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By turning their backs, police are deepening America’s tribalism
Shannon Stapleton/Reuters America’s streets are turning black and blue. A rising tide of urban tribalism, most readily apparent in the deplorable behaviour of New York City cops, is bad news for...
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The police vs. social media
(Evelyn Hockstein/The Washington Post/Getty Images) Policing and social media By Christopher J. Schneider In a very real sense, this a story of two hockey riots. The Vancouver Canucks went to the final...
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To serve and forecheck
Louise Warren. (Photograph by Colin Way) Louise Warren is a forward on the Calgary Inferno. It’s an unpaid gig—with the exception of a few team-related expenses that are covered—and so like most pros...
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Five underrated reasons for Trump’s win
Elam Stoltzfus plants lawn signs outside a U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump campaign rally in West Allis, Wisconsin, United States, April 3, 2016. (Jim Young/Reuters) After Donald...
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A closer look at the rise in hate crimes in Canada
Imam Shazim Khan cleans up debris, on Sunday, November 15, 2015, after the only mosque in Peterborough, Ont., was deliberately set alight Saturday night. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Christopher Katsarov) The...
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The police saved my queer, Muslim life. And they can be allies for others, too.
Shawn Ahmed, the author. (Photograph by Jim Davidson) I’m gay, Muslim, and a person of colour. And I’m able to write this because the police saved my life. In March of last year, the York Regional...
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How to get the cops out of your Pride parade
Scenes like this one from Toronto’s 2016 Pride parade are increasingly rare. A Calgary Pride news release Wednesday seemed to be setting off what, this year, is a familiar pattern in some Canadian...
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The Dafonte Miller case reveals a troubling trust gap for police
A Toronto Police officer is seen here in 2016. (Shutterstock) Last week, Toronto police chief Mark Saunders and Mayor John Tory publicly addressed rumours of a police cover-up in the case of Dafonte...
View ArticleWho’s policing the police?
The post Who’s policing the police? appeared first on Macleans.ca.
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Are police doing enough to find missing people in Toronto’s Gay Village?
A general view of Church-Wellesley Village is seen on September 17, 2017 in Toronto, Ontario. (Valerie Macon/AFP/Getty Images) Here’s a truism: People don’t just disappear. In the last decade, there...
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The fallout of police violence is killing black women like Erica Garner
Erica Garner takes part in a candlelight vigil. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri Christen A. Smith, Associate professor, University of Texas at Austin The sting of the premature death of 27-year-old Erica...
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The problem at the root of the RCMP’s dysfunctional culture
RCMP officers march off the parade grounds following the RCMP National Memorial Service in Regina on Sept. 12, 2010. (Mark Taylor/CP) Ken Hansen is an independent defence and security analyst and owner...
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Rise of the SWAT team: Routine police work in Canada is now militarized
Members of the police SWAT team gather outside a small apartment building in Montréal in 2009. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Paul Chiasson) Kevin Walby, Associate Professor of Criminal Justice, University of...
View ArticleThe ‘hidden’ piece of the Liberal crime bill: police may get to skip court
“I absolutely abhor omnibus bills,” says Tim Quigley, a law professor emeritus at the University of Saskatchewan, “because often tucked away in there are things that nobody really sees, or in the case...
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Caught between a rock and a hard place, Toronto Police confused the city
In March of 1986, a letter arrived at RCMP headquarters in downtown Toronto. It was sent by a group calling itself the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Our Homeland, and it threatened that...
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The perplexing sight of cops saluting George Floyd’s casket
George Floyd, whose death at the knee of police officer Derek Chauvin prompted a global anti-racism protest movement, was laid to rest following a private funeral in Houston this week. Family members,...
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The armour-plated blue line in Brandon, Man.
On Jan. 16, Brandon, Man., police rolled into a downtown neighbourhood with a weapons warrant, and a vehicle fitted for urban warfare. By about 3 p.m. officers had shut down the 300 block of 15th...
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Someone must police the police
Michael Spratt, certified by the Ontario Law Society as a criminal law specialist, is a partner at the Ottawa law firm Abergel Goldstein & Partners and co-host of the legal and political podcast...
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Too many cops?
Ian Lindsay / Vancouver Sun This spring, Tamara Cartwright dropped off an envelope at her local post office outside Lethbridge, Alta. A friend had sent her a jar of hemp-based ointment, so she replied...
View ArticlePolice board kills promotions for G20-tainted cops
Toronto police officers who removed their name tags during last year’s G20 protests have been denied promotions by the city’s police board. A total of 90 officers were found to have stripped off their...
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Byron Sonne: sacrificial lamb, scapegoat, gadfly
The Yiddish language is wonderfully precise when it comes to put-downs. Consider this famous explanation of the difference between a shlemiel and a shlemazl: “A shlemiel is somebody who often spills...
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Californian Occupy protesters pepper sprayed
Capture from YouTube video by asucd The police chief and two officers at the University of California are on leave after a video emerged online that shows riot police pepper spraying peacefully-seated...
View ArticleMcGill Principal defends herself
McGill Principal Heather Munroe-Blum told the Montreal Gazette yesterday that she is “sorry” to students who were hurt by pepper spray when riot police showed up at the administration building on Nov....
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Meet Aminta Granera, Nicaragua’s 60 year-old police chief
Oswaldo Rivas/Reuters Cops like Marge Gunderson, the petite but very pregnant police chief who resolves gruesome crimes in the Coen brothers’ landmark movie Fargo, really exist. Meet Aminta Granera,...
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Police: No ‘good examples’ of why we need Lawful Access
www.stopspying.ca For the past 12 years, Canada’s cops have been pushing for new laws that would allow them to skip the pesky formality of having to get a warrant before spying on us on the Internet....
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Guess who’s recruiting education grads
RCMP by Daniel Paquet Education graduates face a dismal job market. Two-thirds of recent grads in Ontario aren’t working full-time. The University of British Columbia’s teacher’s college recently...
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Lawful Access: a creepy Valentine from Vic Toews
(Sean Kilpatrick/CP) Vic Toews wants to make one thing clear: He does not want to read my email. His office reached out to me after I wrote this post, which detailed the inability of our police to find...
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Security theatrics and Byron Sonne
Pat Hewitt/CP “You guys sure as hell didn’t find any combined explosives, ’cause I didn’t make any.” –Byron Sonne, under interrogation by Detective Tam Bui, June 26, 2010 It’s called “security...
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Do Canadian cops need warrants for GPS tracking?
The American Civil Liberties Union recently shocked Americans with news that dozens of police departments across the country were tracking suspects through the GPS chips in their phones without any...
View ArticleOn navel-gazing, civil liberties, and Shimon Peres
I hope readers will forgive a post that is definitely narcissistic and possibly an overreaction. Here it goes: Israeli President Shimon Peres was in town last night. There was a reception at the...
View ArticleThe Conservatives and the crime rate
Vic Toews acknowledges that the crime rate is going down, this time in a speech on increasing policing costs. “I’ll be blunt,” Mr. Toews said. “Police services face two options: They can do nothing and...
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Quebec demands continued federal cash to recruit police officers
Photograph by Roger LeMoyne When the Conservative government unveiled a $400-million five-year fund to help provinces recruit police officers in 2008, it was billed as a key part of Prime Minister...
View ArticleTolerating civil disobedience
In a pair of blog posts, Brent Rathgeber explains his concerns with some of the tactics used by Idle No More protesters. Last Wednesday, Native Protestors blocked the QE II near Gateway Boulevard fully...
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A new tool in the drug war: marijuana scratch-and-sniff cards
The smell of cultivated marijuana is spreading across England this week, courtesy of Crimestoppers U.K. The crime-fighting charity is mass mailing scratch-and-sniff cards which replicate the smell of...
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London Police should stop targeting Western students
Western homecoming 2012 (Jessica Darmanin) When members of Western’s cheerleading team launched a member into the air on their way to the football game this weekend against Queen’s, their attempt to...
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Who’s to blame for the mess in Toronto?
The most surprising thing Rob Ford has ever done isn’t his belated admission that he has smoked crack cocaine. It’s the fact he became mayor of Toronto in the first place. Traditionally, Torontonians...
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Police officers can’t seek legal advice to prepare notes: Supreme Court
Nick Procaylo/PNG The widespread police practice of consulting with a lawyer while making notes of incidents which are under investigation in Ontario is “an anathema to the very transparency” of the...
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Cop cuts ties with Carleton over class speaker
Matt Skof (left), president of the Ottawa Police Association (Megan Gillis/Ottawa Sun/QMI Agency) Darryl Davies, a criminology instructor at Carleton University, says he brought a witness in a trial...
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Time for an informed debate over policing powers
Prime Minister Stephen Harper hugs the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada Justin Trudeau in the House of Commons on Thursday October 23, 2014 in Ottawa. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press) Sen. Vern...
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The truth about race, the police and Ferguson
The uniform worn by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson on the night he shot Michael Brown (AP Photo/St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office) Darren Wilson is a white, 28-year-old male,...
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