Re: Formal complaint #05-13728 from David Piney (witness of
police aggression suffered by Jason Harry).
Sorry to take so long documenting the details of my complaint Rhys: time is
becoming scarcer for me.
On March 30/05, around noon, I'd just left Spectrum employment center and seen
Jason benignly waiting for the light in order to cross Douglas at Johnson --along
with approximately six other nondescript pedestrians-- when two cops approached
him from behind shouting at him. They grabbed his arm aggressively but Jason
remained benign and wholly surrendered to them. Even so, the cops seemed to
increase their aggression, yelling at him to get to the ground while they tried
to wrestle him down by pulling his legs out from under him as he leaned against
the wall they had forced him into. It took them a few minutes, and the
grotesqueness that struck me most was the benign demeanor of Jason throughout
it all, which made the cops' aggression seem clearly uncalled for. Their
hostility seemed even more out of place when I tried to provide my contact
information to them or to Jason as a concerned witness, and they responded to
me by bitterly driving me away, implying that I'd be next. I could see no badge
name or number on either cop, but one finally responded to my inquiry and told
me he was badge #6.
I immediately called the station to complain from the employment center 60
seconds away, and Keith Lidner said he'd visit the
cells and provide Jason with my contact information when he arrived. When I
called him back later in the day he told me that he'd visited the cells and
"delivered my message", thus implying he'd fulfilled this crucial
responsibility. When I told him I'd seen Jason by fortuitous coincidence just
after he was released and he hadn't been given my contact information, Keith
mumbled it must have been someone else that he visited. Later he said Jason was released before he
got there.
I’ve since found out that Jason had cussed the cops earlier
and they had followed him and responded with punitive coercion (an ageless and
simplistic ol’ boy tactic which the Just Society knew
to be inherently problematic and thus remedied with the enshrined principles of
As for Jason’s swearing at the cops: It’s been my experience generally that if someone swore at someone else they usually deserve it. And the human right to cry out against injustice cannot be suppressed without complicated social consequences (unduly exceeding the simple effort and tolerance needed to hear out the complainant with due respect). Further, I think it’s a benchmark of the competence of today’s leadership in a world that accepts so many serious behavioral wrongs and yet which arbitrarily outlaws simple words as intolerably bad. It’s a fact of life that impassioned colloquial expression from the little people of this culture is often expressed a cuss. So what! It’s wholly benign, and usually meaningless. What’s really gross to me is the fact that Jason was brutalized for simply (benignly) expressing himself. And in my experience, the odds are that his impassioned complaint was probably justified.
I am often criticized for adding these philosophical summaries to my rants. But I realize there are people of conscience out there who truly are trying to do the right thing in life (which is often difficult to determine) and thus it’s for their benefit in pursuit of social solutions that I offer my rational.
Since I believe the only real solution to the curse of crime and human predation is to engender an intrinsic concern for the well being of each other in the heart of humanity, I naturally see the paramilitary basis of today’s policing services as inherently problematic. Its resort to raw expediency as an operational policy, naturally engenders propensities which contradict principles that are crucial for equitable human relations --which continues to author legions of victims. Since police are one of the few visible representatives of society itself on a day-by-day basis, the trickle down effect of their social example and operating standards inevitably normalizes more of the same in the public generally. This simple fact has far too little priority with today’s policy makers.
Thus I believe society’s most important interface with the public should be from more exemplary institutions, such as search and rescue teams that could be geared up to handle policing duties. Instead of patrol cars and paramilitary officers armed with guns and clubs and a shoot-to-kill raw expediency, search and rescue teams could respond to emergencies unarmed with specialized work trucks filled with needed tools. Their non intrusive posture, puncture proof clothing and hidden defensive mechanisms would exemplify their public mandate (which is not primarily for enforcement, but for professional intervention in order to personally encourage our people in an exemplary fashion to do the right thing in life) and thus to make people feel guilty for primitive conduct. It would be the mandate of the publicly invisible and last resort SWAT team backup to fulfill the enforcement duties --a function which inevitably will decline under the heightened encouragement of social standards that a policy of exemplary leadership would provide.
A transition from today’s model could be achieved by simply offering the public an experimental choice between these two styles of policing services. Thus by the public dialing 912 instead of 911 for example, a wholly exemplary search and rescue type team would be dispatched, representing holistic intervention strategies (which a consensus of psychologists have long espoused as the only real solution to our culture’s continuing fostering of crime). And if these search and rescue teams were funded by police budgets the existing policing system would automatically decline with their increasing popularity. Thus offering a wholly democratic mechanism to both prove the practical viability of the search and rescue team’s functionality, and at the same time efficiently downsize the current system to little more than SWAT team backups –a function which couldn’t ordinarily occur under foreseeable circumstances.
In fact I believe the continuation of the current system has more to do with the absence of an effective transition mechanism than anything else. We’ve simply inherited today’s justice system from the warrior aristocracy of old, and have continued in its traditions in spite of the grotesque injustices that are endemic with the ethos. Humanity deserves better. But unless we can establish an exemplary system we can all trust to do the right thing, there will be no hope for developing the inherent human standards needed, and the primacy of the self interest ethos from our animal kingdom roots will continue its scourge, along with the human predator that it inevitably fosters.
I hope you agree, and find this effort helpful.
David Piney.
The Police Complaint Commissioner dismissed my witnessing of a police assault upon a homeless man, Jason Harry, because I don’t have a witness. The fact that contact information for Jason was never provided to me (which formed the basis of my original complaint) was conveniently ignored –thus I have no way of knowing if they approached Jason helpfully, coercively, or not at all for his response to this complaint. I must admit, in my considerable experience with the system this is a typical police response, and the sophistry practiced in the below reply by the Police Complaints Commission is offensive to me in its simplistic self serving primacy.
David.
***************************
Semptember 2nd 2005
Mr. David Piney
General
Delivery
V8W 2L9 Re:
OPCC file 2804 - DA file V05-35
Dear Mr. Piney:
This letter is
being written in response to your request that the Office of the Police
Complaint Commissioner review your complaint against Constables Cowan and Gubbins, both members of the Victoria Police Department.
Your complaint, originally received at the Office of the Police Complaint
Commissioner on
l have
now had an opportunity to review the complete Victoria Police Department
Internal investigation file into your complaint. The file contained statements
from both respondent officers, copies of police notes, miscellaneous internal
e-mails, CPIC records, a further e-mailed statement from you and a "will
say'' from Sergeant Lindner, an interval investigator with the Victoria Police
Department.
Following my
review of the file material, l am satisfied with the
decision of the Victoria Police Department to dismiss your complaint against
Constable Cowan and Gubbins. There were no
independent witnesses to Mr. Harry's arrest and Mr. Harry himself was not
interested in providing any information to the police about the incident. There
is nothing in the tile material to support your statement that Mr. Harry's
arrest was either "unwarranted'' or ruthless''. l believe the detailed
letter from Chief Constable Battershill dated July 7
, 2005 has more than adequately dealt
with the public trust issues outlined in your complaint.
Your
public-spirited suggestions on how to solve the "curse of crime and human
predation", while interesting and l am sure well intended, would not, in
my opinion, be the solution to the many faceted problems faced by police
officer's in today's society. Although perhaps an extreme example, one only has
to take a look at what happened in New Orleans in the few days following the
recent disaster in that city. Unarmed
search and rescue teams were being assaulted in the streets and medical
evacuation helicopters were being shot at and assaulted by armed citizens of
that city. Although there are instances
of some police officers abusing their authority, there are, from my experience
and observations, many more instances of compassionate and caring police
officers going out of their way to assist some of the less fortunate members of
our society. Even though your complaint against the Victoria Police Department
was not substantiated l believe it is important that individuals who have
concerns about police conduct do report those concerns. Thank you for taking
the time to request this review by the OPCC.
I concur with
the decision of the Discipline Authority to dismiss your complaint. Our tile
will be closed and the OPCC will take no further action.
Yours truly, 
Bruce M. Brown
Senior
Investigative Analyst
cc Sergeant R. Wickes
cc Constable S.
Kowan
cc Constable B. Gubbins
OFFICE of the
Police Complaint Commission
Senior
Investigative Analyst Bruce M. Brown,
Mailing
Address:
Tel: (250) 387-5212 Toll Free 1-800-663-2421