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.

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.

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.

Bonjour la pôlisse! Got a permit for your *protest*?

Too, too funny.

Montreal Police are holding a press conference and a "manifestation" - a protest or a demonstration - today in front of the SPVM headquarters for their union members.

During Le printemps érable - literally, the Maple Spring - last year, at the height of the student protests against university tuition increases, the Charest government put pressure on municipalities to enforce their by-laws regulating demonstrations in public areas.

Two veterans of those 100 and more days of protests, tweeted about the cops' media event.  Very droll these two.

frogsarelovely in particular, who documented each protest with her smartphone camera and her tweets, was roughly handled by SPVM cops one night. She was held overnight on a trumped-up charge; a cop claimed that she had uttered threats. She is a pacifist, and her tweets reflect that.

So now the two of them are thinking that this protest needs to have a citizens' anti-riot squad to control such an unruly group, one that has a history of behaving violently. It's a union!  Of cops!  Where's their permit, to show that they're holding a LEGAL protest?

Justin Ling a journalist who covered the Carré Rouge protests in Montreal shared his observations and personal experience of police brutality, here.

[...]I found myself handcuffed, sitting on the sidewalk on a residential street in the Gay Village. Waving around my semi-official press credentials elicited only blank stares and occasional instructions to shut up from police officers. My get-out-of-jail-free card came in the form of a Tweet I managed to mash out before getting carted off to a detention facility. I, luckily, was released before being sent up the river.

There's little doubt that SPVM tactics during these protests have been reactionary. The dragnet put out there to catch vandals and criminals has netted over two thousand of arrests, including journalists, confused bystanders and peaceful protesters alike.

There's lots of anecdotal evidence that the officers have treated press freedom like a bit of a joke. Student journalist Pierre Chauvin's press pass actually got laughs from a few SPVM cops.

My situation -- which spawned a whirlwind of press -- had much to do with my method of escape, and the SPVM's quick thinking on Twitter.

But here's a thought: the police shouldn't be arresting journalists.

[...]Mainstream media outlets have been challenged to shell out the overtime to get online reporters into the streets each night, and independent journalists have been pushed to churn something out other than the traditional cut-and-dried head-news that have dominated much of the strike coverage.

[...]I have spent most of the protest working for OpenFile Montreal. Along with a crack team of other young journalists, we've published nightly coverage that has been consistent, insightful, and -- if I may say -- pretty damn good.

OpenFile has proved itself a strong challenger to the Montreal Gazette on the protest coverage, and has, I think, surpassed other anglophone mainstays like CTV. Hard-nosed journalism that hurls itself to the frontlines, finally, appears to be getting some recognition.

Enter CUTV.

The little campus-station-that-could has far surpassed expectations, becoming one of the staples of coverage for anyone following the strike.

Yet its in-your-face coverage (maybe bordering on overly aggressive,) coupled with a hard pro-protester editorial line have made them persona non grata amongst the police force.

I've seen the CUTV camera crews out every night, throwing themselves into this strike like few others have. Whether or not that's always a good thing is still a matter of some debate. Has CUTV moved away from covering the story, and towards becoming the story?

Still, CUTV's on-the-ground footage has, amid some snickering, been picked up by local, national and international news. It has captured images of police kettling, bonfires that plagued the Latin Quarter and instances that probably constitute undue use of force by the SPVM.

One wonders if CUTV was on the invitation list for the police union's press event AND demo/protest.

Fortunately or perhaps unfortunately, matraque... ah, matricule 728 aka Stéfanie Trudeau won't be able to attend the protest.  She is currently attending court-ordered psychiatric treatment.  In any event, the judge also issued a restraining order which forbids her access to police premises and contact with her colleagues, allegedly because she alluded to Christopher Dorner during one of her epic rages, this one in the offices of the SPVM police employees' union.

Too bad. Some judiciously applied pepper might nicely balance the dose of heavy salt on those Montreal streets after the snow storm...

Added: Justin Ling is known these days for his co-authorship of this piece of investigative journalism. 

Update: The Montreal Gazette reports on the Police Union's *manifestation* today.

*Inadvertent* Cop Brutality?

Or teaching kids what police can and will do to them?

Officer Chris Webb was attending “career day” at Tularosa New Mexico Intermediate School when he sent 50,000 volts of electricity into the child’s chest on the playground. 
The young boy blacked out and has, according to his legal representative, been suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder ever since; the officer faces a civil suit. 
According to the complaint, Webb shot his Taser at the child (referred to only as “R.D.”) after he said he did not want to join fellow classmates in cleaning the officer’s patrol car.  [...] Webb responded by pointing his Taser at R.D. and saying, ‘Let me show you what happens to people who do not listen to the police.’

From here. More.

Such casual and callous disregard for a child's life because he gave the cop "attitude", such reactionary and self-protective response to the legitimate criticism that this was abusive - and illegal - police authority.

We've written much about the systemic and tactical deployment of cop brutality at DJ!, from brute force directed at adolescents, reprisal against someone reporting inappropriate police actions, sexualized violence and degradation of female detainees, to G20 security and SPVM accountability.

Exemplary Cop (Update)

The Montreal police force (SPVM), is known for its brutality and lack of accountability.

In this Rabble News report from March 2012, Stefan Christoff provided an overview of decades of injustice served upon the Montreal population, particularly members of communities that are not protected by their connections to social status, money, organized crime or political power. Some highlights:

Now widely used by the Montreal police, flash bang grenades are made by Defense Technologies, a subsidiary of the world's second largest arms manufacturer, BAE Systems.Flash bangs are rubber-encased devices that explode, creating a 175-decibel shock wave, while emitting a flash of light and releasing a charge of CS gas into the air. CS gas is a chemical irritant that burns the eyes, affects the respiratory system and can cause vomiting. 

According to Defense Technologies' official warning text on the exploding weapon, "this product may cause serious injury or death to you or others."
On March 15, police used sound grenades and CS gas on civilian protesters, weaponry that did in fact "cause serious injury" for 22-year-old student protester Grenier from Cégep de Saint-Jérôme, protesting for accessible post-secondary education. 

Why are Montreal police deploying dangerous explosive devises against popular protests in 2012? Why are more serious questions not being asked in mainstream media coverage about this dangerous weaponry being deployed by Montreal police?

Fredy Villanueva, an 18-year-old youth from Montreal North, was killed by police in the summer of 2005, and his death is the subject of an ongoing struggle for justice led by the Villanueva family. 

To this day, no police officers involved in the Villanueva killing have been charged criminally or faced trial in relation to the shooting, despite a wealth of existing evidence on the topic. 

Villanueva's death inspired numerous underground hip-hop tracks in Montreal, with artists like Sans Pression and Dramatik directing verses against Montreal police shootings and racial profiling. 

In early January 2012, a police intervention at métro Bonaventure turned deadly when police shot and killed Farshad Mohammadi, a Kurdish refugee from Iran struggling with mental health issues and homelessness. The police killing quickly sparked protest in the city and police continue to keep secret a great deal of existing evidence and details surrounding the shooting. 

Since 1987, in Montreal, more than 60 people have been killed during police interventions, including Mario Hamel and Patrick Limoges, killed on the same morning by police bullets in June 2011.

And now Radio-Canada's report on the aberrant actions of a patroller, one Stéfanie Trudeau aka Badge 728 - captures the dysfunctional cop culture that flourishes within the rank and file of the SPVM. (Google translations here and here.) The CTV report is here.

The list of complaints against her is considerable.  It includes gratuitous violence.

Some may remember Matricule 728 from this GGI manifestation in May.

Trudeau may be exemplary but she is not unique.

UPDATE: The inevitable baying of sexist hounds has started, demanding her address and phone number to dox her so that others will inflict the physical harm they wish this woman to suffer.

This is harsh, and may recognize that a form of rehabilitation is required, for her and for all cops who behave thus.

But this is vile, as this one notes.

Josée Legault reminds us of the "rage à deux" that political discourse and police repression produce.

ADDED resource. From this tweet, more about the deleterious impact of cop culture.

TODAY'S UPDATE: My perspective was willfully misrepresented, with regard to outing and doxing Trudeau.  Read my original post.  I never suggested that the procedure used to deal with abusive cops should be more lenient for her.

Though it has been well-documented how social media has been used to transform specific women into targets for the rampant misogyny that festers at large, there are a few so-called pro-feminism men who persist in obdurate denial of this phenomenon and shriek about "gender stalinism" rather than acknowledge the reality. 

From Anita Sarkeesian to Amanda Todd, women and girls are violated online in specifically aggressive ways that men are not subjected to.  Are these threats carried out in real life?  Once a woman has been doxed, she is an open target.  

Food for thought: Whitney Phillips' piece in the Atlantic about Adrian Chen exposing  infamous Reddit moderator Violentacrez in a long profile. This is the product of a tenacious investigation into the many facets of this self-proclaimed troller as well as his role as the creator and moderator of the "Jailbait" and "CreepShots" forums. 

Phillips' reflection on trolling and its oft-denounced racist, homophobic and misogynist manifestations is a compelling and informative lecture.

Added: For those who can read French, this from Josée Legault must be read to understand the foundation and the connections that produced Matricule 728 and a cop culture amenable to political manipulation.
Grand merci to Miranda Nelson.

Evidence that some cops are indeed pigs.

A woman who was bound and sexually assaulted by her then-neighbour, Col. Russell Williams says the police left her tied up for five hours after responding to her 911 call.

Laurie Massicotte says Ontario Provincial Police officers told her they had to leave her in the harness, fashioned by Williams, until an OPP photographer arrived to take pictures of her in the restraint. [...] "Five hours, no medical attention. I was in total shock. I didn't know what the heck was going on." The OPP, she said, treated her like a criminal in the early hours of the investigation.

One officer told her neighbour, Massicotte said, that police suspected she was trying to "copycat" what happened to another sexual assault victim in Tweed, Ont., 12 days earlier.

From here.

Remember, the police did not release to the public any information or warnings with regard to the break-ins and sexual assaults to which women in that area had been subjected.

So how could she "copycat" those crimes? Instead of treating Massicotte like the victim of a crime, the cops assumed she was a perpetrator or complicit.

How many times does police malfeasance need to be proven before the criminal justice system expels these incompetent, sexist, brutal cops?

Advice to Cops: Choose Your Victim Carefully

This is what it takes to get a conviction for a couple of cop-thugs.

But look at the sentence.

Two police officers were handed a virtual house arrest sentence for beating up a disability pensioner who disrespected them.

In January, Justice Elliott Allen found Const. Edward Ing and Const. John Cruz guilty of assault causing bodily harm in the April 2009 attack on disabled pensioner Richard Moore at his Cabbagetown rooming-house.

Ing and Cruz are allowed to leave their homes to work. In addition to the 12-month conditional sentence, the officers were banned from possessing weapons for 10 years. However, that ban is expected to be lifted Tuesday afternoon, when lawyers begin an appeal.

The appeal will likely be heard within the year.

In finding the officers guilty as charged, Allen rejected the officers’ account that they were trying to protect Moore from stepping into traffic.

Moore suffered fractured ribs, dislocated shoulder, a broken finger, a gash to his scalp and scratches to his stomach, hip and shoulder when he was pursued to the door of his Gerrard St. E. home and beaten by the officers.

The officers then arrested Moore for being drunk in public, a charge that was later tossed out after medical tests showed he had no alcohol in his system.

Dig this boohoohoo.

[Defense lawyer] Butt said the transfer from outside duties has cost the officers an estimated $30,000 to $40,000 yearly in overtime and paid duty work.

Reported in the Sun. Oh look.

Moore, who is on a disability pension and was former Toronto Sun printer and ironworker, has had Hepatitis C since 1995 when he underwent nose surgery at Scarborough General Hospital.

So. Cops gotta beat the living shit out of a disabled guy, lie about it, and it gets covered because the victim is a former employee of the rag in order for there to be any repercussions?

Do I have that right?

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.

Ottawa cops presume they're *experts* ...

when it comes to their beliefs for determining if women have been sexually assaulted or not.

University of Ottawa criminal lawyer Blair Crew, said about a third of investigations into sexual assault end with police saying the allegations are unfounded. [...] he said Ottawa police tend to discount a higher proportion of sexual assaults than they do other crimes.

Crew said for a four-year period from 2003-2007, 31 per cent of sexual assault claims that Ottawa Police investigated were dismissed as unfounded — that is, they [believe] never happened — as opposed to unsubstantiated, where there isn't enough evidence to follow the case.

He said by comparison, Toronto's police — which had gone through an audit in how it conducts sexual assault investigations — found only seven per cent of claims to be unfounded. And the rate of claims reported to police that are ruled unfounded tends to be about two to three per cent for other crimes, said Crew. [...]

He said police, still largely male-based organizations, tend to view sexual assaults as something that didn't occur and treat claimants more as suspects than as complainants.

"Frontline sexual assault workers as well as [...] women that have been in my office over a number of years have been insisting they were sexually assaulted despite the police insistence that no crime occurred," he said.

From here.

When you consider the Ottawa police force employs individuals like Melanie Morris and Steven Desjourdy, and that it rejects close to 1/3 of all complaints of sexual assault. it's no surprise women don't bother filing charges.

Cry me a river ....

Sorry Officer Olivera, but this mawkish attempt to spin the reality of working conditions for cops, medical emergency personnel, fire fighters and street intervention staff is transparent.

From here:

An Ottawa police officer wants the public to know that working in the police station cellblock can be dangerous. Special Const. Carlos Olivera said he has to take a cocktail of drugs in case he was infected with the HIV virus or hepatitis C after an incident in the cellblock in December.

He came forward with his story because of recent news coverage of a video showing another special constable kicking Ottawa woman Stacy Bonds after she was arrested in 2008.

And perhaps you've been pushed into the media spotlight by the public relations guy Ottawa Police chief White hired?

Funny how it is that nurses, ambulance personnel, firefighters and homeless shelter workers who face similar health-endangering risks when helping people in need don't beat them up to teach them a lesson, the way some cops feel they're entitled to do.

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.

"Good" apple meets "bad" apple.

And the rest is now history.

A judge has released a video that shows an Ottawa police special constable kicking a man in the cells after other officers dragged him by the legs. [...] In the Delay case, [Justice] Nicholas said Delay, a homeless Aboriginal man, was kicked by Melanie Morris like "you wouldn't kick a dog." The judge also said the entire incident "rattles [her] confidence in the system." [...]

[Constable] Martin, who received an award for his role in rescuing two people whose van had plunged into an icy creek in 2008, initially testified he arrested Delay because his inebriation made him a danger. He also testified that Delay
swore and acted aggressively when he was approached by the officers when he was left in his cell and that Delay tried to hit Morris while she tried to close the cell door.

According to a court transcript, the video shows Delay acting calm and compliant. Delay never hits or takes a swing at Morris on tape. In her closing remarks, Nicholas said she found Martin's testimony riddled with inconsistencies from beginning to end. Martin's notes from the arrest didn't include details pointing to Delay's inebriation until the very end, suggesting he tacked them on later, she said.

Martin also changed his testimony about Delay's aggressiveness in the cellblock after being shown the video, saying the officers' use of force was justified by his behaviour on the street and in the squad car and maintaining Delay continued to yell and swear despite appearing calm on tape.

Throughout his testimony, Martin maintained he never saw Morris kick Delay.

To help understand the coercive nature of pressure exerted upon a cop hero like Martin, producing a version that protects or rationalizes a colleague's abusive actions, check out the comments from Balbulican and Peter after this blogpost.