Different take on the police

Here in Toronto, we have been immersed in a media celebration of everything good about our  police, after one of them was killed. The coverage has been wall to wall, relentless and reverential. I have no doubt that this is partially intended to wash away the rather more distaff memories of the fascistic police palookas' gestapo tactics during the G20. I regret the officer's death as much as the next person but this story has been a good deal more prominent and profile than it would ordinarily be.

And another thing, if a worker is killed in a factory, other workers don't converge on the place from across the continent to attend the funeral. They do if they're cops.

Police are the muscle and hired guns of the state, something the recent media coverage doesn't cover.

WilderMore wrote:

rabble's fixation with the police has intrigue me over the years.

That about sums it up.

Weren't you the dude who said I was "pretty low" because I accused Michaelle Jean of shedding crocodile tears over the plight of Haitians - while having presided over their colonial occupation?

Just wondering why you would open a thread saying police are just like politicians and journalists.

What's next - "Canada's misunderstood military"?

Or, "Conservatives - a caring majority, a few creeps"?

And what about all of us whose unglorious occupations have hugely more accidents and fatalities per hour worked than cops?

Where is the march for roofers... without whom we would be wet and live in moldy rooms.

Not to mention that I'll bet far and away the biggest occupational hazard for police officers is traffic accidents while on duty.

KenS wrote:

And what about all of us whose unglorious occupations have hugely more accidents and fatalities per hour worked than cops?

Where is the march for roofers... without whom we would be wet and live in moldy rooms.

Not to mention that I'll bet far and away the biggest occupational hazard for police officers is traffic accidents while on duty.

Indeed - although there was a deranged man at the wheel in this instance, the death of Ryan Russell was essentially a traffic accident.

You know here is an interesting question. At least since the 1950s there have been studies that examine the social psychological tendencies of people in terms of 'authoritarianism' (they called it the F-Scale). While there have been numerous 'developments' in the type of questions, that are asked  (see for instance Robert Altemeyer's work) but I wonder how high a level of authoritarianism the cops actually fare? (One of the interesting insights that this research has demonstrated is that higher levels of authoritarianism are tied to higher levels of violent behavior...and by 'violent' I'm not talking about violence in self-defense)

I would 'predict' that cops would have considerably higher levels of authoritarianism than the average member of the population.

WilderMore wrote:

Maysie wrote:

I'm not sure if you belong here, Wilder.

I've been on rabble for over a year now and the thing that could get me banned is saying that, overall, and notwithstanding the well documented cases of brutality, the police do an admirable job, and that it's wrong to describe them as "the enemy"?

No one said you'd be banned. Get banned much, WM??

I remember your [url=http://rabble.ca/babble/rabble-reactions/winter-fundraising-drive-rabble... constructive post here[/url]:

Quote:

I'm in Korea teaching English and I like to keep up with Canadian news from a Progressive perspective. It's pains me to see Rabble.ca ignore the suffering of people of colour by supporting their oppressors. There will be no donation from me at this time.

I also recall with fondness your calling me [url=http://rabble.ca/babble/national-news/toronto-cop-charged-assaulting-nob..."pretty low"[/url] for condemning that POS Michaelle Jean - you know, the character that presided over and ardently supported Canada's occupation of Afghanistan and Haiti, and then is moved to tears by the plight of her victims?

And I really loved [url=http://rabble.ca/babble/international-news-and-politics/more-korean-war-... gem[/url]:

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I'm not sure if Maysie has spent time in South Korea as I have, but they truly do appreciate the sacrifices made by Canadian soldiers (and all the other nations' of course) in defence of their freedom.

So, as I asked before, what's the next thread: "Canada's Misunderstood Military"?

Or, "Haitians truly do appreciate foreign occupiers' sacrifices in defence of their freedom"?

What exactly are you doing here?

Sorry, Maysie, I just didn't care much for this thread, and I was venting. I'm done venting. I think.

In Toronto thousands of gang members are meeting to show solidarity with one of their own.  This is the first fatality in that force in many years but they need to send a message to the population that they stand together against the rabble. In the meantime real workers suffer fatalities far more often than members of our privileged institutional gangs.  Notice that the corporate bosses in Canada kill more workers than other comparable jurisdictions but the police will never protect us against those crimes.  Workers are collateral damage in the corporate world.  The police are holy warriors needed to control the population on behalf of those corporate murderers.

Quote:

 

Incidence of Workplace Fatalities by Workforce Characteristics 

 

 The chances of a worker dying from a workplace-related accident or disease in 

Canada vary greatly by industry, occupation, gender, and age group. They also vary by 

province. The key features of the incidence of workplace fatalities by the characteristics 

of the workforce were the following: 

 

• The most dangerous industry in which to work over the 1996-2005 period was 

mining, quarrying and oil wells (49.9 per 100,000 workers or one out of 2,000); 

followed by logging and forestry (42.9 per 100,000 per workers or one out of 

2,300); fishing and trapping (35.6 fatalities per 100,000 workers or one out of 

every 2,800 workers), agriculture (28.1 fatalities per 100,000 workers or one out 

every 3,600 workers  and construction (20.6 per 100,000 workers or one out of 

4,900). Finance and insurance was the least dangerous industry, with only 0.2 

fatalities per 100,000 workers or one death for every 500,000 workers.   

 Incidence of Workplace Fatalities by Workforce Characteristics 

 

 

• Like industries, workplace fatalities are highly concentrated in certain 

occupations. Over the 1996-2005 period, occupations unique to primary 

occupations had the highest fatality rate at 19.5 per 100,000 workers, followed by 

trades, transport and equipment operators and related occupations (19.0 per 

100,000 workers), and occupations unique to processing, manufacturing, and 

utilities (10.2). All other major group occupations had a fatality rate less than 4 

per 100,000.  

 

• Men are much more likely to die on the job than women. In 2005, the incidence of 

workplace death was 30 times higher among men than women: 12.4 deaths per 

100,000 workers versus 0.4 deaths. 

 

• Older workers are much more likely to experience a workplace-related fatality 

than a younger worker. In 2005, the incidence rate rises from 1.8 deaths per 

100,000 workers for the 15-19 years age group to 18.1 deaths per 100,000 

workers for the 60-64 age group. 

 

• The jurisdiction with the highest fatality rate was the Territories at 27.4 deaths per 

100,000 workers in 2005, four times the national average. At nearly double the 

national average, Newfoundland in 2005 had, by far, the highest rate of workplace 

fatalities of all ten provinces, with 11.7 deaths per 100,000 workers. This situation 

also prevailed over the 1993-2005 period.  

 

• Workplace fatalities arise from both accidents and occupational diseases. In 2005, 

out of the 1,097 workplace fatalities 491 (44.8 per cent) were from accidents and 

557 (50.8 per cent) from occupational diseases. Asbestos-related deaths alone 

accounted for about 340 deaths in 2005, 61 per cent of deaths from occupational 

diseases and 31 per cent of total workplace fatalities.   

 

International Comparisons of the Rate of Workplace Fatalities 

 

The ILO Workplace Fatality database shows that in 2003 Canada had the fifth 

highest incidence of workplace fatalities out of 29 OECD countries. Only Korea, Mexico, 

Portugal, and Turkey had workplace fatality higher rates and all four countries are at a 

much lower level of development than Canada.  

 

http://www.csls.ca/reports/csls2006-04-E.pdf

kropotkin1951 wrote:

Finance and insurance was the least dangerous industry, with only 0.2 fatalities per 100,000 workers or one death for every 500,000 workers.

An insurance-related injury I can see; ie, an adjustor having an accident at a claim site such as a burned-out house.  But how would you die in a finance-related injury?  Infection from a paper cut?  Falling off your bag of money?

More on-topic, what do we think of the charges laid against the accused?  Since an officer died, it's automatically first degree murder, though it may actually have been an accident, albeit an accident that happened in the commission of a crime.

Should crimes against police officers automatically carry a stiffer sentence?

Yeah, we need to examine the haitian take on the police.

WilderMore wrote:

For Le T: The point is that there are people out there trying to kill the people who are protecting 'us' (i.e. the population at large).

Except people go into the police knowing that they will have to spend time fighting the bad guys, and they trained for it. As for being assaulted on the job, I agree that is a hazard that comes with being a police officer, but did you know that taxi cab drivers are far more likely to be assaulted than police officers?

Oh, for fuck's sake. The man's funeral is today. He had a wife and a young son. Do you really need to mock him?

Dodger718 wrote:

Oh, for fuck's sake. The man's funeral is today. He had a wife and a young son. Do you really need to mock him?

Sorry about that. We workers, when some of us get injured or killed on the job, are quite accustomed to having our actions subjected to minute scrutiny by our employers - not for the purpose of prevention or really getting to the bottom of the cause of unsafe conditions, but in an effort to blame "human error" and cover up systemic issues which would be costly to correct.

As part of the citizenry which employs the police, I thought I would employ similar standards in questioning their actions - especially given that when my sisters or brothers die on the job, there is no paid leave granted to thousands of colleagues to attend their funerals.

First cop killed on duty in Toronto in eight years. Meanwhile, I don't remember daily front page articles for a whole week about this electrician killed in the line of duty;

TTC bus accident kills electrical company worker

Or this one;

Worker dies after falling off building

Four construction workers in Toronto killed after scaffolding collapsed

I remember the last got almost as much coverage as the recent death of the police Sargent, so I guess construction workers have about 1/4 the value as a police officer.

All in all being a cop is a pretty cushy well paid job with a lot of benefits and few on the job risks. At worst it is probably really boring.

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I think most residents of the city will be astounded to learn that Toronto's finest respond to so few calls - only one every second shift. This is not a productive use of the time of city employees paid about $75,000 a year.

And it is not as if officers are making arrests on every shift. The average number of arrests per officer in Toronto, as it is in other Canadian cities, is seven to eight per year, that is, one arrest every six weeks, only one crime of which is a crime of serious violence.

There's a related point. A recent Environmental Assessment Report from the police service notes that police now spend eight hours on every Priority 1 call, and that's double the amount of time spent on such calls 10 years ago. The time spent on personal injury vehicle accidents has increased 33 per cent in four years. I suspect police spend more time on these incidents simply because they do not have a lot else to do.

John Sewell

It is not murder if you are Michael Bryant. In fact it doesn't even warrant a criminal case be pursued beyond the preliminary stages.

My question is did Sgt. Russell leap onto the vehicle or otherwise engage the oncoming snow plow. If so, the defendant might just be able to get off without any charge whatsoever, in the same manner as Michael Bryant, who was vigorously defended here on the grounds of self defense, when he smashed Darcy Shepard into a mailbox and killed him.

Did the defendant feel he was a immediate risk of being shot, as it seems he was in the end anyway, and as such was he justified in defending himself?

Aristotleded24 wrote:

 

That said, I do agree that there seems to be a sacredness around police budgets that they should always increase no matter what.

They're a central component of the patriarchal-industrial complex! And the wealth lavished upon them has as much a symbolic as a practical component, with its ritual destruction of wealth on the temple fires (of irrational fear).

January 18/2010 - TORONTO - At the funeral of Sergeant Ryan Russell, 35, of Toronto Police Service (TPS) over 12,000 police and public attended the funeral service at Metro Toronto Convention Centre (MTCC) just down the street from Air Canada Centre where they had the service on the Jumbotron. Jumbotron funeral ACC
There was an eerie silence in the main hall at the MTCC as the family and friends marched in the packed room, another room for the overflow was assigned down the hall with video connection of the service.
The funeral service was delayed because of the numbers attending and after the march down University Avenue of over 8000 officers from all over North America was well organized and impressive.

After the family entered and were directed to there seats right at the front as the casket was brought in it was placed on the podium in front of the stage, two year old son Nolan Russell said, "Mommy where's Daddy" as his mother Christine Russell drew her fingers through the youngsters hair.

Officers came from all over North America, with badges from such places as Cleveland, New York State, New York City, Sudbury, North Bay, Montreal, Timmins, Saskatoon, RCMP in their full dress red tunics, OPP and nearly every force around the Toronto area. Many first line workers Fire, Ambulance, and Emergency services were also well represented.

A group of dedicated officers even drove from St. John, Newfoundland to attend the service. The media coverage was extensive as it was shown live on most Toronto stations and live across Canada on CTV News Channel. Sergeant Russell worked out of 52 division in downtown Toronto was killed on the job as he was trying to stop a stolen snow plow that went on a rampage for over two hours through the streets of Toronto on Wednesday morning. The suspect has since been arrested and charged with first degree murder and was shot several times by police and is recovering in hospital. The full snowplow incident can be viewed HERE. A glowing tribute to the 11 year veteran can be viewed by clicking HERE in the Toronto Star.

Daniel .. Toronto