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BLACK-SHEEP COMMENTARIES THE POLICE ARE THE PUBLIC KUDOS to councillors of the District of North Vancouver, for deciding to convene a public meeting on community policing. Their decision was sparked by the use of a Taser at the Deep Cove Daze outdoor festival on Sunday, Aug. 28, 2005 and allegations, as reported by the North Shore News, “brought to council on the following Monday by more than a dozen district residents that officers used excessive force by employing a Taser to deal with an intoxicated 21-year-old man, Peter Giezen.”
As understanding I try be over the dangers that confront police, I am nevertheless deeply troubled by too many incidents in British Columbia over the past few years that involve allegations against police officers of excessive force, including the use of Tasers and firearms, to end violent confrontations.
After the Giezen incident Supt. Gord Tomlinson of the North Vancouver RCMP attempted to downplay the use of the Taser. According to the News, Tomlinson said “It’s like pepper spray or a baton, just another tool in our toolbox to control unruly persons. It’s not dangerous. That’s media scare.”
So far as I’m concerned, Tomlinson is being disingenuous. With Giezen in the grip of four officers the Taser should have been left in the make-believe RCMP toolbox.
Moreover a News editorial on Aug. 31 concerning the Deep Cove Daze incident stated “ …witnesses who have spoken to us are unanimous that the young man was already subdued by those four officers when he was Tasered. The act smacks of punishment, not control to us. And that is simply wrong.”
And onetime district councillor and former Vancouver police officer, Doug McKay-Dunn said, “This meeting is timely, specifically with the recent Deep Cove incident. Police have to feel like part of our community and play a positive role.”
I hope that councillors of the City of North Vancouver and the District of West Vancouver will recognize that there is a pressing need to involve all North Shore residents in a public debate on what seems to be an inexorable trend, in appearance, attitude and the use of force, to quasi-military policing.
If I am right about a drift to quasi-military policing it will be the end of the original purpose of the use of standing police forces as surrogates of the public at large and the beginning of their use as agents of government.
I believe there is an historical connection between Canadian police and the first-ever English standing police force.
The man who began the whole process was home secretary Sir Robert Peel who characterized the relationship of a standing police force with its fellow citizens in one enduring truth: “The police are the public and the public are the police.”
In 1829, England’s parliament, spurred on by Peel, passed the Metropolitan Police Act, its jurisdiction being limited to Metropolitan London. The enactment resulted in an extraordinary experiment in civil policing. It was an urgent attempt to find a means of dealing with unparalleled rioting, crime and disorder that had overwhelmed the old system of parish constables and watchmen, supported on occasion by local militia. Peel’s civil police force was the exact opposite of quasi-military policing. In this prescient experiment, Peel demonstrated an uncanny ability to resolve an immediate crisis in a way that would serve as a blueprint for all future standing police forces. Peel laid down nine specific principles of policing for the new recruits that were intended to ensure that English police would not act as inquisitorial agents or spies of the state or a force unto themselves. Two of them ought to serve as a guide for the district’s councillors in the course of their public meeting:
In 1968, Leon Radzinowicz published his monumental five-volume History of English Criminal Law. In discussing Peel’s experiment with civil police Radzinowicz said: “. . .the ideal set before (the Metropolitan London
police) remained steady: in all their dealings they must behave as the
servants, not the masters, of the public;” and In my next column: Comparing West Vancouver’s municipal police force with North Vancouver’s contract force supplied by the RCMP; questioning the effectiveness of the West Vancouver police board; advocating a municipal police force for the City and District of North Vancouver.
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