The year is 1968, and Chicago is rioting after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Er, maybe it was 1992, with people in Los Angeles rioting to express anguish at their perception of racist policing. Wait, no, it was London in 2011.
No, scratch that, too. I’m thinking of last week in Ferguson, Missouri.
Riots started in the small suburban town outside St. Louis after the police shooting of an unarmed black youth named Michael Brown. Details around the shooting are murky, with both sides telling radically different stories, but none of that is the point here.
The most radical difference between the aforementioned riots and Ferguson was the police response. In Chicago in ’68, people were beaten and arrested. In LA, the National Guard was called in, and there were major oversteps in power. London was the one of few times people in the international community actually complained about the British police.
And yet, there was something distinct about Ferguson: it was the only one of the riots where the pictures could just as easily have been from Afghanistan or Iraq as small-town Midwest USA.
Cops in full combat camouflage and tanks, equipped with snipers and assault rifles, stood alongside rioters like some kind of post-apocalyptic video game screenshot.
The police response spawned opinion pieces from US Congressmen, former cops, lawyers, and judges all over the country, mostly shocked at the militarization of police. Ferguson has been proof that regardless of what sparked the riots, the militarization of police has simply gone too far in the US.
But before you get out your pitchforks, look at our own little patch of grass as a catalyst for positive change. Canadian police departments have, in recent years, been attempting to change how they are perceived and really start to work for the communities that employ them.
Little semantic things, like changing “police force” to “police service,” or the recent program by the Edmonton Police that attempts to reconcile their poor relationship with Edmonton’s Aboriginal community, go a long way to re-establishing trust.
Some places have further to go than others, like Montreal, whose response to being criticized for abuses in handling the student protests were met with new tanks and middle fingers.
Even here in Victoria, our cops have a history of protecting and serving the shit out of you. Still, maybe Canadian cops are on the right track to beginning to work for the people again.