Queer comes to mind when talking about the case of grocer David Chen. A known thief, Anthony Bennett, steals flowers from Chen’s store. This is caught on video. The thief returns less than an hour later. Chen and two workers hold the thief for police. Mr. Chen is charged with assault and forcible confinement. All charges for the thief are dropped. This is morally wrong and a perversion of the law. Thieves should not be able to steal and get away with it. How simple can this get? Explain this to a 4 year old and s/he would easily understand, yet Toronto police struggle with this issue. It is no wonder when people refuse to cooperate with police.
Law can be used and manipulated by the police. The outcome can be debated and fought in a court of law, but this penalizes the wrongly charged. The police know this and can use it to their advantage to intimidate. The weapon of the police need not be physical, as they use the court system to financially and emotionally bludgeon the average citizen. There is no recourse for citizens when police wrongly charge.
Thankfully David Chen is fighting the law, saying that it violates his charter rights. I believe it does. It is idiot cases such as this that make you scratch your head. Then you get mad because the issues are simple and you know this is wrong. You are told by police to call them when a crime is committed, but you’ll wait hours for a response. When they get to your location you’re told the crime is so petty they won’t even crap a statement out for you in the local toilet. They ask you to rely on them for help but when you ask they cannot respond. When the city budget is debated the police always ask to increase their budget.
Is it only myself that sees a self-serving policy here? The police asks the citizens of Toronto to rely on them for a response, when you ask for help they are not to be found. Then they ask for increased budgets to reduce crime in Toronto.
If the police were so concerned about reducing crime they would thank Mr.Chen for holding this thief, clearly caught on video, for helping them fight crime in Toronto. Instead they punish him and his staff. The police cannot be at every street corner. Canada is not a totalitarian regime and hopefully will never be. The Toronto Police swore to “Serve and Protect” whom? Certainly not David Chen.
Toronto police should try to be smarter in fighting crime. Stupid is as stupid does.