G20 cop charged by SIU

So the SIU has finally, reluctantly, charged a Toronto cop with assault, mostly because they were forced to by screaming Toronto Star headlines.

Anybody who's worked for a big bureaucracy like the police, or the civil service, or the teaching profession, knows that the ranks of these workers are not filled with mavericks eager to defy their bosses wishes.

Rather, they are filled with people who got into these nice secure government jobs by knowing how to play the game, and going for advancement by knowing how to play the game, and that means when the big boss suggests that you jump, you jump!

So when you see that hundreds of G20 cops were deliberately hiding their ID badges, or deliberately assaulting people, or deliberately carrying out strip searches for no reason, and deliberately keeping people in detention without access to phones, with handcuffs left on even though they were locked up in cages--- well, you can bet your bottom dollar that someone high up was giving the frontline cops a message---"These G20 protesters are assholes, and you are hereby encouraged to teach them a lesson they won't forget! And don't worry about being punished--- society is going to thank you!"

That "somebody" who was giving out the message sure seems to have been Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair, who has been caught lying three times in support of his anti-protester attitude.

1) He asserted that cops could arrest anybody who came within 5 meters of a security fence--- not so!

2) He tried to pretend that weapons on display at his news conference had been confiscated from G20 protesters--- not so!

3) He tried to call Adam Nobody a "dangerous, armed criminal"--- not so!

And those are just the lies that the public knows about--- how many others are there?

It would be really, really interesting if a Freedom of Information request could reveal exactly what kind of leadership Blair was providing in June, 2010.

If you want to see a list of principles for which Blair decided to pointedly show contempt, I would invite you to go read the Toronto Police's website to read their Mission Statement, or better still, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom.

It would be really, really instructive to see Chief Blair and his fellow cops treated exactly the way they treated others in June, 2010: innocent and guilty cops alike brutally rounded up, thrown in cages and kept there for 24 or 36 or 72 hours without access to phones...  kept handcuffed in groups of 40 or more while people walked by and swore at them and denied them food or water... and then, shazam! Just released without any charges, and told to leave!

Yes, I'd really, really like to see how the cops would react to a taste of their own medicine. But that's about as likely to happen as to see George W. Bush in an orange jumpsuit in a courtroom and the ICC in the Hague.

But, hey, I tell you what--- if I ever live to see either of those things, here's one cynical old atheist who will fall to his knees and sing hymns of praise to God Almighty!