Sunday, August 12, 2007

Our national disgrace: disband the RCMP now















Enough is enough. What does our national police force have to do to be reined in--launch an abortive coup d'état? Now it actually has the face to defend its negligent and possibly criminal actions against Maher Arar, and its subsequent sorry efforts to cover it all up. How much more are Canadians and the gutless political "masters" of this out-of-control police force willing to take?

Over the past few months we've watched Mounties execute
shoot a young man under dubious circumstances and do their best to hide the trail, assault a group of Native people
celebrating a soccer victory in their own village, lie to Parliament, and now shamefully rationalize their cover-up in the Arar case, a cover-up that turns out to be based, not upon questions of national security, but on protecting assorted asses, not excluding their own.

How many more civilians will be shot under suspicious circumstances? Taxpayer dollars mismanaged to the tune of billions? Natives brutalized? Whistleblowers punished, with the complicity of Canadian courts? Peaceful demonstrators and infants pepper-sprayed? Citizens sent to other countries to be tortured, based upon false information? Mass-murderers uncaught because of bungling incompetence? Civilian "review" scoffed at?

A new Commissioner won't do it--it turns out that he's into this muck up to his neck. Reforms won't do it--the corruption has by now extended deep roots into the culture that has been allowed to fester in this police force for years. It's a sick culture, one in which sexual harassment runs rampant, where young Native girls are seen as an occupational perk, where racism is the order of the day.

The "horribly broken" RCMP doesn't need to be reformed. It needs to be disbanded.

It's 2007 and it's time for a clean slate. Are you listening, Prime Minister Harper? Stéphane Dion? Jack Layton? Gilles Duceppe? Canadians have a right to--and we must have--a new national police force, one not only sworn to uphold the law rather than break it with impunity, but under a civilian review board with the power to ensure that the oath is kept: one that can actually bring errant officers, and indeed the Commissioner if need be, to account.We need a new police discipline and a new police culture, and they need to be rebuilt from the ground up. We're long, long overdue. Which political leader will have the courage to step up to the plate first and demand it?