The four RCMP officers who killed Robert Dziekanski at the Vancouver Airport are going to walk.A Crown "investigation" that has taken more than a year has concluded that Tasering an unarmed man twice*--a man who was backing away with his hands in the air--then kneeling on his neck, and then failing to take resuscitation measures once the man's heart stopped, is perfectly acceptable behaviour by RCMP officers, as is lying about what happened before it was known that a video of the incident existed.
This is what passes for justice in Canada today. Our national police force, an institution that is rotten from top to bottom, has once again been allowed to kill with impunity. And we even got to watch the killing on national television.
It's time to disband this "horribly broken" outfit. And it's time to break up the cosy little cliques that have developed between police and Crown attorneys. Lives may well depend upon it.
Until this happens, no one is safe from the bully boys in red serge. No one. There are no checks and balances, there is no accountability. The RCMP is literally out of control. Its officers are, unlike the rest of us, above--or outside--the law.
What does this mean for ordinary citizens? Just ask the family of young Ian Bush. And the mother of Robert Dziekanski.
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*UPDATE: It has now been revealed that Dziekanski was Tasered five times, not twice--the RCMP lied about that, too. "Three pathologists," unnamed, have put his death down to, amongst other factors, a "hysterical fear of flying"--this after being in Vancouver for half a day! So now we have retroactive aviophobia, right up there with "excited delirium" as a new medical alibi for police brutality.
