Winnipeg Copwatch

Check out this remake of N.W.A.’s F*** the Police:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyT1buoyTnY&feature=youtu.be

Shurli Chan, from the Downtown Eastside Power of Women Group (Vancouver), shares her experiences with policing and mental health as part of the In Our Own Voices writing project.

Read her story here: http://www.dominionpaper.ca/articles/4077

Kristian Williams speaks in this audio interview about his first book, Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America, about recent articles about community policing and the counterinsurgency training shared between the U.S. military and domestic law enforcement agencies, and about the growing movement calling for the abolition of police in the United States, and the Pacific Northwest in particular. The show aired on Asheville FM on August 12, 2011.

The show is downloadable here:

http://ia700705.us.archive.org/15/items/PoliceAbolitionAnInterviewWithKristianWilliams/afm-final-straw-08122011.mp3

“Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance” Documentary Screening:
Wednesday, July 20th
Rudolf Rocker Cultural Centre, 91 Albert St. (3rd floor), 7 PM

Launch of “The Canadian War on Queers: National Security as Sexual Regulation” with co-author Gary Kinsman
Thursday, July 21st
Mondragon Bookstore and Coffeehouse 91 Albert St. 7 PM

Dance Party and Art Auction
Friday, July 22nd
Negative Space, 253 Princess street, 10 PM

More events TBA…

Gabrielle Giroday has an article in today’s Winnipeg Free Press about the police response to the epidemic of missing & murdered women. It features Bernice and Wilfred Catcheway, who aren’t relying on the police to uncover what happened to their missing daughter.

“We just go on searching,” said Bernice Catcheway, who spent $10,000 to excavate a dump in Grand Rapids in the search for the Portage la Prairie teen after she went missing in June 2008.

“We’re not waiting for the police. They say, ‘Oh, we’re with you, we’re with you.’ We don’t see that, we have no communication,” said Bernice Catcheway.

Their daughter’s case garnered intense media coverage after it happened, with the family organizing searches and gathering tips. Their experience with police had been frustrating, they said, and that frustration continues.

Update 10:57am: Global has a related story today titled Where are Manitoba’s missing women?

The Ontario Provincial Police have decided not to press charges against Ottawa police for their in-custody treatment of Stacy Bonds. “It is the sixth incident OPP were asked to investigate involving the handling of people in the cellblock. In all cases, the OPP found no evidence of criminal wrongdoing.”

The Harper Conservatives, with their new majority government, have promised to look to pass an “Omnibus” crime bill in the near future, which groups together 11 bills they couldn’t pass as a minority government. The bills generally look to increase prison populations and punitive measures. This is happening despite a significant majority of Canadians preferring preventative measures to punitive methods of dealing with crime, Canada’s decreasing crime rate over the past twenty years,  and the evidence that increased incarceration does not reduce crime.

One component of the bill that has gotten little public attention and little debate in parliament is a provision called “lawful access,” that affects Internet policing powers. It will require your Internet Service Provider (ISP) to provide the police with your personal information without any oversight from a court. Up until now they would need to present a judge with a good reason, and get a warrant.

It will also force your ISP to put in place technology to allow real-time surveillance of your activities, and those of their other customers, and give “several new police powers designed to obtain access to the surveillance data.”

Michael Geist’s column in the Toronto Star gives more details about “lawful access”, and discusses the privacy and free speech concerns raised.

UPDATE 25 May: Yesterday, Jesse Brown’s excellent show Search Engine took on the issue of Lawful Access, interviewing the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association’s Micheal Vonn. Have a listen!

On January 1st John Kurtz of Orlando, Florida, videotaped a police incident that “included the use of tasers, a violent take down, and a pepper spraying after the suspect was subdued and in handcuffs.” After asserting his right to witness the incident, he was arrested by an officer who is “one of the top taser users on the force,” and who had previously arrested a corporate news cameraperson in 2007 (picture is from this incident). It’s not known what happened to Kurtz’s camera and footage, since police didn’t enter it into evidence, and it wasn’t returned to him when he was released on bail.

He is facing charges including obstruction of a police officer, which could result in up to 6 years in jail. Police in Canada and the US have been eager to arrest or otherwise prevent people from lawfully filming them in recent years. So far, US courts have upheld people’s rights to film police, but it remains to be seen whether this will continue in Kurtz’s case.

Writing in Nexus, Alicia Gilmour raises questions around the double-standards in treatment of police who commit what would normally be criminal offences. Her article follows the announcement by the Vancouver Police Department that no charges will be laid against a Victoria officer who appeared in a YouTube clip last year at an incident outside of a bar.

“If kicking someone when they’re down isn’t using excessive force, then what is? …. Why wasn’t the officer charged when anyone else would have been? …. The Victoria men clearly could have been restrained without the use of excessive force. It’s a duty of officers of the law to set an example for the public and to rise above the situation and stop the cycle of violence in our communities.”

The 57 second YouTube clip is included below.