Robert Dziekański's death is still up for debate.

Watchdog's scathing report passes judgment on RCMP in Dziekanski's death

Navigator type spin on it started, with Global news noting Kennedy  is  "going out swinging"  because the federal government is not renewing his ocntract.....

exactly.....

Two years ago.

They got away with murder just like the RCMP who murdered Ian Bush and one of the YVR murderers went on to murder again and the crown over ruled the Delta police on one of the charges...

They killed him because they didn't want to get thier hands dirty, the taser is too easy, too tempting.

that is a burn eh, no1important, and we are 1 of  2 provinces where "the crown"  gets to decide, not the police...

GPie  i  hear you, there is so much sickening about this....

Quibble.

This phrase "excitedly delirious" should be in scare quotes to convey to readers that they are reading fiction. No such condition is recognized in any proper medical text. It is only recognized by the "authorities" at Taser International and medical "colleagues" at police forces like the Horsemen.

Carry on.

Remind, isn't that as it should be?  People who work for the Crown graduated from high school, have an undergraduate degree, passed the LSAT, have a law degree, passed the bar exam and then articled.  Their behaviour is overseen by the Law Society and, in general, they are capable and intelligent people.

The police, on the other hand, well, geez ... a family member taught philosophy in the criminal justice program for years and refers to them as "knuckle draggers."

ETA:  Come to think of it, you have to article and then pass the bar exam. 

Often I have thought so...and then rethought it by thinking it does not matter either way they work in cooperation with one another...then rethought it again by a closing ranks or can't be bothered kinda of perception...and so it goes....

Who was the guy who claimed that waterboarding wasn't torture then underwent the procedure and changed his mind?  Was that Hitchens or somebody else?

I hear you, Bacchus, but in the usual course of events crappy lawyers don't kill (except in death penalty states, of course).  Bankrupt you, devastate you, drive you to suicide, sure.  But they won't kill you.  (Too bad we can't say the same for doctors.)

Isn't it a tad elitist to consider that higher education, the path of which more often than not involves social privilege, is the gateway to some higher moral reasoning? The political class and the bureaucracy is chock full of lawyers and advanced degrees in various fields. Instead of carrying guns and flak vests though, they carry briefcases and wear suits and ties, and quite likely have, if the current crop of them is any indication, more blood on their hands than any cop could ever dream of.

Over 1000 lawyers have warmed the chairs in the House of Commons since Confederation, and 15 of 22 Canadian PMs have been lawyers.  Collectively, they've made quite a mess of things to this point, at least judging by the countless political threads hereabouts for years now, ranging from genocide, imperialism, war, hunger, poverty, the list is quite exhaustive.  But as long as their valuable entertainment skills are unsullied with the dirty work normally assigned to lesser thugs, i'm sure they are quite charming during martini hour.

He's not.  One of the few of them who isn't.  He's an economist instead...Master's degree i believe.

I would agree. There are certain character traits that transcend formal education levels. It's also dangerous to assume that being formally educated would automatically help a police officer deal with the day-to-day aspects of the job. As for education, the main difference I could see making is that an educated cop would do a better job covering his or her tracks when acting improperly.

By the way, a few years ago at a recruiting fair, I was told by the constable that even though the formal requirements of a police officer only go to Grade 12 that most departments will not consider anyone without post-secondary education anyways.

I can't help but to detect a contradiction here with your earlier comment about preferring the company of lawyers over cops.  Presumably due to what we'd both suspect in general terms as certain character traits inherent within the mindset that would view police work as a viable profession.  I can tell you that having lived among and socialized with police, I take the general view that no amount of education would be of any value in providing a greater awareness of their responsibilities within a just society.

Well this is quite the thread drift. But obviously I can't let Maysie's ruthless attack stand. You want a piece of this? Bring it.

Education, including post-secondary education, is a fundamental human right. I don't know a single person who has attended the kind of social science or humanities classes that Stargazer is talking about who hasn't had their life and understanding improved by the process. I would also go so far as to say law school breeds a respect for the law and its antecedents in the majority of its students, and an appreciation for social justice in many.

The problem, of course, is that universities, like the police apparatus, are state structures, which means they have the same innate contradictions. They also instill its subjects with the desire to protect the state and uphold its hierarchical privilege. But abstract attacks on the "ivory tower" don't do justice to the diversity of the university institution. The same battles being fought in our legislature, in our courts, in our unions and in our streets are being fought in the university. Dismissing a liberal education for elitism--and I don't mean criticizing it--which is important work--I mean dismissing it as irrelevant to the "real world"--is the same strategy used by right-wing populists who want to turn law into morality, Marxism into magical thinking, feminism into ideology and anti-racism into counter-intuition. I live in the real world, and my world includes the belief that liberal humanism is something we've fought hard for centuries to understand and develop. I can't believe that teaching some of these basic principles--some might call them fundamentals--wouldn't vastly improve the understanding and empathies of anyone who takes the time to learn them.  That includes the 5-0. It is not elitist or classist to believe that we all have something to learn.

Oh Catchfire, I didn't mean to ire you.

You know I can't let this one go by, my friend. There are many folks in psychology and sociology who don't have what you and I would call a connection to "the real world". Higher education, for them, and I'm describing the majority of my classmates here in liberal-arts heaven, Toronto, is about power-over and granting, accepting and using privilege. Back in undergrad I was in a very conservative cohort, this could be why I had this experience. But the radical activists/students/scholars I met in grad school, and the radical profs, were that way despite the academy, not because of it.

I agree. Where we disagree is that the majority of our learning, or that meaningful learning, happens within the bounds of the academy.

Crown prosecutors and social justice..who would have thought. Perhaps they emerge from a different track than those who develop their appreciation along the traditional lines. You seem to have mistaken an objection to the point raised earlier regarding higher learning being a prerequisite towards enhanced social justice and awareness to mean an attack on education itself, in the manner that you suggest as a hallmark of red state 'anti-book learnin' mentality. This is certainly not the issue. Pre-existing social understanding and value systems can be significantly enhanced through education, in the same way that a pre-existing sense of entitlement and privledge can be supported and justified toward the very ends we see in front of us at every turn in this society. You either have it or you don't, regardless of the educational rung achieved.

maysie December 10, 2009 - 12:26pm - nice post... i do agree with some of catchfires views as well... to quote from maysie and catchfires posts

"Catchfire wrote:  It is not elitist or classist to believe that we all have something to learn.

maysie wrote "I agree. Where we disagree is that the majority of our learning, or that meaningful learning, happens within the bounds of the academy."

This is ludicrous. We might as well give up if we believe that people are just born ignorant, and that's the way they'll stay. Social understanding is an innate, essentialist trait? Sorry, not buying it.

I did not say that a university education is guaranteed to turn you into bell hooks. I said that a liberal arts or humanities education is likely to give you a greater understanding of social and economic forces. I also said that as an agent of capitalism it will also instill in you the ideology of the state. But that is a battle we fight against capitalism, not against education. We've come a long way figuring out this big problem we call democracy, and the modern university played no small part in that. So has the labour movement, the civil rights movement and the feminist movement--all of these things, in fact, interrelate, nourish and constrict each other. That's what bugs me about this enforced, symbolic separation of the university from the real world. It's all real, baby--well, actually, it's all an illusion. Do the police live in the "real world"? One that says since I have a gun and am authorized by the state, I am doing a public good? One that says I am an agent of social welfare and not of capitalist ideology? What about Obama? Does he live in the "real world"? Did George Bush? I don't even know what the real world is. I teach privileged undergraduates and recently volunteered to tutor aspiring students in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. Both are reading and learning the same things. Which one is 'real'?

Education--particularly a liberal arts education--is a good in and of itself. This is recognized in the UN Charter of Human rights, and by most democracies (in lipservice if not in practice) since the Enlightenment. That this needs defending on rabble, especially on such specious grounds, really sticks in my craw.

My university degree taught me two things

1-I can do anything,given the right tools and instructions

2-To look at things critically and analyze them, letting me disect them and understand the essential parts

Neither makes me a good or better  person. If it did, the only racist, sexist, violent abusive people would be non-educated people. Both made me better at understanding things and approaching things but it did nothing for my moral compass. I am what I am before the education and after. Its experience that taught me to change my views as well as a voracious desire for knowledge and reading (neither of which is taught at University. You either have it or you don't).

We are agreed on your two points Bacchus. Where we tend to disagree, I think is where you seem to place university aside as a different category of experience to your other experience. University has had a fundamental effect on my moral compass as has other influences on me.

I agree, education itself doesn't make you a better person.I think what you take certainly does.

I can only give examples from my own life but prior to entering university I was a fairly ignorant 19 year old who thought Pay Equity for women was bad. I had no understanding at all of the dynamics of my abusive relationship, nor the way women were treated in society. I thought it was all our fault. That we were inferior.

So...on to university I go, only to discover, through various sociology classes, that the world really was stacked against us. Then the anti-racism course...I never felt such guilt and horror in my life. It was these courses, these professors who showed this young female the "other side" and taught me about "the other" and that is when my life changed.

I went from being a woman hating woman to a staunch feminist. I started to notice how people interacted and what cues were being sent based upon their conversational cues. I started to understand and emphasize with people. I started to speak out against racism, sexism and homophobia when I heard it. I started attending rallies and got involved with Socialist causes and groups.

For me, my education was invaluable, and that has a lot to do with the courses, the liberal profs I had (and that was all of them) and the teachers who took their time when I needed to speak with them and learn from them in regards to my personal life. I will never forget these profs and the lessons I learned at school. For me, university was a blessing.

That said, I see zero harm in higher educational standards for police.

In regard to individual police officers or Members, what's needed are higher ethical and moral standards. That comes, in part, from better links with the communities they're supposed to be serving. In the case of the Mounties, the para-military structure and culture of that rotting institution needs to be destroyed.

And both of these issues can be addressed by more citizen input into the police. Democracy, even. That starts, in my view, by bringing to an end the repulsive habit, across Canadian police forces, of investigating themselves.

And so on.

Its common in training in the forces (military) that what you bring with you, you will use. If you go somewhere where violence would work against you (as in if danger approaches running or bargaining is the only good choices) then dont bring a weapon because you will always feel you should use it, instead of another instinct

compassion can't be taught at school... how does one learn to able to relate to the suffering of others? perhaps it is through being able to relate to your own suffering, or having suffered in some context.... higher education is sometimes  for priviledged folks... while priviledged folks suffer too in some respects i suppose, i think the gap between those who have and haven't is wider when i think of those with higher education and those not able to get that... maybe i am wrong on this... is higher education a status symbol? it certainly is viewed favouably in our culture and i think there are good reasons for this... however, i still don't know how one learns compassion and i don't believe a higher education is being able to provide this... i think compassion can come with experience.often real experiences in life are when one is out living it, as opposed to being in an educational setting... i think this is what was missing in the Robert Dziekanski example.... i think the issue of education is a very central one to this story but in a more broad way..

Education only taught my friends they were somehow better than me for learning from a prof, while I learned from books at my leisure. Insight cannot just be taught there has to be a trigger, this doesn't come from schooling but can.

The main issue with police is one seen in most organizations....fraternity. This applies to many areas and causes above the law and elitism. My friend is having problems dealing with her friends because they are part of her sorority. She doesn't really like them , but is oathbound to help them. Rediculous. The police, military, and esp lawyers are all in this same category. You can throw firefighters and doctors in there as well. Protecting the brand at all costs is paramount. Even if it isn't deserved.

___________________________________________ Soothsayers had a better record of prediction than economists

Of this society, it might be said that it is a product of the educational system, and not the inverse. Any rational observation that isn’t hinged upon hysterical gatekeeper sensitivities couldn’t help but to observe that the system being defended has been producing a type of subjectivity that eventually takes its place alongside all other forms of conditioning, turning out for the most part, individuals who accept competition on the understanding that the playing field is level, who expect in life that each person be rewarded as in a contest according to their merit, who always ask permission before talking while silently respecting the rules and those with the highest grades.

At best, even attachment to the great, critical intellectuals and their youthful rejection of capitalism are branded by this love of school, institution and tradition. Meanwhile, broad based inaccessibility has bought forth a remarkably powerful counter culture school of the street, in competition with state institutions and its cardboard culture. Perhaps on some level after all, the extreme right is already reconciled with the most virulent left, with both having similar suspicions in this regard.

A delightful paradox lies in the fact that higher education within a corporate system is seen as a triumph over all other ways of existing, at the very moment when the demands of perpetual growth sees an educated North American workforce as an increasingly superfluous hindrance. Corporate services sector and governance prospects await each graduate cycle, where the remaining work that hasn’t disappeared during the night is divided into highly skilled positions of research, conception, control, coordination and communication which deploys all the knowledge necessary for the latest production processes. Positions requiring lesser skills are apportioned to individuals tasked with the maintenance and surveillance of the process. The first are few in number, very well compensated and thus so coveted that the minority who occupy these positions will do anything to avoid losing them.

The present educational apparatus resembles on the one hand, a gigantic mobilization machine for sucking the energy of humans that are becoming superfluous, and, on the other hand, it is a sorting machine that allocates survival to conformed subjectivities and rejects all “problem individuals,” all those who embody another use of life and, in this way, resist it. Meanwhile, managers, scientists, lobbyists, researchers, programmers, developers, consultants and engineers, literally never stop working to serve and augment productivity.

The security apparatus, when it considers education as a worthwhile pursuit at all, sees value in maintaining parity and awareness as a means of risk management in developing influential and informed strategies to counter idleness among both the educated and uneducated alike, and to provide informed excuses and draft propaganda for re-gurgitation by the political class at the microphones.

Though it seems a general observation in nature, the question of education within a capitalist system is not at all a philosophical one. It is what rules, takes possession of, and with ample precedence, ultimately colonizes the most banal, personal, daily existence. Education is inseparable from the state. Thus it should come as no surprise that our political figures all emerge from the same system. We generally agree that our leaders are the root of our ills, to the extent that we like to grumble so much about them and that this grumbling is the consecration that crowns them as our masters. The life we invest in these figures is the same life that’s taken from us.

The RCMP can not purchase a good reputation for any amount of money.  The behaviour of the RCMP officers involved, not only during, but before and after the tazing event, demonstrates that the RCMP has inadequate civilian oversight, and inadequate training. 

The money tossed into revamping the RCMP Complaints Commission, is only money.  It needs to be spent correctly.  There needs to be power to supenea officers to testify during investigations, and the power to gather all records, no matter what the medium.  There must be civilians in power running the new body.

No matter how good this might turn out, it does not address the human rights abuses by JTF2, and CSIS.  So its like plugging only one hole in the dam.  It's not enough.

A culture of "Testing out" new weapons (elecronic or otherwise) against civilians, and maintaining a culture of cover-up are things a democracy must not tolerate.

Peace,

Matthew Pauly

"Freedom Endures Through Sacrifice"