How to respond to a peace officer…

COLIN ALEXANDER

There are lessons in this for everyone, both for Inuit and for police officers everywhere, especially including Nunavut.

I have this story from an eyewitness believed to be reliable but, in any case, the lessons hold.

There’s a middle-aged Inuit woman living in public housing in the southern part of Ottawa. She is said to find the money somehow to get drunk every day. This may be an exaggeration, but let’s just accept that, as a generality, this happens.

Recently, so my informant tells me, a neighbour called the security guard for her apartment building, presumably because the woman was making more noise than acceptable. The security guard put handcuffs on her, and called the police.

My informant says the security guards for the building are generally unpleasant to everyone for no good reason, as if they thought the only way to deal with people was assertively. Doubtless the escalation that was to unfold began there.

Eventually, no fewer than eight Ottawa police officers are said to have arrived, and then the woman started yelling and screaming. The police started knocking her about, and the scuffle escalated.

The woman yelled to onlookers to observe what was happening. A police officer then put his hand over her mouth to lessen the attention drawn to them.

In due course, the woman was thrown into a police car in such a way as to cause a seemingly deliberate and severe blow to the head. My informant says the action of the eight Ottawa police officers dealing with just one small middle-aged woman was “insane.”

In fairness, it is challenging to deal with an angry and ranting drunk of either sex once anger and ranting are in full flight. I just know that escalation is almost invariably counter-productive, and it can be dangerous.

With patience, calm usually returns eventually, although the wait may seem unreasonably long. That’s why even a habitual drunk needs to know instinctively how to respond to authority even when demands are infuriating.

Regardless of the accuracy of this incident as related to me, we know for certain that this kind of thing happens constantly across Canada, and not just in Nunavut, and not just to Indians and Inuit. Sometimes people die in a scuffle with police, as at Vancouver International Airport.

The lesson for all citizens is to be absolutely docile and polite when dealing with a peace officer.

It is a sad reflection on police managerial competence that officers don’t seem to go into schools to get that message across, among other needed ones. If they do, then they need to do more because the message is not being received.

Indians and Inuit are particularly vulnerable to mistreatment by police, especially when intoxicated and behaving stereotypically, and they particularly need to avoid provocation. (It’s another story altogether why this should be so compared with, say, Chinese and Japanese Canadians, but that’s not the issue here.)

Absent discretion, even a single reasonable complaint may induce a physical response and an additional charge of obstruction.

My point here is to get this message across: If a confrontation starts even for something as simple as producing a driver’s licence, play it cool and answer questions politely.

Any protest is likely to make things worse even if you are entirely in the right. Everyone needs to know this as part of the basic street-smarts of life — not just for Inuit but for everyone.

It seems incomprehensible, but an apparent fact, that police either get no training in defusing a confrontation, or else they don’t use what they have been taught.

Nevertheless, for all peace officers (especially the thugs, as documented in the Ottawa Citizen, who are policing Ottawa’s bus service), there is also a lesson here: You work for the community, even for drunks making a disturbance, and not the other way around.

You need the cooperation of the public. Your job is to keep order with the lowest possible level of argumentation. Don’t complain that the job is stressful, if you incite the stress!

There was a tragic lesson for police a couple of years ago in Kimmirut, when a young Mountie was shot and killed. The now-convicted murderer had had many run-ins with the police and, apparently, he had sometimes been knocked about.

Someone who knew him said to me after he murdered Const. Douglas Scott, “I’m not surprised it happened. He hates cops.”

All peace officers need to understand that thuggery by one rogue officer may elevate the risk to others, and you never know how and when the resulting latent hostility may surface.

On the other hand, I recall an interview for CBC television in Kimmirut after the murder of Douglas Scott. A teenager said the officer acted toward him like a friend and an older brother.

That’s the way things ought to be, a two-way street of mutual respect and cooperation.

Police work can be rewarding, and it seldom needs to be stressful if officers treat all citizens, even violent and repeating criminals, with respect. That’s not the same thing as being soft on crime.