Don't like carding? @TPSboard, @TorontoPolice, @TPAca team up for a giant F.U. | #TOpoli

Aw, come on, you old sourpuss! Can it really be that bad?

Well, maybe. He smiles nicely for the camera.

What's that? I'm being mean, you say? Unfair, even? Because you just know people so deeply invested in a toxic and dysfunctional status quo will happily hand the top job over to a guy who's going to fix it!

As some schmuck once argued:

... we're talking about an ingrained culture that's been setting in and putrefying for decades, if not centuries. Anyone perceived as an enemy ... gets targeted and slimed. And anyone who wants to function and rise within that culture has to buy into its intrinsic values, no matter how sociopathic or dysfunctional.

"Civilian oversight." Right. I'll just be over in the corner, throwing up.

The door's this way, Chief Blair

So it seems Bill Blair isn't getting with Team Ford's austerity program.

Instead of being a good boy and implementing the 10-per-cent reduction the mayor's team is demanding of city managers, he's looking for a budgetary increase. Not a lot, mind, but the surrounding drama, already at a slow boil, has been cranked up even farther, and now there's speculation that his job's on the line.

Someone remind me: what does the Police Services Board do again?

So the cops are going to keep their sound cannons. The deal is done.

Mr. Mukherjee, tear down this wall

Just finished listening to Matt Galloway throwing softballs to Alok Mukherjee on Metro Morning.

More on police brutality during the G20, and institutional response

Thoughtful piece in NOW magazine, and my initial response:

All good stuff, but ultimately the fight isn't with the Board, the chief, or any discrete police force, be it municipal, provincial or federal. What's at issue here is a dysfunctional organizational and occupational culture that isn't going to be fixed by any institutional response or individual inquiry or review.

Consider: what is it about policing that makes individual cops think it's OK to beat the shit out of peaceful citizens exercising their fundamental rights? Or abuse the power of preventive detention, knowing that whatever charges are filed will ultimately never stand up, but also knowing that there won't be any individual or organizational accountability for the abuses visited upon people? As bad as the police misbehaviour during the G20 was, these questions go far beyond that weekend.

Which is why any anticipation of a meaningful institutional response is, in my submission, ultimately misguided and futile. The Board isn't going to do anything that seriously ruffles police feathers. They all saw what happened to Alan Heisey. Moreover, the fog and confusion arising from questions of overlapping jurisdiction, and just how far the Board's mandate extends, and the continuing distraction arising from the debate over policy versus operational matters, pretty much guarantees that the Board won't be able to accomplish anything meaningful.

Deputants will have their say. Recommendations will be made. Fingers will be wagged and tuts will be tutted. But as long as cop culture itself persists as it is currently, well ... don't hold your breath.

Fighting the good fight at the Police Services Board

It's extremely doubtful that we're going to get anything meaningful in the way of institutional response to the police abuses at the G20.  And thus far, a lot of the heat has been focused on the cops themselves, rather than on their political masters at Queen's Park and Ottawa.  (Yes, we're looking at you, Harper and McGuinty.)

But you've got to love Julian Falconer as he lays it out for the Toronto Police Services Board.  Watch this:

When public institutions fail us

Just finished listening to a ridiculously shallow and badly scripted interview by Robyn Brown on CBC Radio's Here and Now with Farrah Miranda (was in the car, so I may not have the names right, and I'll correct if necessary) from the Toronto Community Mobilization Network. TCMN is conducting its own investigation of the violence and brutality inflicted upon peaceful demonstrators by police during the recent G20 summit in Toronto. Not surprisingly, this grassroots initiative stems, in part, from a recognition that there isn't going to be any meaningful institutional response. No one is going to be held accountable by the Police Services Board, the city, the province, or Ottawa.

So what's Robyn Brown's approach to this, but to badger Ms. Miranda for signs of “balance?” It sounds to me like you've got your minds made up already, she said – are you going to talk to the police and get their side of the story?

Wow.

Where to begin? How many things can you find wrong with this?

Well, let's start with intellectual laziness. That's very much in evidence in Ms. Brown's attempt to impose a facile “he said / she said” framework on the story. There aren't many stories that boil down to that. Framing it as “protesters say this, but police say that” makes it possible to ignore all kinds of complexities and shoehorn the story into a simple one-size-fits-all model. That may work for an eight-minute segment before you break for the news on the half-hour, and it may mean you can file your story without any conscious effort, but it doesn't do justice to the story or serve your listeners especially well.

And the suggestion that the Network organizers have their minds made up? Or that they ought to be talking to the police to get their side of the story? Let's see now. The Network is asking people to come forward with pictures, video and first-hand accounts of their treatment at the hands of police. In other words, anyone who was:

• gassed
• beaten
• tasered
• kicked
• shot with plastic bullets
• subjected to racial or ethnic profiling
• “kettled” in the rain at Queen and Spadina
• held without charge in the gulag on Eastern Avenue
• threatened with gang rape
• degraded by sexist and / or homophobic slurs, etc.

Associated with the CBC interview, I also heard one citizen describe how the bones in her finger had been shattered by a police baton. I also heard a doctor who was treating people for trauma, broken bones and concussion describe how police confronted her and confiscated her gauze, bandages and other medical supplies.

Just an observation, but I'd say those folks have already heard the police side of things quite clearly.

And it's not as if the traditional media outlets are going to devote any further air time or newsprint to these stories. They've got their images of broken windows and burning cop cars, and their interest in revising the narrative is pretty much non-existent. (Time to move on. Didn't Mel Gibson say something rude or something?)

If anything, the TCMN's initiative is just a further demonstration of the impotence of regular institutional responses – and of how traditional media outlets fail in their responsibilities. We already know that bodies such as the Police Services Board, not to mention all three levels of government, aren't even going to pretend to care about the citizens whose rights they're supposedly charged with safeguarding.