Police and the Value of Sharing Information

In that bizarre movie Jane Mansfield’s Car, well-known actor Robert Duvall, a nosy citizen, arrives at a traffic accident scene and confidently walks through the police line. He chats with the cops about how the accident occurred.

That scene would never occur in Ontario where police have expanded and tightened their no-go perimeters at investigation scenes. This is disturbing because it is part of a trend by governments to squeeze the public’s right to information.

There are some examples from our own Haliburton County this summer.

There was that fatal shooting at a house on Highway 118 in which the OPP closed off a long section of highway. A media photographer trying to do his job was not allowed to go further than the road shoulder. 

Another OPP officer stonewalled a reporter by saying he couldn’t tell her anything. He brushed off the reporter by saying there was no media relations officer to handle any questions. In other words: get lost.

There also was an OPP investigation on Highway 35 at Saskatchewan Lake. Again a long section of highway was closed while OPP checked out an abandoned car suspected to have been involved in a Lindsay death. Anyone travelling north or south between Carnarvon and Dorset had to detour via the Kushog Lake Road.

Also on 35 just south of Dorset the OPP investigated a fatal car crash and closed the highway so tightly that anyone travelling from Dorset to, say a St. Nora Lake cottage, had to backtrack along Highway 117, go south on 11, then east on 118 and then north on 35. That is a detour of one and one-half hours.

In all three incidents the police gave little or no consideration to public inconvenience or the needs of the news media, which reports to the public.

One of the most ridiculous examples of police over-controlling a situation occurred last fall in Hamilton. Corporal Nathan Cirillo of the Hamilton-based Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders was shot and killed at the National War Memorial in Ottawa.

He lived in east Hamilton and Hamilton police sealed off several streets in his neighbourhood. No threat was involved and Cirillo’s killer already had been shot dead on Parliament Hill.

Hamilton police, when asked why such a large area had been sealed off, said it was out of respect for Cirillo’s family. They didn’t want media and citizens in the neighbourhood where the family lived.

Wouldn’t a couple of officers posted on the street outside the home have been enough?

Last month a Toronto police superintendent was found guilty of unnecessary exercise of authority in the arrest of more than 1,000 protesters at the 2010 G20 summit in downtown Toronto. The presiding judge said the superintendent lacked an understanding of the public’s rights.

We all understand that police work is difficult and that there are good reasons for controlling investigation scenes. The problem is that police over control too often, not considering public inconvenience or the public’s right to know.

The real concern here is not about a cop at a crime or accident scene having a bad day, or getting puffed up and over exercising his or her authority. Cops at the scene get their orders and their attitudes from their commanders. Their commanders get their orders and their attitudes from the top police brass. And, of course, the top police brass get their orders and attitudes from the politicians.

Our politicians are masters of media manipulation and of controlling what they want the public to hear and see. Police brass take their cue from the politicians, or in some cases are simply told what to withhold or manipulate.

Increased police control of what we see and hear is only a small part of a wider and more serious Canadian problem: lack of genuine freedom of information.

Canada in many ways is a closed society because so much of its information is controlled by politics. A truly open society is controlled by knowledge and our knowledge never can be complete until we learn the true value of sharing information.

Driving Surprises

Each time I venture onto our roads I return convinced that we motorists are killing and maiming each other in record numbers.

We must be, considering the recklessness we witness every day on our highways. You’ve seen it all: vehicles tailgating so close you can’t see their head lights in your rear-view mirror; passing on double caution lines before hills and curves; impatient and distracted driving, and of course, speeding.

I decide to go looking for numbers to confirm my impression that our roads are increasingly becoming slaughterhouses. The numbers that I find shock me.

Despite all the bad driving habits I witness on the highways, fewer people are dying or being maimed in auto accidents. That seems impossible considering the number of distracted drivers, reckless drivers, speeding transport trucks and the deteriorating condition of many of our roads. But it’s true.

Back in 1994, 3,230 people died and 164,635 were injured in traffic crashes across Canada. Those numbers have declined steadily and by 2014 were down to 1,923 people dead and 120,660 injured, a remarkable drop considering the increased population and growing number of vehicles.

Closer to home, fatalities on roads patrolled by the Ontario Provincial Police also have declined. Last year there were 265 fatal collisions on those roads, down from 380 10 years ago.

Those numbers paint a picture of safer roads, part of which might be attributed to better driving practices.  It is not an accurate picture, however.

Fewer people are being killed or maimed on our highways, but the number of accidents is increasing. There were 75,000 collisions on OPP patrolled roads last year, compared with 69,000 five years earlier.

Also, collisions involving transport trucks are increasing. Last year there were 6,140 transport truck accidents on OPP roads. That’s up substantially from five years earlier when 4,667 were reported.

That’s no surprise to anyone who spends any time on Highway 11, or the 400. If you drive those roads at 10 kilometres over the limit, you will be passed by streams of big rigs doing 20 or 30 kph over the limit. And, have you ever seen police pull over a transport truck for speeding?

So despite fewer deaths and injuries our roads in fact are becoming more dangerous, not safer. The decline in deaths and injuries likely can be attributed to more seat belt use, air bags and generally safer vehicles.

Charges for not using seatbelts - and incidentally for impaired driving - have declined steadily. Distracted driving, however, is rapidly becoming the big new danger on our roads.

Ontario this summer increased distracted driving fines from $60 to $500 per offence to between $300 and $1,000. Also, a distracted driving conviction now will cost a driver three demerit points.

My road travels also have left me with the impression that I am seeing more OPP cruisers pulling over more vehicles. Therefore the OPP is charging more and more bad drivers. That also is not an accurate picture.

The OPP has been writing fewer tickets for highway offences. Last year it issued 431,267 tickets under the Highway Traffic Act, 45,000 fewer than in 2013 and 48,000 fewer than in 2012.

The OPP also are nailing fewer drivers for speeding. They issued 253,427 speeding tickets last year, 40,000 fewer than in 2013 and 41,000 fewer than in 2012.

They are starting to get more drivers on the relatively new Slow Down, Move Over law. That’s the one where you must slow down or move to another lane when approaching police, tow trucks and emergency vehicles that have their lights flashing. In the first six months of this year OPP have charged 763 drivers for failing to comply with that law. The fine is $400 to $2,000 and three demerit points.

So what this fact finding exercise has taught me is that numbers don’t always tell the true story. Despite fewer deaths and injuries, our roads are just as dangerous as before, probably more so.

(From my Minden Times column Aug. 6, 2015)

Another Police Overreaction?

   Only in Canada, eh? Indeed. Other countries probably would think three times before sending a fully armed tactical team aboard a passenger aircraft returned to the ground because of a possible bomb threat.

   It happened last Friday when a Sunwing vacation jet left Toronto for Panama. It turned around over West Virginia after a young man, reportedly upset by the price of cigarettes, made ‘direct threats’ to the aircraft. It was escorted back to Toronto by two F-16 fighter jets from the U.S. National Guard.

   Once on the ground, a tactical unit aiming assault rifles stormed into the aircraft’s aisles. They grabbed the young man and yanked him off without incident, which was fortunate for the 161 people on board.

   The police action appeared to be a gross overreaction that seriously frightened passengers and could have injured them.

   I’m not alone with that opinion. John Nance, former airline pilot and ABC News consultant, said that had the man had his finger on a bomb trigger, he would have blown the plane up when the police stormed it.

   “I’m not sure this was the correct reaction,” he said on Saturday’s ABC World News.

   The incident left many questions needing answers. Whose SWAT team stormed the plane? One news report said RCMP took charge once the plane landed. Peel Regional Police took the man under arrest. Who made the decision to send combat police aboard? What are the protocols and procedures in place for such incidents? Was there an air marshal aboard?

   There have been enough bad police actions in this country (i.e. OPP killing of Dudley George, RCMP killing of Robert Dziekanski) to raise concern about the leadership decisions of our police services. 

   The Sunwing incident must be investigated and the answers to the questions it raises must be made public.

   

Policing for Revenue?

There is a line between enforcing the law in the interest of public safety and enforcing it to raise revenue. Police forces, directed by their political masters, are crossing that line more often in these rough economic times.

The Ontario Provincial Police have been on our lake at least four times this summer checking boats for alcohol, required equipment such as a working flashlight and those absurd boating licences. Normally they show up once a year to remind everyone they are out and about promoting safety.

You can hear the provincial coffers ringing as they go about the lake issuing tickets. They boarded one fellow’s boat and found an empty glass that smelled of alcohol although there was no alcohol on the boat. They gave him a breathalyser test, which he passed. However, the empty glass that smelled of alcohol was enough for them to charge him, which will cost him $300 or more.

There are more and more cases like this where a warning would suffice. But the province needs money and policing is an important revenue stream. Law enforcement officers will tell you they are not pressured to lay charges. However, woe be the officer whose ticket issuing is below average at performance review time.

The story making the rounds in cottage country is that the OPP had to buy more boats for patrols during last summer’s G8 meeting in Huntsville. Now they are using the boats to raise money to pay for them.

One priority of the OPP’s strategic plan is to “build trusting relationships with the public . . . .” A trusting relationship will be built only if the public believes that law enforcement’s main focus is public safety, free of pressure to raise revenues.