Canada Updates

Yesterday I noted that I'd been searching -- at least as of late last year -- for any news about a promised independent investigation of the violent takedown last May of a teenager dressed as a Star Wars trooper by Lethbridge, AB police. A Canadian visitor sent me a link to this story in the Calgary Herald dated December 21, 2020, seven months after the episode:

No criminal charges will be laid following an external investigation into the Lethbridge Police Service takedown of a teenager dressed as a Star Wars character in May.

Well, criminal charges are beside the point and would hve been unlikely. In the US, there's a charge for assault under color of authority, which is usually applied to race-related incidents. The Lethbridge cops, and their supervisors, were just really dumb, not criminal, and the question is whether they should be dealing with any issues requiring good judgment, which is what police jobs often require. So the external investigation skipped over the real question. But the story goes on,

[Cafe] owner Bradley Whalen[, who had hired the teenager to wear the outfit for a promotion,] told Postmedia on Wednesday that he wasn’t surprised by the results of the investigation.

He said he had problems with the process of a nearby jurisdiction’s police force taking up the investigation, with ASIRT’s involvement limited to ensuring the investigation was conducted independently and objectively.

“It was pretty much a joke,” Whalen said. “We know that they know that they did wrong.”

Whalen said he talked with Medicine Hat investigators once, and said neither he nor the employee had received any contact or apology from Lethbridge police.

He questioned why the investigation took more than half a year, with the outcome released days before Christmas.

“I didn’t expect anything else. I don’t know why it took so long. It’s just to make people wait and forget, I guess,” Whalen said. “They didn’t want anybody asking questions and they didn’t want anyone to be available for comment this afternoon.”

So the question of whether the whole episode was grossly mishandled, which it clearly was, and whether anybody will be held accountable, which they almost certainly won't, goes back to the good ol' boys in Lethbridge.

Regarding exactly what happened in the Burnaby, BC Canadian Tire store last Monday, the official version, thanks to the same Canadian visitor, is that the man who refused to wear a mask and was violently taken down by a group of store security guards was arrested for assault.

Be that as it may -- the police make arrests in such cases based on the credibility of witnesses on the scene, but the disposition of the case is then with the courts -- the actual video images we have show the man in a carotid hold from store security.

In the US, this hold, when used by police agencies, is extremely controversial. It is often categorized as "deadly force". The question in my mind is how a store security department, using low-end semiskilled personnel who often are not authorized to carry firearms, could contemplate the use of such a tactic at all. As of last Wednesday, news reports said the Mounties were asking the public for additional video of the incident.

But the Mounties certainly would know the place to go for video would be the Canadian Tire security department, which would have video coverage of the whole store, from multiple angles. Even to ask the public for their cell phone shots, when all the detectives have to do is go to the back office and see the store video, is kinda silly.

My view is whatever the obnoxious customer did, the store security staff grossly mishandled the situation and created bad publicity for the store. The goon trying to break the guy's neck in the photo, and his supervisor, should be fired.

The impression I have is that US police agencies are much more acutely aware of potential public scrutiny of their actions in these sorts of situations, and local news in particular is much more conscientious about followup. I'm not impressed by how Canadian public relations officers or local media handled either situation.

Hey, you guys up there, this is the 21st century.