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Last year after the shooting of Paul Boyd on Granville street by a VPD officer, I was listening to the Early Edition Radio One. Stephen Quinn was interviewing the new chief Jim Chu (I didn't even know his name then).I heard him say (which I confirmed with a telephone call to Stephen) "I am convinced that my officers are innocent of any wrong doing and I stand behind them 100%"
Now on the face of it, this might seem appropriate, but to someone with more than half a brain it means something different.
His legal duty was to say "The matter is still under investigation, therefore I can't comment."
The news right after the shooting had witnesses saying that they saw Mr. Boyd with his hands up and that he appeared to have been executed. This was confirmed in July 2008 by what my arresting officer told me when I stuck my head into the police car to try to challenge the prohibition laws.
This supervisor told me, when I mentioned my charges to the chief "Yeah, the guy with the bicycle lock injured a cop severely." As if this is a valid reason that a cop can gun down someone on the street with their hands up.
What Chief Chu actually had done was exhibit gang behavior telling his own cops, who must carry out the investigation, that he feels that the shooters were innocent, and this before any investigation was even begun. I have a record of not going along with gang type behavior, no matter which colors they wear.
The OPCC accepted my complaint and gave me 1st person standing. It was the Mayor and the police board which sent 2 cops a lawyer and someone from mental health to my door and asked me, the complainant, several silly questions, one of them about my use of Marijuana. Since then I have not heard a single thing.
Before the cops can come after me for smoking pot, (which allows me to see more clearly than most citizens) I want them held to the laws so that they don't behave like criminal gangs! I don't want executioners, nor those who stand behind them, working on my police forces.
Policing is a dangerous business. Just because someone gets hurt on the job is no reason to allow executions in revenge or to intimidate the public. Before we need to hire more cops, we must hold the present ones accountable under the laws, otherwise we are building a police state.
What would my habits have to do with the police chief committing a crime of Obstruction of Justice on behalf of the shooter? Not only did he do this, but it also appeared to have corrupted the investigation and any appearance of lawbreaking, corruption are grounds for the laying of charges.
That incident which I have just described is the purpose for the prohibition laws, so that those who might change our laws and demand police accountability for the betterment of society are denigrated and marginalized and denied their rights and their power of political expression.
"In a world of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell
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