Ottawa cops in hot water, again.

A video allegedly showing police brutality in the ByWard Market late Friday night has prompted a review into the incident by the Ottawa police, says police Chief Charles Bordeleau. The shaky video appears to show a man being forced to the ground by three police officers. While being held by officers, the video documents one officer punching the man in the upper body and head area as many as a dozen times. The one-minute video does not show how the altercation began, nor does it show police taking any suspects away. 

From here. 

I heard this report on Radio-Canada. The police chief "invites" witnesses to step forward to share what they observed.

Given what happened to these women who witnessed and reported police violence in their neighbourhood, I'd think that people might feel threatened by the legal bullying tactics that cops exert inside the courtroom in addition to their illicit, intimidating reprisals.

Also, a reminder: What every citizen NEEDS to know about photographing and filming police officers in Canada, from here. 

UPDATE: A female witness who was there that night "could not corroborate the police account of what happened at the scene..." She also said: "The cops showed up and made it so much worse". From here. 
  
I predict that cops will intimidate and frighten this witness into changing her recollection of what she observed.

UPDATED AGAIN: Ontario Ombudsman André Marin reprimands the Ottawa Police Service.

The same day Bordeleau initiated the complaint, he also sent an internal email to the force’s rank-and-file reminding them that “the job of a police officer is a difficult one and we all know that enhanced scrutiny is a fact in our role.”

Bordeleau also wrote that officers have the public’s confidence and his confidence and respect for the work they do.

Marin says morale-boosting comments by the chief or even officers identifying Fairbairn and saying he’s a great guy, are innocuous enough, but when officers start giving their personal assessment on the extent of the force used by Fairbairn in the altercation, they influence the investigation and the likelihood that witnesses, civilian or uniformed, who saw evidence to the contrary, will come forward.

“The pursuit of the truth becomes pointless.”

Marin called for officers to use the same rigorous and strict process they use when investigating the public and to not show favouritism and partiality at the outset, just days after the incident.

This is how police forces roll.  A reminder of how cops intimidate those who witness their violence, here.

Abuse of power and authority in Ottawa.

Zoom at knitnut writes about this from a blogger's perspective, one who has been covering gratuitous police brutality in Ottawa for a while.

However, when I read the original news story something else emerged, as malign as unwarranted and illegal cop violence but symptomatic of a specific authoritarianism.

An Ottawa police officer who hit a 15-year-old boy in the head several times during an arrest in a darkened Rockcliffe Park Public School yard has been cleared of misconduct after a review concluded the constable used “accepted” standards for use of force. [...]

While the probe couldn’t figure out how many times McFadden hit the boy, it is known that the officer broke his left hand — the hand he used to strike the boy in the head.

The trouble began just before 10:30 on the night in question. There had been complaints about mischief at the school yard weeks earlier, so Ottawa police set up a four-officer surveillance team.

The team included two plainclothes officers, one of whom wore shorts and a backwards ballcap, a sergeant, and an officer positioned inside the school, which is known for educating the children of diplomats and politicians, including those of Prime Minister Stephen Harper. [my italics]

And there you have it. Just as the multiple disruptions of civil rights during the G-20 were the required trappings of Contempt Party leader's MASSIVE *security* show, so must this particular surveillance "incident" exonerate police officers of charges that unwarranted and brutal force was deployed. The conclusions of the Review Board were predictable, as with the official refusal by Toronto Police to investigate cops' criminal actions during the G20.

SHithead and his Con jobs found in the RCMP and now in municipal police forces their most compliant and eager bullies.

Remember the Ottawa cop who abused a Black woman?

Sgt Steven Desjourdy has a new job. That's him on the right.

Yes Desjourdy - who should NOT even be allowed within 10 metres of any woman in police custody - now works in the division that investigates human trafficking.

In April this year - yes in 2014 - Desjourdy was "found guilty of discreditable conduct at an internal Ottawa police disciplinary hearing into a widely reported, controversial cellblock strip search in 2008.

In September 2008, Desjourdy left a female prisoner half naked in pants soaked with urine; her shirt and bra had been cut off during a strip search [...]

It took more than three hours for Desjourdy to provide her with temporary clothing called a blue suit."

DAMMIT JANET! has written about Desjourdy or pointed to him in reference to cop violence towards women in police custody.

For example, this: "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 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." 

Meanwhile, last week some Harper government MPs staged a series of opportunistic histrionics at the Justice Committee, ostensibly to hear presentations from women who have been trafficked and religious groups hoping to receive a large chunk of money in return for rescuing stigmatized victims they'll rehabilitate and pity, ALL in support of C36.

ADDED: This from Kate Heartfield captures the intent of the CPC dog-and-pony show, as well as the very worst moment when the chortling, snorting, oinking Con MP Goguen tried to score points against a lawyer (who substantiated his opposition to C36 with evidence) by badgering a multiple-rapes survivor.

(DJ! does NOT support C36; it is contempt for women and for the law.  In that blogpost, I reminded Peter MacKay - so greatly disgusted with "perverts" who purchase sexual services - that he might direct some of his outrage towards a certain Con politician, a buddy of Harper who subjected his wife to the very degradation that so incensed the Minister of Justice. Juxtapose this with the passage here, where Rob Ford offered up Renata to anyone interested. Procurement, or trafficking his wife. Is that a Ford family value?)

Back at the Justice Committee hearings, law enforcement witnesses like Chiefs of police supporting C36 were unable to explain why current criminal code sanctions against human trafficking aren't being enforced to stop "procurement" and the enslavement of women into forced sex work through threats, confinement and other brutal methods.  

And the focus of MP Joy Smith's (yes, the MP who hired Vic Toews' mistress) attention at the hearings was riveted upon the horrific, brutal stories told by women who had been trafficked.

Despite numerous fundamentalist religious groups vehemently claiming thousands upon thousands of women are sexually assaulted 10, 20, 30 times daily, very few police investigations, arrests, charges, and prosecutions of human trafficking are being followed through in any rigorous or systematic way.

On the last day of the hearings Christa Big Canoe of the Aboriginal Legal Services of Toronto challenged the legal sloppiness of the pro-C36 crowd who used trafficking, and prostituting as synonyms for one and same criminal activity.  

MPs should distinguish between sex work and human trafficking as they consider bringing in a new prostitution law to replace the one struck down last year by the Supreme Court, an expert said Thursday.
After three days of often heart-wrenching testimony, the House justice committee is wrapping up the first phase of its work on the government's proposed prostitution law rewrite.
Many of the witnesses told horrifying tales of being trafficked and abused, while others spoke in favour of letting sex workers choose to sell their services.
Christa Big Canoe, legal advocacy director at Aboriginal Legal Services of Toronto, summarized the divide following 20 hours of hearings.
"[What] we're hearing a lot from a lot of the witnesses is the interconnectedness, but what we're not hearing is the distinct differences between trafficking and sex work," she said.
Big Canoe suggested better enforcing Canada's existing human trafficking laws if MPs are worried about the problem. Studies of human trafficking, she said, talk about how elusive the traffickers are.
"So the question I have to this committee is, how is that going to change by the provisions that you're now proposing, and what can be done to change that if it's not already occurring?"
The committee has heard from police officers that it's difficult to charge alleged human traffickers and that some law enforcement agencies use the threat of charges against prostitutes to extricate them and have them provide evidence against the traffickers.
Big Canoe pointed out that last year's Supreme Court ruling known as Bedford dealt specifically with Canada's prostitution laws.
"Bedford was about sex work. It wasn't about trafficking. We have laws in Canada about trafficking that aren't actually being used well. 

So Sgt Desjourdy, "known to police" for brutalizing women in police custody, is assigned to Human Trafficking at the Ottawa Police Services.

What sadistic person in Human Resources assumed this bully and abuser of women would be an appropriate fit for law enforcement tactics which Prohibitionists and Evangelicals are counting upon to "extricate" women from coerced sex work, arrest them, threaten them until they agree to testify against their traffickers then afterwards dump them somewhere, perhaps in the basement of a church where Harper Conservative business men can exploit them as "regular" low-waged-with-no-benefits workers.  

Oh. Wait.

Grand merci @kwetoday whose tweet tipped me off to Desjourdy's new job.

Honesty is Always the best policy.

This is the face of the communications & PR company that the Ottawa Police has hired to polish their bad apples in order to craft a communications *game plan* and to correct its image.

Face Value's slogan is: Trust. Worthy.

The events caught on CCTV at the cop shop are merely the tip of the iceberg. There has been considerable public exposure of officers and special constables who engage in unprofessional conduct, brutality and illicit practices. It will take more than a communications *game plan* to halt the rising tide of citizens' disgust with those who defend the actions and behaviours of thugs and bullies.

Nonetheless, Derek Johnston has invested time and effort to marketing his company to clients such as the Ottawa Police. From here, we learn that he presents himself as a specialist

"in addressing the issues of how police organizations manage their reputations as part of their risk management strategies and how they communication risk [sic] to stakeholders and the public."

Okay doke. Perhaps Johnston is proposing to exploit social media in support of his client. If so, he might counsel in particular Chief Vern White to heed advice proffered by Marta Kagan.

Listen.

Messages are not conversations.

It's a dialogue not a monologue.

Relinquish control.

Don't F**k with people.

In a world of social media, honesty is the only policy.

What was that last point again? Honesty is the only policy. Good luck with that, Johnston. Hope that Chief White does not choose to emulate Toronto Chief of Police Bill Blair.

Update: More about that contract with Face Value Communications - Ottawa police services board chair Eli El-Chantiry said: “We want to be transparent, accountable and we want the public to expect no less from us.”

Now you see it. Now you don't.

"Showing more transparency" is usually code for the smoke-screen that lying liars create.

Thus it comes as a surprise that Ian Scott, director of the Special Investigations Unit, is siding with two families using civil litigation to challenge the unlawful deaths of family members killed by police officers.

Shorter Fantino: Oh yeah? Police ju-ju always trumps the Criminal Code and Charter rights.

Yes. That Fantino, currently in the Conservative Candidate Protection Program.

As well, read knitnut and dr dawg about the illegal police brutality directed at Stacy Bonds.

Finally: only a cop can ensure complaints against cops who do not follow proper procedure and are derelict in their legal duties, are processed in a fair and timely manner.

Doug Thompson was found dead in a city boarding house last September, and police officers gave his body to social services without checking his wallet or cell phone for ways to notify his next of kin. It took a week for his family to find out the 61-year-old had passed away of natural causes.

Andrew Thompson [an Ottawa police officer] filed a complaint, which resulted in internal discipline for the four officers. "We weren't satisfied with that given the seriousness of the negligence on their part," Thompson told the Standard- Freeholder earlier this year. "They've made a huge mistake."

The Ontario Civilian Police Association hearing will now review the charges laid against the four men. Thompson and his family also filed a $250,000 lawsuit against the police, city services and the coroner's office involved in the burial.

Link for above.

Merci to Toe for the news item about the SIU.

Rate a Cop

Another nifty use of the Intertoobz: Judge My Cop.

If you've had an experience with a cop -- good or bad -- this site wants to hear about it.

The website is the brainchild of 21-year-old Andre Borys, who was inspired to create the forum after his own encounter with Toronto police last summer. It was on one May evening that Mr. Borys was the designated driver for a group of friends out for a night on the town when police nabbed him for stopping in front of a pizza parlour in a no-parking zone.

“One officer looked at my licence, saw that I’m from Mississauga, and asked ‘What, they don’t have no-parking signs like this in Mississauga?’ ” recalled Mr. Borys, a fourth-year business student at McMaster University.

“I wanted to show him respect, so I didn’t respond with a smart-ass comment. Here I am being very respectful and he’s talking down to me.”

Mr. Borys doesn’t dispute the fact that he was breaking the law, nor that he deserved the $60 ticket, but says he felt making a complaint would have had no effect. So he started the website to allow people with similar experiences to air their grievances.

But it wasn’t until he saw the recent public outrage over alleged police brutality during the G20 summit making headlines this week that he decided to go live.

It went live very recently, so there aren't many comments there yet and they're all from Ontario.

So, what do the cops think? What did you expect? Waaaaaaah!

The Toronto Police Association says it is worried that a new website allowing the public to rant about their police encounters, publish names and badge numbers and rate officer behaviour, could incite “abuse” toward its members.

Well, when it come to 'abuse', the public has certainly been getting some lessons from the experts lately.

Paging Stacy Bonds. The Ottawa police haven't been mentioned yet.

Here's the site: Judge My Cop.

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?

Police brutality: cops walk, again.

More evidence that cops are not subjected to the same *justice* system standards that ordinary citizens are.

Two police officers charged after an incident with an elderly man that court heard involved a Taser, won’t have to face trial since the case was delayed too long.

RCMP Const. Mitchell Spears and Transit Police Const. Ken Jansen were both charged with assault after an incident at Surrey Memorial Hospital with patient Keith Booker that was witnessed by a nurse, court heard previously.

Spears, the officer who arrested Booker on April 22, 2010 and took him to hospital, was also charged with assault with a weapon.

B.C. Provincial Court judge Ronald Lamperson decided Wednesday all charges in the case, which saw an “institutional delay” of 22 months, would be stayed.

Meanwhile, research has confirmed the presence of a two-tier criminal *justice* system, with regard to First Nations, Metis and Inuit peoples.

Aboriginal people are so vastly over-represented in Canada's federal prison system that current policies are clearly failing them, according to a new report by the Office of the Correctional Investigator.

The report found "no new significant investments at the community level for federal aboriginal initiatives. No deputy commissioner dedicated solely to and responsible for aboriginal programs, planning, implementation and results. And worst of all, no progress in closing the large gaps in correctional outcomes between aboriginal and non-aboriginal inmates," Howard Sapers, the correctional investigator for Canada, said during a news conference in Ottawa.

The report was tabled in the House of Commons Thursday morning — only the second special report ever written by the investigator since the office's creation 40 years ago.

The trail of many social policies which have marginalized one group of our population "defines systemic discrimination," Sapers said.

Grand merci to Ikwew for source material.