After watching last nights broadcast of The National I am left with one simple question.
What sort of fuckery is this?
We all know the story of Robert Dziekanski by now. Tasered to death in the Vancouver airport by RCMP who spun a tale of defense that was -to their embarrassment- directly refuted by a video shot by a bystander. It’s been a gong show from the beginning with officers changing statements after watching the video evidence, the Crown deciding that the officers would not face criminal charges and actually stating publicly that the video supported their accounts. So much of a cluster fuck this is that Attorney General Wally Oppal has recently said that “nothing is final” and eluded to the possibility of future criminal charges against the officers despite his office having already “cleared” them.
The once sterling reputation of the RCMP has been taking a public shit kicking in recent years and that’s where the fuckery comes in. Benjamin Robinson, the officer responsible for ordering the repeated use of the taser, was in trouble long before he entered the Vancouver airport that day. Such were his personal and professional problems his immediate supervisor refused to endorse a pending promotion on the grounds that he was stressed and not fit for the command. The promotion went through anyway and Robinson ended up in Richmond where he ordered Dziekanski to be tasered 5 times, and where he also later killed a motorcyclist and then fled the scene while driving drunk with his children in the car. Clearly this is a man that should never have been in a position of power and this is the heart of the problem. The RCMP, rather than support and deal with the issue of an officer that is facing difficulties, chooses to simply transfer them in the hope that the problems disappear or at the very least, become the headache of someone else. Could this have been avoided if the powers that be had intervened when one of their own started displaying a dizzying array of poor decisions? A shocking number of retired officers are now coming forward to express their dismay at how quickly and how far the department is sinking into a steaming pile of shit. One of those retired members just happens to be the former commanding officer of Benjamin Robinson and he brought up this almost unbelievable scenario which continues to play out in our Canadian towns and cities each and every day. According to him and others, the RCMP today is more concerned with their carefully constructed public image than they are with supporting their employees and dealing with potential problems. They just ship them out. Screw dealing with it, just send them somewhere new.
You could see the shame that those retired officers felt for their force. Their shame and their utter disgust for what it’s become.
In case you’re wondering…. After the taser incident Robinson was transferred to the RCMP’S Vancouver 2010 integrated security unit. After the hit and run, he was suspended. With pay. So again, I must ask; What sort of fuckery is this?
