weekly - A journalist is jailed or fined tens of thousands of dollars. The offence? Promising to protect a confidential source. In May, the Supreme Court heard the National Post’s bid to protect a source behind reporter Andrew McIntosh’s “Shawinigate” investigation into federal loans and grants to businesses in the Quebec riding of former prime minister Jean Chrétien. A ruling could come this fall. The McIntosh case has been before the courts since 2002, when the RCMP tried to seize a leaked bank document that suggested Chrétien personally benefited from a loan to a Shawinigan hotel he once owned. The document came from a source McIntosh had promised to protect, but police want to test it for fingerprints and traces of DNA that could identify the leaker. The Post challenged the warrant and won at the trial level. In 2004, Justice Mary Lou Benotto of the Ontario Superior Court described confidential sources as “essential to the effective functioning of the media in a free and democratic society,” and she ruled this particular source should be protected, not exposed (R. v. The National Post et al., [2004] O.J. No. 178). Ontario’s Court of Appeal disagreed and, in 2008, ordered the Post to hand over the document (R. v. The National Post, [2008] O.J. No. 744). The court accepted, as did Benotto, that gathering and disseminating information “without undue state interference is an integral component” of the Charter right of freedom of the press. And in some cases, the courts will recognize the journalist-source relationship as privileged.
Police and security chiefs ARE NOW able to scour the contents of every email and internet phone call sent in Britain. The program, known as Deep Packet Inspection, also gives them the ability to eavesdrop on phone calls made over the internet. The proposals, revealed by Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, come amid increasing evidence that terror groups such as those in the Mumbai attacks are using internet telephones to avoid telephone taps on landline and mobile phones. NOW I HAVE NOTHING TO HIDE, but I do rightfully object to a police state and the political watchdogs being used by any of the perverse, crooked politicians to watch over any of their rightful opponents, At least they should get a court order from a judge stating the reason for their search now too and next also their actual findings..
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