Kamloops’ support for Cpl. Michaud is well-deserved as he continues to recover after being shot during a routine traffic stop. Good relations between the RCMP and the Kamloops community indicates how different things are in Canada than the U.S. But we can’t take that for granted.
(G20 demonstrations in Toronto, 2010)
It’s unlikely that the citizens of in Ferguson, Missouri, will be holding a fund-raising dinner for any of their injured cops any time soon. Not after the controversial shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, by the police last August.
Not after the police in Ferguson responded to a peaceful demonstration by citizens, hands in the air pleading “don’t shoot,” in full military gear and created a city under siege.
That doesn’t seem to fit into the police force motto to “serve and protect,” does it? Just where did they get all that military gear in the first place? It turns out that U.S. police are the “beneficiaries” of hand-me-down gear from the most well-financed army in the world.
You see, once the U.S. army invades a country, it has a lot of stuff left over; especially when you consider that the economy is based on the production of new weapons.
That’s how Ferguson, population 21 thousand, ended up with armoured vehicles, night-vision goggles, assault rifles, and assorted battle gear on hand, just in case things get ugly, writes John Lorinc in Walrus magazine.
Things are not as bad in Canada but we must be vigilant of mission creep. A similar program exists in Canada where the Canadian Forces has been transferring night-vision goggles and field equipment to the RCMP for years, including “de-armed” armoured fighting vehicles. Saskatoon police recently used their own AFV in a stand-off, and released aerial footage of the event.
The Vancouver police department bought at Lenco BearCat armoured rescue vehicle in 2007. York Region, north of Toronto, acquired a $340,000 Quebec-made “rolling fortress.” In Montreal and Quebec City, cops have taken to wearing camouflage pants, a practice that has raised eyebrows.
Police must be armed with weapons to match those of deranged shooters. If police had the carbines promised in Moncton, perhaps the death count of three RCMP could have been reduced.
However, a properly armed police force and a militarized one are not the same thing. It’s a mental mind-set as much as a material one and it works both ways. Once a community sees police as protecting moneyed corporate interests and state ideology, rather than the community’s, the trust is broken. Once police view criminal elements as being so wide-spread as to poison the community they serve, the community becomes the “other.”
Neil Boyd, criminologist at SFU doesn’t see militarization in Canada to the same degree as the U.S. However, “It is worrying on one level, because we think of militarization as armed conflict between states,” Boyd said. “As a society, that’s not consistent with the police model of keeping the peace. The question we have to ask is, Are the police more inclined to take an us-and-them approach, or are they simply acquiring more technology? ”
Canadians must remain vigilant against the militarization of police and the mind-set that can follow. Civil society depends on that delicate balance.
Eye View 