A Pixelated Lynching

The absurdity of much of the media and the general public’s response to the Robert Dziekanski affair defines reasoned explanation. One Facebook group calling for action to be taken against the RCMP members involved in the death has close to eight thousand members. The incident – more than a month old now –has been on the front page of virtually every paper every single day since the video of the incident was released. On Saturday, the National Post devoted fully ten – count them, ten – pages of coverage to it. Rather, I should say, at least ten. I stopped counting at that point. For all I know, there could have been a whole supplemental section devoted to the matter. The Globe and Mail went so far as to describe the death as an “execution” - a judgement which has been echoed in print and pixels across the land. Has everyone lost their minds?

It is often repeated that this death raises “troubling questions.” And so it does. However, I put it to you that the questions which should be asked are not those which are being asked – or are those which are likely to be asked by any wastefully expensive public inquiry into the matter.

An inquiry seems likely to focus upon the Taser itself and, more broadly, to lambast the RCMP for its glaring failure to greet a violently out-of-control man who they were summoned to subdue with milk and cookies. It appears appalling possible to me that the RCMP members involved might well, either by their superiors or by senior politicians, be thrown under the bus to satisfy public bloodlust on some pathetic technicality.

That’s a serious possibility here. It’s worth recalling, to pick one example, that when Sergeant Ken Deane, responding to a violent Indian protest at Ipperwash in Ontario, shot and killed a man who he believed to be carrying a rifle – a necessary and entirely defensible act – his superiors and the government of Ontario shamefully allowed him to be tried and convicted for criminal negligence causing death. Similarly, we should also remember that in the case of Rodney King – another case where video distorted the public mind – the officers involved were not only disgracefully put on trial for subduing a violent criminal who was high on drugs but then, when a jury correctly acquitted them, were further victimized by a vindictive Federal prosecution whose sole purpose was to satiate the appetites of the unwashed and illiterate masses.

It’s easy to see how these events will play out. The force members involved are marked. The only way to satisfy public anger will be to find something to stick against them. It won’t be murder or manslaughter. Instead, someone will find some minor charge to throw at them or some of them in order to satisfy the public. And that’s a travesty.

So far as the RCMP members are concerned, what happened here?

We know the sequence of events. This man was, for whatever reason, obviously unstable and violently out of control. Airport security declined to deal with him an instead the RCMP were summoned to the scene. When the RCMP arrived, their job wasn’t to attempt to talk sense into a deranged man who they knew not to speak English. Their job was to subdue him. When he resisted their lawful efforts to do so and reached for a weapon – a blunt object which, if used to strike could well have killed or injured one of the force members involved – they used what force they had at hand to subdue him and end the threat he posed. I fail to see what exactly they are supposed to have done wrong here.

The police aren’t social workers. They aren’t there to talk out-of-control people into being nice. When the police are called and a person is violently out of control, it is the job of the police to bring that person under control. Nothing more and nothing less. They did that job and, unfortunately, Mr. Dziekanski died as a result. Yes, it’s sad that a human life was lost – but the blame for that rests upon the person whose violent and dangerous actions forced the RCMP to use force against him. If I go running through the streets with a replica rifle shouting threats at the general public, the RCMP would shoot me – and rightly so. Their job is to, within a split second, respond to threats – not to wait until harm comes to themselves or others and then act.

The RCMP members involved in this incident were doing their jobs. They were defending the public. I don’t believe they deserve to be condemned for that. I will have no part in an ill-informed pixelated lynching of the sort we now see taking place before us.

Yet still, some troubling questions do linger – and ought to be addressed.

Primarily: why was someone with the background and skills of Mr. Dziekanski being allowed into Canada in the first place? How exactly did we come to have an immigration policy wherein we would allow an unemployed (and quite possibly close to unemployable) man in his early forties – a man who didn’t speak a word of English and had a criminal record – come to Canada to live with his sixty-something mother? That’s an outrage worth holding an inquiry over. No wonder my taxes are so high.

Second: I, for one, would like to know what kind of airport security we have in place if this deranged man was allowed to roam about for eight hours unnoticed and unmolested by police or security? The last time I came across the border I was harassed and aggressively bothered by the border services agency over my iPhone. How did a man who didn’t speak a word of English and was apparently in a highly agitated state for some period of time manage to clear customs and then fail to attract the attention of anyone in a position of authority for such a prolonged period of time?

Third: is the horrible abuse suffered by the RCMP members involved – and the police as a whole –as a result of inflammatory media coverage of this incident likely to make the police less aggressive and therefore less able to defend myself and the rest of the general public?

Those are some questions worth asking – but which, regrettably, will be ignored and swept aside in the rush to find someone for the public to blame.