From: slider@atashram.com

Halifax’s police union is lashing out after two of their members faced scrutiny for assaulting a Black youth.

On Monday, the union that represents Halifax police officers leaked an
email to CBC complaining that chief Dan Kinsella placed the officers who assaulted a 15-year-old Black boy — leaving him with a concussion,
bruising, and injuries on his hands — on administrative leave.

https://www.halifaxexaminer.ca/featured/police-union-says-it-cant-do-its-job-without-beating-up-black-people/?fbclid=IwAR1I7otWT5TQIzB5BfmM2NGje7Agzxh9cdeTSaSBB2kwhZEEktxffHt3sGg

Dean Stienburg, the president of the Halifax Regional Police Association,
told CBC that:

Morale is probably the lowest I’ve seen it in 30 years, it’s actually getting worse.

Let us be clear about what is happening here. The police are telling us
that they derive morale from beating up Black children, or at least, from getting away with it.

This is not some rogue organization. This is the body representing the
police, speaking for Halifax police officers.

They are not telling us that they take racial profiling seriously, and
that they’re worried about their relationship of trust with the community. They are not telling us that it is their priority to eliminate racial bias
from policing. They are not telling us that the responsibility to use
force is a serious one and that they do everything to de-escalate
situations. They are not telling us that beating up Black people is, at
the very least, a bad PR move.

Instead, they are telling us that their priority when it comes to dealing
with Black people is to continue to be able to use as much violence as
they want without being held accountable. Not by the chief, as little as
he is doing, and not by the public. If we refuse to let them brutalize us freely, then they tell us that they can no longer do their jobs.

They are telling us that they consider it their job to brutalize Black
people.

All you police apologists, please let that sink in.

What seemingly drove the police union to writing and releasing this email
is that Black people held a couple of protests asserting that no, we are
not okay with the police beating up mothers in front of their children or
with children being assaulted and handcuffed for challenging the police.

Stienburg’s response to this small amount of public pushback is to
threaten that if they are not allowed to brutalize Black people, they will
stop doing their jobs:

“They [officers] start being reactive, and they simply respond to the
calls that come to their car, or their computer in their car or come over
the radio, and that’s a real step backwards for policing and a real step backwards for public safety,” he said.

In other words, if Black people dare to keep speaking out, then the police
will simply have to stop policing, and therefore it’s Black people who don’t want to be beaten up who are making our communities unsafe. Public safety depends on granting police free rein to assault Black people even
if they are not doing anything criminal, and even if they are only
asserting their rights. Our battered bodies are, the police tell us, the
price of public safety.

Officers who threaten to stop doing their actual jobs — not the “job” of beating up mothers and children — should be immediately dismissed from the force. We are being told that our police force must be allowed to escalate violently with impunity as a condition of serving the public.

Let us also keep in mind that these will be the people tasked with running
a know-your-rights campaign.

This statement from the police should put to rest any ideas that police violence is a matter of a few bad apples.

Over the past couple of months, as I’ve been attending the police
commission and council meetings asking them to freeze the police budget
until the police demonstrate they can deal seriously with racial profiling
and police violence, the officials tasked with overseeing the police and holding them accountable have responded to this moral challenge by congratulating the police on the job they are doing and giving them more
money to do it.

Shame on every single one of those officials who enable a police force
that is openly telling us that they consider it a necessary part of their
job to brutalize children and mothers, and that if they are not allowed to
do that, they cannot do their jobs or feel good.

This response by the police union to officers not even being suspended and still being paid after being filmed assaulting a child is exactly what we should expect from officers.

In Toronto, for example, the police union continues to use the exact same rhetoric against the banning of carding. A 2018 email from Toronto Police Service officer Mark Hayward to Toronto Mayor John Tory that was also
leaked to media similarly argued that without racial profiling, police
cannot do their jobs:

“You flip-flopped on carding and supported its demise. You forced budget
and staffing cuts on the Toronto police,” read the email…

“It is obvious Chief Saunders is a puppet on strings and you are pulling them. You have zero qualifications to run a police service and should be
hands off, to allow the police to do what they do best,” he wrote in the email.

In fact, I included text from this very email in my presentation to the
police board, arguing that the police always respond to demands to end
racial profiling by threatening any officials who try to hold them
accountable, and by arguing that racial profiling is a vital part of their
job.

In response, I was asked if I had anything good to say about the police.

CBC’s publication of this email without interviewing any members of the
Black community for context also demonstrates how the media frequently
colludes with and engages in propaganda for the police. Questions a
reporter should ask in this situation include:

• Why are the police leaking this email and why do they think this
benefits them?

• What public message are the police trying to send with this email?

• What do Black people who are trying to hold the police to account feel about having police officers openly argue that violence against Black
people is an integral part of their job?

• What effect might this have on Black people who challenge the police?

That CBC publishes this material unchallenged — and in fact provides follow-up space for the police to further assert their right to assault
Black people without offering any Black voices in response — is a failure
of journalistic responsibility to the Black community.

Desmond Cole, author of the bestselling book The Skin We’re In, which chronicles a year in resistance to policing and state violence, suggests
that this email from the police union shows us who the police really are:

When we say that policing is violent, this is the clearest example of what
we mean.

What’s going on here is that this is a distillation of the idea that
policing is violence without consequences. What you notice here is that in
a so-called normal workplace environment, people would be disturbed to
know their colleagues are acting like this. If it were a teacher or a
social worker who hurt a child, people would say, of course you have to
punish them.

But with policing, the only social code is to protect each other. The code
is to do whatever you want and get away with it. So there’s no outrage
among police saying, I can’t believe these people are acting this way.

So what is useful about this is it tells you about their nature. They’re
not saying that these violent officers don’t represent us as a police
force. They’re saying: not only do they represent who we are, but letting
us get away with it is part of our job, and if you don’t let us do this,
then how are we supposed to do our job?

The police have shown us who they are, if we ever had any doubts. They are
not interested in healing from racial profiling, in working with the Black community, or in changing police culture. And they made sure to leak this
email so that the public knows it. If our officials continue to refuse to
hold the police accountable while giving them more and more resources to
be used in their “job” of unchecked violence against us, then they are
also letting us know who they are.

This email lays it all bare. It is past time to do something about it.

### - awww the poor picked-on police with their tasers, their billyclubs,
their armour and their guns eh? awwwww

everyone's always picking on them??

needs NEW police is all, a new TYPE of police! one who uses his MIND
instead of his gun?

sack the fuckin LOT of 'em! get rid of all the 'graft' too at the same
time?

might have to bring in the army to assist while they train up a new lot of
cops more fit for purpose!

but them the breaks coppers! you've all had it too good for far too long!
you are now outmoded!

we'll forgive you the past (some of it anyway heh) but ya gots to GO!
you're mind-set is all fucked up! it's not your fault but retraining ya's
to be 'different' kinda cops just isn't gonna work + wont do anything whatsoever to reform the whole damn deal... so just go!

not all coppers are cunts, but most of them are, and/or soon end up that
way...

just ask serpico! LOL :))))))

end of story!

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* Origin: www.darkrealms.ca (1:229/2)