Who muzzled the RCMP over Insite?

Paul Wells yesterday on the bogus “academic” argument against Insite and the muzzling of RCMP's attempts to fix their earlier support of it :

"The only “research” the Harper government is prepared to rely on, as it fights Insite all the way to the Supreme Court, was not research; was secretly bought and paid for with federal tax dollars; contradicts the actual research; has been disowned internally by the police force that bankrolled it; and would have been disowned publicly by that police force if somebody at the RCMP’s highest ranks or outside it hadn’t put the kibosh on."

In December RCMP in BC were set to hold a presser to acknowledge :

"an extensive body of Canadian and international peer-reviewed research reporting the benefits of supervised injection sites and no objective peer-reviewed studies demonstrating harms.” As well, [Chief Superintendent] Harriman said the RCMP would admit that “reviews” commissioned by the force, which contested the centre’s research, “did not meet conventional academic standards.”

Then BC's RCMP Deputy Commissioner Gary Bass called it off : "I’m really sorry, I’ve been ordered not to go ahead with the news conference.” But on whose orders exactly?

John Geddes wrote the original piece on this at Maclean's on Friday, already linked by Pogge and The Jurist. Today Wells is pushing to get some traction on an issue that, regardless of what anyone's opinion of Insite may be, clearly points to government data fudging. Where the hell is the rest of the media on this?

Comments under both Wells and Geddes are running to the "oh well, research, who can tell what's really true?" and "who said the government interfered?"variety.

Well you can tell a couple of things about one of those RCMP commissioned reports, written by Dr. Colin Mangham, and how government figured in them.

Flashback : In May 2008, Tony Clement, then Health Minister, turned up at the Standing Committee on Health intending to combat Insite with one doctor in tow - Colin Mangham, "Director of Research" for the Drug Prevention Network of Canada.

The Drug Prevention Network of Canada is a member org of the Canadian government's National Drug Prevention Advisory Committee and an offshoot of the Drug Prevention Network of the Americas, dedicated to "combating the drug legalization movement globally."

The current president of DPNCanada is also on the board of DPNAmericas; the Canadian vice pres is Gwen Landolt of REAL Women. Rounding out the board of our own war on drugs Canadian clonetank is founder and past president ReformaCon MP Randy White, plus a couple of Scientology Narconon graduates.

"Honorary board member" Calvina L. Fay of Drug Free America and Save Our Society From Drugs is touted as having "served as an advisor to President Bush on drug policy".
Yeah, war on drugs!

So did Clement's Dr. Mangham have any data for the Health Committee in 2008 to support his contention that 22 independent research papers in support of Insite were worthless? No, he was just offering an opinion, a "critique".

Cathie was on this back in 2007 with the publishing of Mangham's "critique". The new wrinkle is that someone muzzled the RCMP on coming clean about it last fall.

Now who do we know that has made a veritable career out of muzzling civil servants ?

Humanity vs Corporatism (Update)

Another round in the battle between do-gooders and evil-doers?

Taser International's lawyers are challenging the findings of the Braidwood Commission in the BC Supreme Court.

Taser International says its bottom line is hurting and its reputation has been slurred in the wake of a provincial public inquiry report that concluded the weapon can cause death. ...

David Neave, a lawyer for the U.S. manufacturer, told Judge Robert Sewell on Monday that Taser is concerned about Braidwood’s conclusion that the weapon can cause death. “It’s a slur on Taser that its device can kill,” Neave said. “That’s a slur that ought to be removed.”

Sewell noted the commission had concluded the “harm this product could cause carries with it a low risk of death.” However, Neave said there is no medical or scientific evidence to support that the weapon has caused any deaths.

Sewell challenged Neave further and said use of the weapon, if carried out by anyone other than police officers, could be considered assault causing bodily harm. “This product is designed to cause harm,” the judge said.

Neave rejected that. “It’s designed to incapacitate,” he said. “Certainly there is a pain component associated.”

I believe that the terms that I've emphasized, if employed by anyone other than a lawyer working for Taser International, could be considered weasel words.

Taser International claims that Braidwood's conclusions "had caused concern with customers around the world and it was hurting potential sales". The price of stock shares seems to be affected also, as a result of the commissioner's plain language observations that were widely disseminated in news items.

I blogged about Braidwood last year. I mentioned, and linked to a letter sent to Sofia Cisowski from Dr Mike Webster, RCMP staff psychologist. There are points that he used that need repeating, in light of what happened in Toronto during the g-20.

As in all democratic societies, the police in Canada are given the authority to use force to ensure that the laws of the country are upheld and public safety and security are maintained. This, of course, carries the expectation that police persons and their organizations will be accountable to the public for any use of force . However, even though the community provides the police with the ability to employ legitimate force, several questions arise:

i. What is a reasonable use of force?
ii. Why and under what circumstances is one type of force chosen over another?; and, iii. What standards are in place to ensure that there is consistency in addressing use of force situations?

The police, in Canada, have attempted to address these questions by developing use of force models. No matter whether it is the RCMP's Incident Management Intervention Model (IMIM) or the more widely used National Use of Force Framework (NUFF), these are attempts to integrate force options (e.g. presence, communication…etc.) with a generic decision making model (e.g. assess-plan-act). There are some key principles underlying these models:

i. The primary responsibility of a police person is to preserve and protect life;
ii. The primary objective of any use of force is to ensure public safety;
iii. The safety of the police person is essential to public safety; and,
iv. The use of force model does not replace the law.

In May 2009 blogpost, I refered to a tipping point,

"the level at which the momentum for change becomes unstoppable", as defined by Malcolm Gladwell in his book, refining the expression as a sociological term: "the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point."

Dr Dawg also used that expression in this post.

There are reports, many documented by lawyers who attempted to communicate with their clients (activists pre-emptively apprehended and detained in cells during the g-20) that young people from the province of Québec were specifically targeted by police organizations.

That information must be presented in the course of the civilian-led public review into the behaviour of the riot police in order to identify the source of directives that dictated their actions - even though the head of the Toronto Police union has rightfully stated that it won't be a a full-fledged public inquiry that would be legally binding, as ordered by the province.


Photo source.

Update: As more information about the abusive policing methods on display at the g-20 emerge, some media are suggesting that "the RCMP were largely at the helm" of the security operations. This makes the information supplied by Dr David Webster relevant to these circumstances also.

Sunset for the RCMP.

Yesterday Dr Dawg wrote about Mike Webster's revealing testimony at the Braidwood Inquiry.

This is the letter that Dr Webster wrote to Zofia Cisowski (Robert Dziekanski 's mother) published in the Globe and Mail.

While not 'le coup de grâce' to the RCMP that some might wish, Dr Webster's letter may well signal the tipping point, "the level at which the momentum for change becomes unstoppable", as defined by Malcolm Gladwell in his book, refining the expression as a sociological term: "the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point."

Today Gary Mason, a journalist at the Globe and Mail, adds his own perspective. The thirteen comments that follow his article express agreement with the points presented by Dr Webster.

The fourteenth comment is from Mason Wright, Globe and Mail evening news editor, apologizing for closing the comments section, citing 'legal reasons.'

The members of the toxic executive inner circle of the RCMP will not go quietly. They have demonstrated that they are willing to hold public safety in fealty to their imperatives, and the public hostage to their collective arrogance.