Wednesday, June 30, 2010

A concern...

It looks and smells a lot like the ISU and anyone else invovled engineered the situation in Toronto to maximise the chance of mass arrests. They built enough detention cages and such to house a 1000 arrestees, finagled a secret law, lied to the public from the get go, and I'd be really surprised if there weren't agent provocateurs and riot facilitating restraint in order to maximise police justification for their later actions.

It's probably safe to say that public trust in the police is compromised in the worst way.The Miami method police provocation is less likely to work next time, but I'm sure the cops will try it again. They don't seem capable of much else in recent years.

However, video footage from Montebello to Toronto is educating the public on how to spot so called Black Bloc police agents in the crowds. Fit builds, crewcuts, issue footwear and a general out of place look are in severe contrast to the skinny kids with bad hair in hoodies they're aiming to mimic.

The chances of one these police agents (or perhaps worse, an innocent individual fitting the description) being lynched increases with each new event. It's not hard to guess what a line of armed riot police would do to a protest surrounding one of their officers.

My Northern Ireland friend from an earlier post also informed me the most terrified he'd ever been as when he found himself caught in front of his own riot line, exposed to the protestors. He said he lept so high over his own lines he saw helmets beneath his boots. The crowd would have ripped him apart. This is how these things work. It's the darker part of the new rules.

While I catagorically do not condone mob the lynching of anyone, it must be kept in mind that the police can control their actions much more so than crowds. And politicians can control the police. And sometimes, we can control the politicians.

There must, in the interest of preserving the integrity of our system of laws and rights and general public safety, be a good faith public inquiry into the events of this past weekend. And concrete action taken to prevent a repeat.

No comments: