All the declinations of terrorism.

 

On Monday Harper's Politburo staged a nimble bit of Kabuki theatre, as my co-blogger dubbed it.

No longer content to exploit Canadian children and their families for PMSHithead's photo ops, the PMO rallied RCMP resources in support of an emergency debate on Vic Toews' testerical bill for Combatting Terrorism. Alison at Creekside has everything you need to know about the Harper government Con job in this regard: the background, the public histrionics, the tactics.

And now, this:

Internal e-mails obtained by CBC News show that RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson has ordered all senior Mounties to get clearance from his office before committing to any meetings with MPs or senators.

Specifically, they are to notify a liaison office that co-ordinates RCMP strategy with the office of Public Safety Minister Vic Toews.

RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson has instructed senior Mounties to notify his office before accepting meetings with MPs and senators, similar to the approval required for his own meetings by Public Safety Minister Vic Toews last year.

In an email dated March 22 from Paulson to more than 50 chief superintendents, assistant commissioners and deputy commissioners, the commissioner said that meetings or lunches with parliamentarians "can have unintended and/or negative consequences for the organization and the Government.

The development has opposition critics accusing the government of undermining the independence of the police. "There's a very large pattern in this government of trying to control information," said NDP MP Randall Garrison.

RCMP commissioner not 'muzzled,' Toews says.

"It's not appropriate for the government to reach into the police operation. It's a very, very fundamental part of what we must be assured exists so that the police aren't doing the work of the government, they're doing the work of the public."

Garrison, who is the NDP critic for public safety, said "these memos raise some very serious concerns about whether the government is interfering in the operations of the RCMP to try and assist in controlling their political message. So I think it's very serious."

Liberal Senator Grant Mitchell, critic for an RCMP reform bill, C-42, said he feared the "politicization of the police force."

From here.

In preparing this post, I reviewed news items about the RCMP covered by MacLeans. 

First, beyond the ongoing, systemic, violent misogyny within the force and in the field, this "incident" struck me as quite symptomatic of the noxious, agonic macho culture of the RCMP.

The document says Const. Martin Simpson wired an SD-100 soft detonator inside the doll “with the assistance and planning” of fellow squad member Cpl. Nigel Blake while Hempston was away on Christmas holidays. The detonators, “classified as high explosives,” were seized when a film company tried to import them in 2003. RCMP Cpl. Annie Linteau, speaking for B.C.’s E-Division headquarters, offered a markedly different account in an statement, saying an unnamed RCMP member had a “low energy” pyrotechnic squib detonate in his hand. “The member was transported to hospital for treatment with superficial injuries.”

When Hempston returned from holidays, he noticed the doll on his desk had been tampered with and picked it up with both hands. It exploded when he turned it on. Among the severe injuries he sustained, according to the lawsuit: damage to his hands that required several surgeries, nerve damage and a loss of feeling in his fingers and thumb, carpal tunnel syndrome in both hands, hearing loss requiring hearing aids, tinnitus in both ears, chronic post-traumatic stress, anxiety, nervous shock and “loss of faith in his colleagues.”

The supposed prank raises a number of troubling issues: the cavalier handling of explosives by the elite 14-member disposal unit; the decision not to charge the perpetrators, although an independent police investigation recommended criminal charges; the fact that Hempston continues to work in a tense environment with colleagues he is suing in a bomb unit that demands teamwork.

From here.

This is how a RCMP officer threatened and abused Ashley Smith. 

Instead of investigating spousal abuse, which is a form of gendered terrorism when enforced by individual sociopathic males whose actions are implicitly sanctioned by authorities, the RCMP set up a sting operation to entrap the female victim.

This occured in the same province where the alleged group rape and cyber-harassment of Rehtaeh Parsons was desultorily investigated by the RCMP. 

DJ! also posted about serious miscarriages of justice, at the hands of the RCMP.

So. Who will be carrying out and enforcing the provisions of S-7?

The RCMP.  As Alison put it:

Let's suppose you know someone, perhaps your landlord or a colleague at work, that the government suspects may one day in the future commit an act of terrorism. You can be detained for up to 3 days without charge while being questioned. You don't get to hear, let alone challenge, any evidence given against you or your colleague, even if it's tortured out of someone you've never heard of in Syria, and you can be held without trial for a year if you don't co-operate.

Every one of us is as vulnerable and exposed as this man was, merely for contacting Harper's office to register his opposition to the Northern Gateway pipeline.

Who needs the Spanish Inquisition when Harper's Politburo, or "The Centre" has the RCMP to do its bidding? 

Missing or murdered indigenous women and girls

[...]Michèle Audette, president of the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC) states that, “it is incredible that the RCMP is publicly doubting the number of missing and murdered Aboriginal women and girls that has been documented in the Native Women’s Association of Canada’s Database! The high number of missing and murdered Aboriginal women and girls that has been documented was based on accurate secondary source information that in many instances came directly from police reports that had further been corroborated by NWAC researchers with various police agencies.

NWAC collected and developed the Database of Missing and Murdered Aboriginal women and girls between 2005 and 2010 through the Sisters In Spirit initiative, which was based on cases that were in the public domain. “Anyone can collect this information, it is there, but what is unique is that NWAC went beyond this general collection and spoke directly with many families of missing and murdered Aboriginal women and girls and was able to augment the data to better determine what the needs and gaps are in terms of service delivery, programming, and policy services. I invite you to educate yourself, your family, friends and community, and visit the NWAC website and see the research for yourself,” said NWAC President Audette.

From here.

Last week Human Rights Watch released its report on the "Highway of Tears".

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police in northern British Columbia has failed to protect indigenous women and girls from violence, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Women and girls Human Rights Watch interviewed also described abusive treatment by police officers, including excessive use of force, and physical and sexual assault.

The 89-page report, “Those Who Take Us Away: Abusive Policing and Failures in Protection of Indigenous Women and Girls in Northern British Columbia, Canada,” documents both ongoing police failures to protect indigenous women and girls in the north from violence and violent behavior by police officers against women and girls. Police failures and abuses add to longstanding tensions between the [...] RCMP and indigenous communities in the region, Human Rights Watch said. The Canadian government should establish a national commission of inquiry into the murders and disappearances of indigenous women and girls, including the impact of police mistreatment on their vulnerability to violence in communities along Highway 16, which has come to be called northern British Columbia’s “Highway of Tears.”

“The threat of domestic and random violence on one side, and mistreatment by RCMP officers on the other, leaves indigenous women in a constant state of insecurity,” said Meghan Rhoad, women’s rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Where can they turn for help when the police are known to be unresponsive and, in some cases, abusive.”

Human Rights Watch conducted research along Highway 97 and along the 724-kilometer stretch of Highway 16 that has become infamous for the dozens of women and girls who have been reported missing or were found dead in its vicinity since the late 1960s. In July and August 2012, Human Rights Watch researchers interviewed 50 indigenous women and girls, and conducted an additional 37 interviews with families of murdered and missing women, indigenous leaders, community service providers, and others across 10 communities.

Indigenous women and girls told Human Rights Watch that the RCMP has failed to protect them. They also described instances of abusive policing, including excessive use of force against girls, strip searches of women by male officers, and physical and sexual abuse. One woman said that in July, four police officers took her to a remote location, raped her, and threatened to kill her if she told anyone.

Women who call the police for help have been blamed for the abuse, shamed over alcohol or substance use, and have found themselves at risk of arrest for actions taken in self-defense, women and community service providers told Human Rights Watch.

“I will never forget that day,” said “Lena G.,” whose 15-year-old daughter’s arm was broken by a police officer after the mother called the police for help during an argument between her daughter and her daughter’s abusive boyfriend. “It’s the worst thing I ever did. I wish I didn’t call.”

This instance of systemic negligence, incompetence and, allegedly violence, by the RCMP with regard to missing or murdered indigenous women is not limited to BC.  It appears that the force in Manitoba has similar problems.

"While the stories in the Human Rights Watch report are based in British Columbia, they are eerily similar to the stories we hear from victims, families and friends affected by the missing and murdered indigenous issue in our territories," Nepinak said in a statement released Friday by the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs.[...]

A spokeswoman for Nepinak said the reference was about police dismissing reports about missing women.

"Most of the complaints we hear about against police is that they do not take missing reports seriously and even dismiss them," Sheila North Wilson said.

She cited a generally a poor attitude toward aboriginal people and aboriginal women. "Not all officers, of course, but (there are) some who make it hard for some of our people to trust police," she said.[...]

In Manitoba, approximately 80 cases of missing and aboriginal women date back decades. They are the long-term focus of a joint RCMP-Winnipeg police investigation set up a few years ago.

It happens in Ontario, too.  Thunder Bay for example has become the recent focus of activism for the purpose of making public, and mapping many flagrant cases of local police officers' complicity in an ongoing campaign of sexual terrorism directed at Indigenous women. Operation Thunderbird, it's called.

There is, in my humble opinion, a form of misogynist terrorism directed against all women, but it is specifically racist in the way that it targets women of  First Nations, Metis and Inuit ancestry in Canada. Elements of our Parliament's Committee on Public Safety and National Security definition apply: a “terrorist activity” is an act or omission undertaken “in whole or in part for a political, religious, or ideological purpose, objective or cause” that is intended to intimidate the public or compel a person, government or organization to do or refrain from doing any act, if the act or omission intentionally causes a specified serious harm. Specified harms include causing death or serious bodily harm, endangering life, causing a serious risk to health or safety...

As the HRW report underlines, indigenous women in BC are the target of sexual terrorism that appears to be aided and abetted with impunity by members of the RCMP.

Fundamentalist, gynophobic christian ideology fuelled the violence directed at aboriginal children sequestered in residential schools, as it continues to contaminate the murderous impulses of men bent upon doing harm to women.  I wrote about a little-known report regarding Robert Pickton's justification for his femicidal campaign.

I believe there are many other predators like Pickton across Canada, working alone or with the help of accomplices, some of whom might be cops.

I want to know where Maisy Odjick and Shannon Alexander are, and what happened to them. Their mothers, their families miss them.

This woman is my choice to head a National Inquiry into Missing or Murdered Indigenous Women and girls.  When she spoke at the Downtown Eastside Missing Women Inquiry, many RCMP and Vancouver Police staff attended with their pricy lawyers.

In an internal email sent by RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson last week addressed the Human Rights Watch report on police mistreatment of indigenous women and girls in northern British Columbia, he said: “...don't worry about it, I've got your back.” 

It's likely this information was leaked to HRW.  Imagine the reaction of officers who are not complicit with RCMP systemic misogyny and racism.  This was a clear message from the Commissioner to those officers who acted as alleged by the HRW report that they would not be held accountable.  It was an implicit threat, silencing those who don't condone nor engage in such actions, a declaration that Paulson would protect the guilty - but not the whistle-blowers from retribution.

The RCMP went into attack mode when the HRW report was released and tried to discredit it or obtain the names of those who had provided information.

This is their default operating mode when the force is criticized; this is the plan to discredit female officers who have charged the RCMP work environment is toxic to women.

Imagine if the force used its considerable resources to actually investigate and stop crime, instead of allowing the thugs inside its ranks to run roughshod like unchecked mini-warlords. 

The last word goes to Chris Andersen and his hard-hitting post about what needs to happen.

Ultimately what is needed here is a national public inquiry on missing and murdered Aboriginal women. The RCMP could play a powerful role in such an inquiry, since they sit on the front lines of these events. A public inquiry would not only allow a sober exploration of the structural inequities that has produced this national tragedy, but it could, as many inquiries do, represent a powerful moment of reconciliation and trust-building between Aboriginal nations, communities and families, on the one hand, and policy agencies, various levels of government and the public, on the other. However, this would require a level of introspection and acknowledgement of responsibility that seems permanently beyond the reach of the RCMP, as most policing agencies. And in remaining so, the RCMP continues to reveal its own heart of darkness: not only its inability to protect Aboriginal women from colonialism’s darkest moments, but its inability to admit its own responsibility in producing the events themselves.

The photo above is from here.

Maintiens le droit ...

It appears that we've written quite a lot about the RCMP, at DJ!

And most of it covers the police violence within and outside its ranks - not the regrettable armed display of force required to fulfill its mandate of law enforcement - but a corrupt and despicable exploitation of its resources and its mandate that has repeatedly, unjustly harmed, damaged and killed people.

There's no end in sight, as it emerges that the Mounties do a truly negligent, incompetent job of keeping records with regard to officers that have been brought up on cases of professional misconduct, and possibly, of criminal activity.

[...]no one within the RCMP had a comprehensive list of Mounties who’d been disciplined, became obvious after CBC News asked for basic data between 2005 and 2008 that included offences and findings by internal adjudications boards.

CBC News submitted the request in November 2008. It was delivered four years later in November 2012. An officer who handled the file offered an embarrassed apology, and explained the delay was due to the list having to be created from scratch.

[...]Many of the allegations are also criminal offences, including two cases of possession of child pornography. The CBC asked for details on which cases went on to criminal prosecution, but the RCMP did not make that information available.

And while about 50 of the cases were withdrawn, in some cases due to the expiry of the statutory time limit for a hearing, more than a third were deemed so egregious the officers involved either quit, were forced to resign or had to forfeit 10 days pay — the harshest punishment under the RCMP Act short of dismissal.

Meanwhile, the RCMP old boys' club is calling the shots on the manner in which it will defend the institution from several sexual abuse and harassment lawsuits against the force and specific officers.

Moving from outright denial to counter attack, it appears that the legal strategy rests upon a campaign of discrediting the claims that have been brought forward by female officers.




A vulnerable female complainant has been singled out, likely to demonstrate to the others what awaits them - to intimidate them and ultimately, to silence them.

The RCMP’s statement of defence, filed earlier this week, details the results of the police investigation and the review board’s findings, and says whatever happened between Gastaldo and Pearson occurred outside of their work and has nothing to do with the force.

“If any of the Crown defendant’s employees, servants or agents engaged in the conduct alleged ... then all such conduct was outside the course and scope of the employee, servant or agent’s duties,” says the statement of defence, filed in B.C. Supreme Court.

Even if Gastaldo was harmed in any way by Pearson, the statement of defence says, it wouldn’t be the force’s fault.

“Any of the damage allegedly suffered by the plaintiff was caused solely by the unauthorized conduct of Pearson, and the Crown defendants are not responsible for that conduct,” the statement says.

Gastaldo’s lawsuit was among the first of several involving female RCMP officers who have claimed they were assaulted, harassed and abused on the job.

[...]The statements of claim and defence contain allegations that have not yet been tested in court.

The RCMP has so far issued denials in several sexual abuse and harassment lawsuits against the force and its officers.

The highest-profile case involves Cpl. Catherine Galliford, a former spokeswoman for the Air India and Robert Pickton cases. She filed a lawsuit last year alleging years of abuse by numerous officers.

Const. Karen Katz has a lawsuit alleging a colleague harassed and sexually assaulted her, as well as a second lawsuit that alleges more widespread abuse spanning her entire career.

And Janet Merlo, a 19-year veteran of the force, filed a class-action lawsuit in March alleging sexist comments, sexual pranks and derogatory remarks while on the job. Her lawyer has suggested dozens of other officers are prepared to join the case.

Aggressive "defense" tactics deployed by the RCMP display many of the elements that characterize systemic rape culture, as well as a toxic work environment.  The failure of the police force to treat its officers and other employees - male and female - with the respect they deserve as human beings, is typical of military-type organizations based on the very worst misogynist practices "tolerated" if not encouraged by the leadership.

The photo above is from here.

This is what CONs do

From serial sexual predator Vic Toews' office:

The federal public safety minister's office tried to scale back an apology the RCMP delivered earlier this year to the families of serial killer Robert Pickton's victims, Postmedia News has learned.

A senior adviser to the RCMP commissioner later wrote that the government's proposed revisions — which ended up not being adopted — drained the apology of its "purpose" and "impact," according to internal emails obtained under access-to-information laws. [...]

On Jan. 27, just days before RCMP investigators were scheduled to start testifying at the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry in Vancouver, British Columbia's top Mountie, then-assisstant commissioner Craig Callens, released a statement to media regarding the force's handing of the Pickton investigation.

"I believe that, with the benefit of hindsight, and when measured against today's investigative standards and practices, the RCMP could have done more," the statement read in part.

"On behalf of the RCMP, I would like to express to the families of the victims how very sorry we are for the loss of your loved ones, and I apologize that the RCMP did not do more."

Pickton, a pig farmer, was arrested in 2002 and eventually convicted of six counts of second-degree murder, though the remains or DNA of 33 women were found on his property in Port Coquitlam, B.C. He once told an undercover officer that he killed 49.

Email records show that shortly before the RCMP statement was issued, Julie Carmichael, press secretary to Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, wrote to Daniel Lavoie, the RCMP's executive director of public affairs in Ottawa, requesting changes to the text.

"Daniel — please find attached the revised product," she wrote. The next line was underlined for emphasis: "Please ensure the statement issued is reflective of these changes."

The revised statement did not include any acknowledgement that the RCMP "could have done more" in the Pickton investigation and the apology was limited to saying "how very sorry we are for the loss of your loved ones."

Is the Conservative Party of Canada accountable? No.

But it's clearly abject, callous, venal and odious.

If only Circe* were around to set things aright...

In July of last year, after the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry presentations had been concluded and before Oppal's final report was released, I wrote a DJ! post about the controversy surrounding Coquitlam RCMP officer Cpl. Jim Brown.

In light of ongoing criticism of the RCMP, of charges of sexual harassment against female officers and of reported incidents of systemic and individual violence against indigenous women, I wondered what had happened to him. 

Brown's right to privacy, an entitlement to satisfy his transgressive sexual appetites and the privilege to separate personal pursuits from his professional duties were nimbly defended by a faux-menist blogger who declared private acts didn't "necessarily" impinge upon the public world, as though the dedicated practice of hard-core activities that featured the brutal degradation and humilation of women by a cop enmeshed in Pickton's network, belonged to a completely separate reality. 

By implying that an accountant's or a plumber's BDSM diversions wouldn't affect their work, ethical issues and red flags about the officer's conduct were smoothly dismissed by this blogger.  Interestingly enough, his response to a female cop's abusive deportment was not equally indulgent. 

A quick search reveals this, from last October.  Public reaction to Cpl Brown's activities triggered an organized campaign of damage containment by the RCMP.

In an affidavit filed in court describing himself as “not a mere informant” but “an agent” directed by the force, Grant Wakefield says he provided the RCMP with that material and accused Cpl. Brown of engaging in sex while on duty and being involved in bondage- and domination-themed websites.

The RCMP found no evidence of criminal wrongdoing, but concluded “allegations of professional misconduct appear to be supported.”

The RCMP said Cpl. Brown has been suspended since July.

On Aug. 18, the Mounties raided Wakefield’s home and seized his computers.

Along with the B.C. Civil Liberties Association and media outlets, the New Westminster man is asking the court to unseal the information police used to obtain the controversial warrant to invade his apartment.

One wonders what might connect the RCMP's innumerable undisclosed "failures" during the Task Force investigation into missing DTES sex trade workers, Cpl Brown's proclivities and Commissioner Bob Paulson's fast and furious response to the Human Rights Watch report last week.

Also, it appears Cpl. Jim Brown is suing Wakefield and lawyer Cameron Ward, who acted as counsel to several of the families of missing and murdered women during the Missing Women's Commission of Inquiry for damages.  His claim is the very demonstration of tactics an accused bully will use to shift focus away from the harm he may have perpetrated, to his own alleged suffering as a victim.

The claim accuses Wakefield, along with Jane and John Doe, of improperly obtaining photos of Brown in bondage, domination and sado-masochistic scenes from a fetishist website, and sharing the images with the police and media.

It further states the three were behind a "false and defamatory" online campaign that was "deliberately calculated by the defendants to expose (Brown) to contempt, ridicule and hatred, and to cause other persons to shun or avoid (Brown), and to lower (Brown's) reputation in the eyes of right-thinking members of the community, all of which has in fact occurred."

The court document states the officer, who remains suspended from his job, has suffered "substantial and persisting" injury to his personal and professional reputation as a result of Wakefield's alleged actions. His pride and self-confidence have also been damaged, the claim states. Ward, meanwhile, is accused of writing and publishing defamatory blog posts that questioned Brown's role in the investigation of serial killer Robert William Pickton.

According to the claim, Brown played a minor role in the Coquitlam RCMP investigation that later led to Pickton's arrest and conviction on six counts of murder.

The claim states Ward's conduct "is sufficiently egregious to warrant an award of punitive damages."

Oddly, he's not included the RCMP in his suit though it seems his colleagues instigated the events that led to the revelation of his off-duty amusements.

Meanwhile, Marnie Frey's family's request to secure her remains for burial - she was one of the DTES women killed during the Pickton farm carnage - was handled in a desultory and improper manner.

*The title is inspired by Circe's mythical sorcery which transformed men into swine.

It's an insult to pigs to call cops by their name.

News that Coquitlam RCMP Cpl. Jim Brown (aka the “Kilted Knight”) posted graphic photos of himself holding a knife to a woman’s throat on a website devoted to sadomachism has prompted significant public concern. Although this appears to be just another black eye for the nation’s police force, there is potentially a much bigger issue here.

Cpl. Jim Brown isn’t just a police officer who is a sexual deviant on his own time and who likes to connect with other like-minded individuals to share their twisted experiences. He is the RCMP member who produced informant Ross Caldwell in mid-July, 1999, almost three years before the RCMP accidentally discovered evidence that Robert Willy Pickton had been disposing of women’s bodies on the Port Coquitlam property he shared with his brother David. Caldwell was an acquaintance of the Picktons who reported that Willy Pickton had been seen skinning a woman in the barn, that he kept handcuffs under his bed and that he owned night-vision equipment, a semi-automatic rifle and wigs that he wore when he went trolling downtown.

From here.

Xtra and Dan Savage have weighed in on Twitter, claiming that CBC news coverage about RCMP Cpl. Brown is an invasion of his privacy and that his personal sexual preferences should not be a public concern.

Given his close connection to the Pickton investigation - and that someone in the fairly tightly-knit and protective BDSM community found his photo re-enactment of actual crime scenes where women were tortured, murdered, dismembered and fed to pigs, disturbing - Brown's professional deportment should be scrutinized.

During the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry, a number of police officers who worked on the investigation that eventually led to the trial of Willy Pickton were exempted from examination.

Willy Pickton didn’t kill up to 49 women by himself, not according to the jury who convicted him of six counts of second degree murder. The women whose remains were found at the pig farm were likely the victims of a group of sexual sadists and torturers, who likely included convicted murderer Willy Pickton himself.

How did Cpl. Jim Brown meet informant Ross Caldwell? Was Cpl. Jim Brown one of the sexual sadists frequenting Piggy’s Palace? Why didn’t the RCMP act on the important information he brought forward? Were the RCMP monitoring the gang activities, including the Angels’ visits to Piggy’s Palace? Why did the RCMP seemingly ignore a ten year string of serial murders? Did they have bigger fish to fry? How many murderers remain at large?

All of these questions should have been answered by the just-concluded Missing Women Commission of Inquiry. We tried our best to pry the lid off and get the evidence out, but our attempts to have Cpl. Brown, Ross Caldwell, Bev Hyacinthe and David Pickton testify (among others) were rejected, as were our attempts to get access to the records of the Organized Crime Agency of BC that would reveal the nature and extent of police surveillance and gang infiltration activities involving Piggy’s Palace.

The Missing Women Commission of Inquiry is patently incomplete. Now it has been revealed that the Coquitlam RCMP had a sexual sadist in their ranks who was sufficiently connected to the Picktons to produce a key informant, someone who tipped the police what Willy Pickton was up to three years before he was arrested. The Commission hearings must be re-opened. If it does not re-open the hearings, it will be perpetuating a police cover-up of the circumstances surrounding Canada’s worst serial killing case.

Instead, the Commission targeted a number of minor players, including this police clerk. It was a travesty of justice miscarried in order to protect Pickton's buddies-in-crime.

The RCMP has become emblematic of the worst examples of male sexual entitlement and privilege.

Added: Rabble has a long screed regarding Brown: "Private fantasy, Public Reality". It's not that great. The author is clearly not familiar with the premise of 'safe, sane and consensual' activities that informs ethical practitioners of BDSM. As well, she misrepresents Terri-Jean Bedford who is a professional dominatrix - not someone who currently experiences abuse, exception made for the violence of a "justice" system that criminalizes sex trade workers to "protect" them.

Competent research, precise knowledge of legal questions, including the criticism directed at the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry and a better understanding of boundary issues would have been highly helpful to Meghan Murphy and it would have made her rant referral-worthy.

Heal the RCMP or replace it.

Necrotic festering is bubbling up within the RCMP.  Its foul stench wafts from every part of the force. The infection is spreading: surgery and excision will be required.

The affliction known as flesh-eating disease "..is a misnomer, as in truth, the bacteria do not 'eat' the tissue. They destroy the tissue that makes up the skin and muscle by releasing toxins.."

RCMP Commissioner Paulson has to be removed, as soon as possible. The man is worse than gangrene; he spouts insincere platitudes and clichés in lieu of genuine commitment to change the toxic culture and behaviours that contaminate every aspect of the organization.

Recently Paulson attended an event where he was invited 

"to discuss national security in the wake of the Brussels bombing, and also what progress he was making on curtailing harassment and weeding out members who have sullied the force's reputation. [..] he was asked by a member of the audience, when was the last time he had written a traffic ticket to anyone. Instead of answering the question, the commissioner went on a "bon mot" diversion. He talked about speeding down B.C.'s Coquihalla Highway with some family members last year and being pulled over by an RCMP officer. Paulson got some laughs when he mimicked the horrified reaction of the member who suddenly realized he had just pulled over the big boss; an officer who faced the unenviable decision of whether or not to lay a fine on him. The tell though, came when the moderator said he wouldn't ask about the dollar value of the ticket. Paulson's expression went from a broad grin to 'oh-oh' in a flash as he seemed to realize he had stepped in it. [..] Later, talking to reporters, he was clearly not pleased when the speeding incident came up. At first, he said, "Aw, it was just a story I made up." Pressed further he changed course, saying, "No, I don't want to talk about that. I do not want to talk about that."

Paulson's casual Catskills routine is offensive, in light of the most recent developments and disclosures in the matter of interminable sexual harassment within RCMP ranks.

The harassment, [Linda Davidson] alleges in court papers, took many forms: unwanted grabbing and kissing; crude jokes, including the placement of ketchup-stained tampons in her locker; and constant questioning about her sexual orientation and abilities. “I experienced this treatment irrespective of my detachment, posting, rank or seniority,” she wrote in an affidavit. “I never felt that I could rely on senior officers to protect me.“ The Bracebridge, Ont., mother, who now runs a security firm, is the lead plaintiff in a proposed class-action lawsuit alleging systemic gender-based harassment and discrimination in the RCMP — the second such lawsuit to hit the force in recent years.

Last, but not least, is the ongoing RCMP mindset of collusion with rape culture and racism, which enables abusive practices such as this one.

Last month, Cody Durocher was convicted of sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl in Hay River, N.W.T. It was his third sexual assault conviction. RELATED | RCMP botched N.W.T. sex assault investigation, documents say At that trial N.W.T. Supreme Court Justice Louise Charbonneau had some harsh words for the way that girl was treated after disclosing the incident to police, noting that instead of being taken to hospital, she was put in a jail cell for violating her probation, where she remained until the following evening. Durocher, 31, was convicted of raping two women in different towns in northern Alberta in 2010. He pleaded guilty to the first after DNA evidence linked him to the attack. He was sentenced to two and a half years in prison. Durocher was sentenced to three years for the second attack. In court, the 13-year-old Hay River victim said Durocher sexually assaulted her on January 11, 2014.

Here's an idea: appoint a royal commission to investigate the institutional roots of whatever pathology it is that maintains a "..nature of policing makes it ripe for behaviour that is _less than professional_" 

Name Marie Henein to chair that commission. She doesn't suffer fools gladly. Here's how she handled Peter Mansbridge's ham-handed attempt at interviewing her.

Buy popcorn.  Lots and lots of popcorn.

RCMP: pre-emptive ass-covering for VanOC

When last we wrote about the RCMP, it was a mere spit in the ocean that has been blogged about the Horsemen and the Braidwood Inquiry.

It appears that in anticipation of the roughshod, no holds barred, security authority to 'Taser with impunity' that the Vancouver Olympic Committee is about to bestow upon the Mounties, the RCMP is attempting to cover its ample posterior by holding one public consultation.

Olympic security officials have approached a local multicultural organization for help in providing culturally sensitive security during the 2010 Games.

On behalf of Sukhvinder Vinning, vice president of the Multifaith Action Society, former Vancouver city councillor Nancy Chiavario has sent an e-mail announcing an opportunity for people to discuss issues pertinent to their faiths with an RCMP officer.

The objective is to enhance the understanding of security screeners at Olympic venues. Anyone who wishes to convey information on this topic will have an opportunity to speak to an (sic) RCMP officer on Wednesday (July 22) at 2:30 p.m. at the Guildford library branch at 15105 105th Avenue in Surrey.

The RCMP meeting with people of different faiths comes shortly after two legal experts claimed that the 2010 Integrated Security Unit's plans would be illegal in the absence of new legislation.

One meeting will enhance the understanding of (RCMP) security screeners at Olympic venues? Really? One. Meeting.

And what impact will that valuable public input have upon the legality of its security plans?

A Few Good Women ...

When my daughter was 8 years old, she expressed a desire to work for the RCMP. Back then - and it wasn't that long ago, folks - some Canadians still took pride in our national police force. It was a collective romantic delusion.

Had she persevered in this interest, I would have supported my daughter's choice but I would have feared for her psychological and physical well-being. Even then, I knew that sexism was rampant in the RCMP, a systemic disease.

Flash forward a decade or two. Early this month, RCMP Corporal Catherine Galliford went public with her experience of the sexual harassment unofficially tolerated and sanctioned within the organization.

She has accused a supervisor of exposing himself to her, and says she suffered other unwanted sexual advances.

"I went to every boss I had at the time and I kept on saying, ‘Please don't make me work with these people.' And they didn't do anything," Galliford told CTV News.

She claims that several senior officers were responsible for the harassment.

On one occasion during the Pickton investigation, she says that a supervisor told her: "I have a fantasy about Willy Pickton escaping from jail and tracking you down and ripping your clothes off and stringing you from a meat hook and gutting you like a pig.'"

"My supervisors were laughing," she said.

The Mounties released a statement Tuesday saying that it could not comment on Galliford's allegations but that harassment "is not tolerated." [...]

According to police psychologist Mike Webster, however, complaints like Galliford's aren't that uncommon in the world of policing.
"This remains a man's world. It's very difficult for females to get by in that man's world," he said.

Galliford is scheduled to testify at the official inquiry into the Pickton investigation.

Galliford, 44, is slated to testify at the inquiry in January, but says she won’t be testifying for the RCMP, but rather on behalf of the victims.

In an interview, and in a 115-page statement given to the RCMP, Galliford said top Mounties had “enough evidence for a search warrant” of serial killer Robert Pickton’s farm in 1999. From 1999 to 2002 14 women were brutally murdered by Pickton, a fact that haunts Galliford.

She says she will testify that both RCMP and VPD officers, even after the Missing Women Task Force was formed in 2001, engaged in sexual liaisons and harassment, watched porn and left work early “to go drinking and partying.”

This is the work environment my daughter would have had to endure, had she signed up to become a RCMP officer.

Grand merci to Antonia Z.

Missing gold worth $15.3 million not stolen says RCMP.

Somehow and somewhere between April and October 2008 more than half a ton of gold physically stockpiled by the Royal Canadian Mint could not be located.

The RCMP has now concluded that gold was not stolen.

Tory minister Rob Merrifield trumpeted in the House of Commons that gold was not stolen.

Since it has not been found by the RCMP however, one may surmise that it is still missing.

This happened while the Harper New™ Government managed the country, including Crown Corporations such as the Mint.

Last June, Merrifield, the junior Transport minister responsible for the Crown corporation, told the Commons that preliminary results of an independent audit failed to determine what happened to the gold. "I've instructed the mint to bring in the RCMP to examine this matter in a fulsome way," he said at that time.

The mint made a written request for a criminal investigation later that day. Merrifield's remarks in June followed a series of Citizen articles detailing how officials at the mint had been quietly hunting for the gold since October 2008, when a routine inventory count could not reconcile tabulations made six months earlier with the physical stockpile.

On June 29, three weeks after the mint called on police, detailed findings of the four-month Deloitte audit ruled out bad bookkeeping and other inventory control errors for 17,514 troy ounces of missing gold and other precious metals. The news generated international headlines and fuelled speculation about what would be Canada's biggest gold heist.

The same day, Merrifield and Transport Minister John Baird issued a joint statement calling the loss "inexcusable" and promising the mint will be "held accountable."

They added: "We have ordered the Mint to call in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. ... The RCMP investigation is ongoing." Not so. The RCMP had only been investigating whether to investigate. There was no formal case.

Ah. Merrifield and Baird asked the RCMP to investigate whether to investigate. That sounds very butch.

March for Lies 2016, Part 2: UMPTY-GAZILLION ATTENDEES!

There were great expectations for this year's March for Lies. First, its traditional organizer, Catholic Campaign Life, graciously invited all anti-choice groups to participate.

And second, Parliament is debating and will pass the tragically flawed medical assistance in dying act, which one would have thought would rev up the "womb to tomb" gang.

So the turn-out was going to be MASSIVE, yes?

In Part 1 of our annual Delusion Watch, we compared the size of yesterday's rally to April's 4/20 marijuana rally.

Doing this again. Compare rallies. 4/20 on left #MarchforLife #m4l on right. pic.twitter.com/7EXzGCzDhq

— Fern Hill (@fernhilldammit) May 12, 2016

So how many people were there?

The Ottawa Citizen had veteran fetus freak watchers, Kady O'Malley and David Akin, live blogging/tweeting the event.

This really doesn't look quite as big as last year. #m4" pic.twitter.com/qmQmBk4rRM

— kady o'malley (@kady) May 12, 2016

Kady reported that an on-stage speaker claimed 20K in attendance and added "I'd put it closer to 6K, but we'll see what the RCMP says."

What did the RCMP say? CFRA Radio:

Rough RCMP estimates indicate more than 10,000 people participated in the march.

But that's not what David Akin reported.

Also: my count of crowd - and I walk through crowd actually counting — is 4,500. Smallest #M4L I can recall pic.twitter.com/tiqZf9EjnE

— David Akin (@davidakin) May 12, 2016

He added in another tweet that "police" said 3,000.

We were still breathlessly awaiting LieShite's outrageous inflation estimate and today we found out.

22,000!!!

So, there you have it. Somewhere around 3,000 (RCMP officer to Akin), 4,500 (Akin), 6,000 (O'Malley), 10,000 (RCMP), 20,000 (from the stage), or 22,000 (LieShite) people attended this year's Futility Bunfest.

Akin made a 40-second Facebook video with this introduction:

Here's my March For Life crowd in 40 seconds. Smallest turnout I've seen at this event. I actually count myself - takes about 20 minutes -- and I got 4,500 at 1230 ET (and I might be a little generous) RCMP officer told me: 3,000. Organizers from the stage said there were 20,000.

We called it in April. The anti-choice movement in Canada is *snerk* dying.

Even with the widening of the tent and the extra impetus of imminent government action on assisted dying, the ranks of forced birthers are thinning remarkably.

But the bald-faced lying is as strong as ever.


ADDED: David Akin's report. He picked up on the comparison to 4/20. :-)



Last year's report.

Too little, too f**king late!

This is not a sincere apology and only slightly, a recognition of responsibility. It smacks of a CYA attempt by RCMP lawyers to head off litigation as damning details keep tumbling out, in spite of officials' attempts to do damage control.

The RCMP issued a public apology Friday to the families of the women murdered by Robert “Willie” Pickton, admitting the “RCMP did not do more” in the investigation before he was charged.

The prepared formal apology came after days of testimony at the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry, in which the way that the RCMP and Vancouver police handled the investigation into the murders of six women Pickton was convicted for -- as well as the disappearances many other women -- has been challenged.

According to this revelation, the RCMP tipped Pickton off; they let him know that he was a target of their investigation - a "known subject".

Incompetence and malfeasance, that's what it appears to me. Isn't it obvious - particularly in light of allegations that women working for the organization suffered systemic discrimination and ongoing, unofficially sanctioned, sexual harassment at the hands of fellow male RCMP officers.

A continuum of cop violence against women: systemic and authoritarian, sexualized and fetishized. (updated)

From Ayesha, we learn about yet another woman's death, as a the tragic outcome of a desultory police investigation.

In an extensive post on a Facebook memorial page, her mother Leah Parsons described how the straight-A high school student became depressed and suicidal after the incident.

“The person Rehtaeh once was all changed one dreaded night in November 2011. She went with a friend to another’s home. In that home she was raped by four young boys . . . one of those boys took a photo of her being raped and decided it would be fun to distribute the photo to everyone in Rehtaeh’s school and community where it quickly went viral,” Leah Parsons wrote. “Because the boys already had a ‘slut’ story, the victim of the rape Rehtaeh was considered a slut.

“This day changed the lives of our family forever.”

Rehtaeh, who was a 15-year-old high school student in Cole Harbour at the time, was repeatedly bullied at school and “suddenly shunned by almost everyone she knew.”

“She was never left alone. She had to leave the community. Her friends turned against her. People harassed her. Boys she didn’t know started texting her and Facebooking her asking her to have sex with them. It just never stopped,” her mother told CBC.

Racialized women in Canada experience this daily.  First Nations, Metis, Inuit, Black, all brown-skinned women of mixed ancestries rarely if ever trust the police to take reports of sexual violence directed at them seriously, and to investigate properly. In reality, reporting such violence makes them vulnerable to the cops' own abusive practices, as case after case demonstrates. Operation Thunder Bird attempted to expose this reality.

In Ottawa, a judge recently exonerated the sexualized brutality that a police officer used against a woman detained for alleged public intoxication - a "charge" which was never actually shown to be founded.

Violent cops like Steve Desjourdy can sexually humiliate, degrade and punish jailed women with impunity. His actions which were challenged in criminal court, have been excused and thus can become the official standard that police taking women into custody can apply.

According to the judge who presided over the trial, Desjourdy "used reasonable force".

Many who viewed the internal video that captured Desjourdy and his colleagues' actions, observed that he seemed to be enjoying his job, exerting force in order to break the detained woman's will and her instinct to defend herself from the cops' deliberate, sexualized violations.

Familiar patterns of cops' fetishized brutality against women keep surfacing.  It would appear a measure of implicit identification with the perpetrators of sexual assault impinges upon some police officers' professional capacity to effectively investigate violent crimes against women.

In my opinion, the RCMP has become irreversibly corrupted and poisoned by misogyny; this latest outrage is more evidence of the toxicity of its systemic sexist culture.

UPDATE: Two excellent blogposts that MUST be read. Both cut to the core of the way rape culture enables violence against women and girls.

Child porn isn’t a “community issue,” RCMP from Steph Guthrie really nails the misogynist sub-text of the shoddy excuse the RCMP provided for its MASSIVE lack of due diligence, with regard to the taking and distribution of the photo of Rehtaeh Parsons.  A crime was committed; it's the RCMP's job to deal with it.  Unless its officers' sloppy lack of professional dedication is a recognition that the institution is de facto complicit with child pornographers and sexual assailants in that community.

This is heart-wrenching:

[...] where the fuck were the school officials, the members of the law enforcement, the people who should have made sure that she had adequate follow-up mental health care after her hospitalization? Where were they, and why didn’t they do anything? Or if they did do something, why didn’t they do enough?

Rehtaeh’s rapists are still out there. They are still in high school, they are still going to parties and they are, quite likely, still raping. Why wouldn’t they? They got away with it once, didn’t they? Rehtaeh’s rapists are still living normal, untroubled lives, and she is dead. [...]

Saying that we need to educate boys and girls about appropriate behaviour is victim-blaming. Saying that this wouldn’t have been a problem if the pictures hadn’t ended up online is like saying that rape is fine, but publicly broadcasting it isn’t. Calling Rehtaeh’s death a tragedy because we’ve lost a beautiful young woman is a joke – seriously, what bearing does her appearance have on how sad her death is? And since Landry is refusing to open an official review into how the RCMP handled this, isn’t he basically saying, “I think she was lying about the rape, but gosh, she sure was hot”?

All of this, every single word of this statement, all of the things that Rehtaeh endured, every single detail presented here is rape culture.

Read the comments too.


So, with regard to the way it deals with sexual violence against women and girls, should Canada feel *superior* to India?

The role of pigs in Pickton saga.

These are only 15 of the missing women that were killed at the Pickton farm in Port Coquitlam.

Pigs - the porcine type of Sus genus - were happenstance accomplices in the murders. They were recruited to remove the evidence.

What is emerging from the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry, established to examine how police investigated the disappearance of dozens of sex trade workers from the Vancouver Downtown Eastside "combat zone" is that two-legged *pigs* stuck their snouts in, with the result that a number of deliberately engineered events derailed the investigations.

Certain police documents — including notes from their investigations — have not been disclosed. Pages from reports have mysteriously vanished. Police witnesses have offered conflicting accounts of key events. “This case has all the familiar hallmarks of a police cover-up,” says Mr. Ward, choosing his words carefully. “And I’m afraid the inquiry may be enabling it.”

Why, despite their strong suspicions, their corroborating information from tipsters, and their knowledge of Pickton’s violent history with prostitutes, did police wait years to stop the serial killer? Who knew what, and when did they know it? Mr. Ward doubts the inquiry will answer those questions, because they involve high-ranking police officers and others with too much to lose. [For example] why, in 1998, [was] a decision made by B.C.’s criminal justice branch to stay charges of attempted murder and unlawful confinement against Pickton, after his near-fatal stabbing of a Vancouver prostitute at his farm?

Pieces of the story emerged at Pickton’s marathon murder trial in 2007. He was convicted on six counts of second-degree murder.

From here. At the time, there was a strong impression, supported by Willy Pickton himself, that he accepted the role of fall guy in order to divert attention from other people involved in the bloody carnage, and in events that took place at the pig farm.

This sharp woman testified at the inquiry in January:

The investigation of serial killer Robert Pickton suffered from the same kind of systemic failures as the investigation of Ontario serial killer Paul Bernardo, the Missing Women inquiry was told Monday.

Peel Regional Police Deputy Chief Jennifer Evans, who was asked by the inquiry to provide an expert analysis of the Vancouver police and RCMP investigations of Pickton, said there was a systemic communication breakdown between Vancouver police and the Mounties.

From here and here:

In her report, Evans was critical of an interview of Pickton done on Jan. 19, 2000, by RCMP Constables Ruth Yurkiw and John Cater. [...]

During the interview, Pickton was asked about an informant's claim that Pickton was seen one night butchering a woman in a barn on his Port Coquitlam farm.

Pickton, claiming he had never hurt anyone, told the officers they could search his farm and even take soil samples to search for DNA.

"I ain't got nothing to hide," Pickton said at the time.

But the officers never took Pickton up on his offer.

In her report, Evans wrote: "The worst case scenario was that Pickton would refuse them entry; the best case scenario, we will never know."

And this week:

Wracked by personal grief and disillusioned by a loss of confidence in the VPD and RCMP, Vancouver police Det. Const. Lori Shenher broke down on the stand at the Missing Womens Commission of Inquiry on Tuesday.

Shenher’s two days of testimony painted a very grim picture of policing in the Lower Mainland, suggesting badly flawed efforts by the VPD and RCMP possibly allowed drug addicted sex workers to die needlessly. [...]

Shenher eventually got a handful more investigators. But two “interfered” with the effort because they were “racist, sexist and homophobic,” Shenher said.

Shenher admitted in cross-examination that tips and reports of missing women were likely lost because a VPD civilian member was “racist.”

She said she missed many investigative avenues and engagement with sources was “woefully inadequate” because she didn’t have the needed time or resources.

Shenher reluctantly acknowledged that she came to believe senior management did not expect her to be successful. She said she heard an allegation that Vancouver deputy police chief John Unger referred to the missing women as “just f-cking hookers,” in a meeting.

Most of the missing women were of mixed ancestry - Aboriginal, European, African, Asian.

Here's a personal account from a woman who experienced this toxic environment first-hand.

I was in Vancouver in the early 1990s, looking for work in the medical field for which I was trained. I had never been in Vancouver before. I got temporary work in the East End of Vancouver. It was like they had declared war on women, all women. I couldn't walk down the street without being sexually harassed and I was in my forties. On one occasion this man followed me onto a bus, saying he was going to follow me home. I asked the bus driver for help - he was brilliant in getting rid of this creep, much more than the police would have been, though I didn't realize that at the time. Looking back, it must have been in the mass murder period and every man in the place knew he could get away with virtually anything. I mentioned my problems at the clinic where I was working, but they were in denial in a major way. I was happy to leave Vancouver after three weeks and would never go back. I have lived in three cities, all larger than Vancouver, and have never experienced such harassment before. In fact, the largest city, London, England, was the safest.

And then, there's RCMP officer Catherine Galliford's perspective.

I believe Robert Pickton was the logistics guy, and that other people may also be criminally involved in violent activities including the femicides, that took place at his farm. How likely is it such facts will be disclosed to the inquiry?

Two important additions:

This website and a blogsite about the missing women.

Vancouver cops who acted with revolting impunity are named by witnesses at the inquiry, here.