Road conditions: fine. Residential neighbourhood. Speed: 122K in a 50K zone. Not answering a call, just driving like that. Kills a five-year old child.

Breathalyzer test? We’ll never know.

But no charges will be laid. The driver was a cop. And he’s still out there, serving and protecting.

UPDATE: The Quebec Crown prosecutor’s office has now tried to explain its way out of this. If this is the whole of their grounds for refusing to charge the speeding cop with criminal negligence or manslaughter, I’m afraid I remain unimpressed.

The Crown is attempting to blame the father of the child for taking a left turn on a green light before it had turned to priority (flashing) mode. It was a turn the parent had apparently taken many times, no doubt on the assumption that on-coming traffic would be approaching at or near the 50K legal speed limit. Judging the exact speed of a car directly approaching is not easy. And it should also be stressed that the unmarked police car was using neither a siren or flashers.

If anyone other than a police officer were, say, to run over a jaywalker under these circumstances, he or she would (rightfully) face charges of criminal negligence at the very least. Jaywalking is illegal, but so is speeding, and the two do not cancel each other out. The same principle should apply here. But the Quebec Crown has doubled down, and continues to dig. A shield of impunity remains in effect for police, who appear to live outside the law that they enforce upon the rest of us.