The Blue BS machine

They're at it again this morning. A two-fer, in fact.

On the CBC's Metro Morning today, a virtual tag team. First up: former Toronto police union boss Craig Bromell – a guy who needs no introduction, I'm sure. Surprise, surprise – he and Bill Blair haven't always seen eye to eye, but he doesn't think Blair should resign. But the cops he's talked to think the chief should have just kept his mouth shut about the SIU. What a shock.

But Brother Craig's got some, er, unique insights into the Adam Nobody shitkicking. While it's no surprise that he's saying we should wait for the results of the investigations and let the processes run their course, he's also saying Blair might have gotten bad advice from his lawyers and PR people. And closer to the ground, apparently, we don't know what "intelligence" the cops at Queen's Park were acting on, and we don't know what tactical directions they were getting from their superiors.

Boy, I can just imagine what that "intelligence" and what those orders must have sounded like. "All units, see that guy with the beard and the long hair? Terrorist. Take him down. Extreme prejudice."

Next up: the Man himself, kindly deigning to speak to the CBC from Victoria. No, I didn't refuse to co-operate with Andre Marin; it was all his people talking to my people and I never had a conversation with him. And a shout-out to the Star for providing us with video evidence, we're acting on it, and we've identified the officers, and we're working with the SIU, yada yada yada. And maybe I should have been a little bit more clear about the impugned regulation under the Public Works Protection Act, and what it empowered officers to do. And no, I don't know what a public inquiry would accomplish, there are all kinds of probes and inquiries and investigations going on, and they're just overlapping and confusing everything, so let's just let them do their work.

Uh-huh.

I mean, I don't want to sound, well, snide or anything, but would a guy with integrity:

• slough off responsibility onto unnamed underlings
• wait for a newspaper to take the lead on providing crucial evidence
• hide behind a thicket of process?

Well, I sure feel better now. Some years from now, some of the gorillas who assaulted Adam Nobody might even lose a day's pay. Still waiting to hear about the assholes who ripped off John Pruyn's prosthetic leg and laughed while they ordered him to hop. Or the racist, sexist and homophobic pigs who were taunting, threatening and abusing people at the Eastern Avenue gulag. 

The security-and-repression apparatus is going full-tilt boogie, but the spin machine is in danger of overheating, I think.