Posted on 06/12/2007 7:23:17 AM PDT by oakcon
Shortly after the shooting death of Jordan Manners, the 15-year-old Toronto student, eighth-grade students at nearby Oakdale Park Middle School were called to an assembly. The subject: relations with the police. It's a hot issue in that part of town. The community is in an uproar over the shooting and allegations are flying that police have been heavy-handed in their hunt for Jordan's killer.
But the group invited by the school to address the students weren't interested in improving relations with the police. They were there to fan the flames. Their message to the 12- and 13-year-olds was simple: Don't trust the cops. They are not your friends. They deserve to be hated and feared, because they are bullying, brutal and racist. For good measure, they handed out an offensive little leaflet called "Survival Tactics: Dealing with Police." It kicks off with a reference to Rodney King, the black man who was beaten up by the Los Angeles police several years before these kids were born. "Although it may be difficult, be polite when they are insulting and bullying you," the brochure reads.
Who were these anti-cop propagandists? They were law students from nearby Osgoode Hall Law School at York University. They are volunteers with an outfit called Community and Legal Aid Services Programme, CLASP.
Glenn Stuart, who directs the program, told me that CLASP works with many local schools, starting as early as Grade 5. Its goal is to teach the kids their "rights." In these sessions, students are encouraged to relate incidents of police harassment and alleged brutality. Each kid gets a wallet-sized reminder entitled "Know Your Rights." It has an illustration of upraised fists - presumably representing the masses rising up against their oppressors.
Related Articles Recent
Globe editorial: A code of silence that has to end One dead, three injured in Toronto area shooting Shots only came one way, police say McGuinty eyes handgun ban after brazen shoot-out Internet Links 'Survival Tactics: Dealing with Police' (pdf) Know your rights' (pdf) Needless to say, the police aren't included in these programs. That's because they're the enemy.
In fact, Toronto's police have made admirable efforts to expand community policing and outreach programs. Some officers spend hours of their own time volunteering with youth groups. And yet the cone of silence remains an tough obstacle to solving crimes and protecting the community from thugs. In this neighbourhood, it's better to go to jail than be a snitch. Hundreds of people turned out to mourn Jordan Manners and to demand that the city, the schools, the province and the federal government do something to stop the killing - but scarcely anyone was willing to help police catch the killer.
CLASP's well-meaning law students are mostly middle-class and white. I doubt if any of them have heard a random gunshot in their lives. Oakdale Park's students are largely a mix of Caribbean (mainly Jamaican), Southeast Asian (mainly Vietnamese) and other kids from immigrant backgrounds. Many come from disorganized, single-mother families where discipline is scarce, and they have a multitude of learning problems. The unwitting effect of the messages CLASP sends will be to keep them in the underclass forever.
Apart from hating the police, what other lessons are students learning in Canada's most at-risk schools? The main lesson is that there are no consequences for bad behaviour, or for lack of effort, or contempt for school. Although many of these students can barely read or write, the pressure to show "success" in such schools has grown intense. Teachers are simply not allowed to fail them, because that is said to hurt their self-esteem. (Last year, for example, the York Region District School Board failed just six Grade 8 students out of 8,064.) Nor are teachers allowed to deduct marks for handing in assignments late, or for routinely skipping classes. Teacher after teacher has told me: "The kids are in charge. We aren't."
Adolescents who lack structure in their lives need firm guidance and clear expectations. Instead, the schools offer a therapeutic approach that demands nothing and excuses everything, and pretends that self-esteem can be built without accomplishment. In this world of endless rights but no responsibilities, students learn that they are systematically victimized by society - starting with police and teachers. They learn that their troubles are everybody else's fault. They learn that mainstream values - such as respect for the law - are contemptible. This is called "empowerment."
This is the culture war that's playing out in Canada's most beleaguered schools. And the wrong side is winning.
That’s the ticket, get the cops out of your neighborhood and then wonder why the crime rate keeps going up. What a bunch of maroons!
Never send a trustafarian to do a father’s job.
This is a function of too many laws, pressure on the police to be tax collectors in addition to protectors and responders, and “the cop mentality” that is an odd mixture of high-handedness and fear of the people they are supposed to be serving.
I can see why some law-abiding people would be afraid of the police. Of course, this is all predicated on the fact that you are a generally law-abiding person. If you are a “bad guy,” you should be afraid of the police.
Respect for the law is not remotely the same thing as respect for cops, any more than respect for the Constitution is equivalent to respect for Bill Clinton.
Here's the video version of the pamphlet:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEEWcsWk4E0
Quite frankly, the cops are not your friend, and that’s what I tell my kids too.
I’ve been stopped twice for suspicion of DUI and called on the phone twice over the years because my car matched the description of a suspicious vehicle. The lesson learned: if they think you’re the guy, they’ll use every trick in the book — including lie after outright lie — to browbeat you to try to get you to incriminate yourself, to inconvenience you to the point that you figure just playing along would be easier and you can straighten it out at a higher level (NO!), to avoid telling you the truth about what’s going on, and, while they’re at it, to try to pin something else on you.
(NB: 0.00% both times, ATM receipts proving it couldn’t have been my car. “Could I just fax these to you? And then you could call the bank?” “No we would really like to talk to you down here at the station.”)
And when all else fails, they’ll just try to pin something else on you anyway after all the trouble you’ve put them through *cough* by not making it easy for them to bag a suspect before dinner.
Related editorial:
Actually, comedic exaggeration aside, maybe more people should follow what Chris Rock’s talking about there.
So do the “Stop Snitchin’” T-Shirts in Canada also have to come in French?
Our local rag gave a lot of press to a recent shooting of a thug by a CCW-ed victim. Bottom line - the thug culture believes it is right to rob someone else if you have been robbed, and to shoot someone if they shoot one of yours. To the thug culture, the hoodlums are just "good guys" like everyone else in the culture. The Police are teh "bad guys" because they enforce a set of laws that run contrary to this culture.
If you are not in their circle of friends you are eligible for tickets.
Most people are not their friends. So I would say it is true, the Cops are not your friend.
But see, the issue is not whether cops are the nicest, best, or most fair people in the world. The point is society has something called the rule of law, and everyone needs to respect it.
The following week every time I pulled out of my road, there was a county cop on my tail who followed me to the school (about a mile away) just begging for a reason to pull me over.
Cops my friends? I think not. They're roadside tax collectors.
I have always told my kids...the police are there to enforce laws, and are always to be respected...but they are not your friends....never talk to them without your attorney present, even if you are a just a witness..
I would say that respect for the law infers respect for the police in general. Individual officers should be given respect, at least until the earn your disrespect.
While I have no respect for Bill Clinton, I respect the office of the President of the United States. If I had met Clinton while he was performing his official duties, I would have shown him respect out of respect for that office. Of course I'd likely have been respectfully disagreeing with him and his policies.
I've had some experiences with cops that very quickly earned my disrespect. However, the majority of cops I've met are good people. Of course I don't personally deal much with officers that are performing their official duties so it is the few that bring attention to themselves by acting like jerks that stand out.
I, for one, tend to agree with that statement more and more each day.
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