MarijuanaNews.com : Documenting The Role of Politicized Canadian Police In Maintaining Cannabis Prohibition. Canadian Narks Versus Canadian Freedom. Following the DEA Party Line. The Battle for Canada

Posted December
5, 2003

Analysis by Richard Cowan

Recently on
Pot-TV I talked about how Canadian narks work with DEAland to undermine the
sovereignty of Canada and the freedom of the Canadian people.
See

http://www.pot-tv.net/archive/shows/pottvshowse-2323.html

When I started
doing research for the program, I was actually surprised by how much material I
had to document the problem.

One of the problems
is the misdirection of police resources when cannabis prohibition takes
precedence over protecting the public.

Canadian police
are far less politicized than their counterparts to the south. The major reason
is that Canadian police officials are appointed, not elected. However, this does
not mean that the Canadian police do not have a political agenda that seeks to
maintain their power, as is typical of government agencies.

Unfortunately,
unlike most other government agencies’ self-serving propaganda, claims by the
police are often accepted uncritically by the media. This is a dangerous
mistake.

See
Why
Do The Best Newspapers In Canada Keep Falling for the DEA/RCMP Party Line?

One of the absurdities of this process is that we have police with minimal
educations pretending to be authorities on medicine, and even international
relations.

Obviously that
does not mean that the police are the only prohibitionists, or that all police
are prohibitionist. In fact, I think that honest cops are badly hurt by cannabis
prohibition and many realize that fact, but cannot speak out for fear of hurting
their careers.

Even members of “the Establishment”
recognize this problem.

On
the subject of misdirected police resources, consider this excerpt from an
August 2, 2001 Vancouver Sun article by Karen Selick who is a lawyer and writer
in Bloomfield, Ont. She is a regular columnist for Canadian Lawyer magazine from
which this column was reprinted.

Excerpt:

“Police
focus on vice leaves victims of real crime on their own

In fact, a Toronto lawyer recently told me that he had arrived at work one day
to find two bullet holes in the glass door to his office. He called the
police, but was told that they wouldn’t send an officer to investigate. This
sort of thing “happens all the time,” the officer said on the phone.

Another
friend told me he’d been the victim of identity theft, probably an inside job by
someone working at his bank. Among other things, there was a withdrawal of
$16,000 from his line of credit. When he called police, he was told they don’t
investigate frauds against individuals if they’re under $250,000 or, for
businesses, under $1 million.

These troubling anecdotes are corroborated by statistics. A 1997 study by
Statistics Canada revealed that only 24 per cent of property crimes are ever
cleared by police. For breaking and entering, the rate is 15 per cent.

We
get another hint in a case where a pair of undercover policemen attended a
Marilyn Manson concert dressed like rock fans, in white face makeup and black
wigs. They cajoled and intimidated a 14-year-old boy into parting with $10 worth
of marijuana — a third of the stash he intended to smoke himself. An appeal
court eventually threw out the boy’s drug trafficking conviction due to police
entrapment. Meanwhile, not only had the police wasted a lot of manpower
engineering this silly episode, but someone in the Crown prosecutor’s office
also thought this boy’s dastardly deed worth some prosecutorial resources.

See
Another One We
Couldn’t Make Up! Canadian Court Throws Out Conviction of Teen Entrapped into
Selling Dime Bag to Nark – After Three-Year Prosecution.

Police argue that these vices are increasingly controlled by organized crime,
leading ultimately to violence and murder. Therefore, the logic goes, we must
pursue petty vices in order to prevent deaths.

But
don’t tell that to the cops or law-and-order politicians. They demand
ever-increasing funding, and ever-increasing powers, to deal with problems they
actually help to create. They’re willing to risk transforming the country into a
police state, apparently for our own good. Have they never pondered the fact
that urine tests conducted in prisons invariably show that even in those
microcosms of the ultimate police state, there’s always a good percentage of the
population that manages to get stoned?”

In August of
2001, Eye Magazine carried an article by John Sewell, a former mayor of Toronto:
Excerpted from DON’T LET THE POLICE FOOL YOU ABOUT CRIME STATS

Next
time you hear the argument that Toronto needs a larger police force, recall the
data the police themselves publish about what they do. It’s surprising and
sometimes hard to believe, but apparently true.

On average, a police officer in Toronto arrests nine people a year — about one
person every six weeks. Most people assume that most officers are involved in
work of significant danger, struggling to subdue and arrest criminals on a daily
basis. It’s not true.

The number of people the police arrested for criminal offences in 2000 was
47,771. There were 5,372 uniformed officers on the force. That’s the math that
produces nine arrests per officer per year. For every cop who arrests one person
a week for the year, there are four who don’t arrest anyone.

This ( and other ) data is found in the 2001 Environmental Scan released by the
Toronto Police in May. The report also notes that the number of people being
arrested is slowly falling — it has fallen 10 per cent since 1996, even though
Toronto’s population has increased by more than 100,000.

Crime is often measured by the number of charges laid, but that depends on two
things. First, incidents that could be crimes must be reported to the police,
and it is well established that many incidents never come to police attention.
Some women are unwilling to report sexual assault, some murders aren’t reported,
some thefts are considered too minor to report. Victimization studies show that
there are many more victims than crimes.

Secondly, incidents become crimes only when police lay charges, and that’s
another story. Some criminologists think police have decided to lay a lot more
charges against youth than in the past, hence the “rise” in violent
youth crime. Also, police usually lay more than one charge for any one incident.
Last year 195,000 charges were laid, an average of four charges against every
person arrested in Toronto….

Every
person arrested for a single drug incident can expect to face about three
charges.

Charging someone with multiple crimes for the same incident might help the
police obtain a conviction, but it makes it difficult to tell whether crime is
on the rise or not. Is violent crime in Toronto increasing, or are the police
just laying more charges for violent crimes against those arrested? We don’t
know.

We do know that almost everyone who gets arrested is strip-searched, although
that’s not reported in this police document. As some criminologists say, this
kind of intimidation ( none of those arrested have yet been found guilty of
anything ) is police acting as though they are the justice system, rather than a
small part of it.

Less than 20 per cent of charges laid are categorized by the police as
“violent crimes.” Of those, more than half are simple assaults where
no serious harm is done — such as two guys fighting in a bar after drinking too
much, or shoving matches that result in a few bruises but no requirement for
hospitalization. If one excludes these shoving matches, which are registered as
assaults, the number of charges for violent crime has fallen considerably since
1996, presumably because there isn’t as much violent crime in our city.

We’re just like other places — violent crime is on the decline, although that’s
not fairly captured by the police data. ( One other point: three-quarters of all
robberies and assaults, including assaults where more serious physical harm was
done, do not involve weapons of any kind. )

Put the figures about violent crimes together with arrests and the picture looks
like this: of those arrested, less than one person in four is accused of a crime
involving violence. So the average officer arrests two people a year accused of
a violent crime. It makes you wonder about the training police get, and why they
are armed to the teeth. Don’t these figures say police work is mostly about some
ill-defined kind of community or social work?

Drug charges have almost doubled since 1996 — 10,550 charges were laid last
year against 4,100 persons — although
more than half the charges are for simple marijuana possession. One can see why
the Toronto police are not in favour of decriminalizing marijuana possession:
without those charges, there would be a visible enough drop in the numbers to
weaken police calls for more money….

I
think that there is enough real crime that ending prohibition would not cost any
of the police – except perhaps narks who could not be rehabilitated – their
jobs, if they were doing what they should be doing.

The
real vested interest that the police have in cannabis prohibition is political.
Follow the power, not the money.

First, at the
street level, cannabis prohibition is a source of arbitrary power for the
police. Even the “reforms” supported by The Canadian Association of Police
Chiefs would continue to let them decide whom to arrest. For example, the
association’s board adopted a policy that calls on the Canadian government to
give police the option of charging someone with 30 grams or less or issuing a
ticket and fine or community service.

From 2000 see
Toronto Police Chief
Supports Decrim — At the Option of The Narks – And “Education Or
Treatment Programs” For Marijuana Users. The Therapeutic Police State. — 2
Articles
and
The Prohibitionist
Counterattack in Canada Escalates. Blatant Drive to Create DEAland Style Police
State. Phony Decrim Bill Gets Even Worse.

Even more important, cannabis
prohibition is a source of moral and political authority for the police and
admitting that it has always been a counterproductive fraud and morally wrong
would undermine their moral and political authority.

The police are in
too deep to just shrug and cut their losses. This is as true in Canada as in
DEAland.
See
The
Prohibitionist Counterattack in Canada Escalates. Blatant Drive to Create
DEAland Style Police State. Phony Decrim Bill Gets Even Worse.

It is outrageous that the police can even get
away with lying to the Canadian Senate about everything from Dutch drugs
policies to average THC levels of cannabis.

Consider what the David Griffin head of the Canadian Police Association
told the Canadian Senate in May of 2001 about the Dutch:

“In Holland, studies conducted in
the early 1990s reflect the negative impact of illicit drug tolerance.

From 1984 to 1988 the number of hashish
smokers over 15 years of age doubled in Holland. From 1988 to 1992 the number of
14 to 17 year old hashish smokers doubled once again, that of 12 to 13 year olds
even tripled….

According to studies reported by the
International Drug Strategy Institute, shootings increased 40%, holdups 60%, and
the murder rate in Holland was 3 times that of the United States “.
See
Canadian
Police Association Demonstrates The Role of Ideology in the Maintenance of
Marijuana Prohibition. Sweden Ideal While the Dutch Are the Worst. Analysis by
Richard Cowan.
and
Drug
Czar Lies Again About the Dutch, Who Respond With The Facts;
Czar’s Aid Says, “forces at work to legalize drugs are trying to
bring
these wonderfully allied governments into conflict.”

In
fact, The Netherlands has a murder rate that is about 22% of DEAland’s and the
Dutch teen marijuana use rate is less that of many prohibitionist countries,
including Canada.

Griffin even told the Washington Post that
Canada surpassed Mexico as a supplier of marijuana to the United States.
See

The
Prohibitionist Police State Versus The People. Analysis By Richard Cowan

Then there is the
lying to promote more prohibitionist propaganda in the guise of “drug
education.” The DARE program is very popular among the police who are peddling
it in small Canadian towns, and anyone who criticizes it is called pro-drug,
even though DARE’s own president has admitted that it does not work.

See
The
Royal Canadian Marijuana Police and DARE: Selling a Big-Time Fraud in Small Town
Canada.

However, of all
the lying done by the Canadian narks, perhaps the most dangerous is that done to
undermine Canadian sovereignty. This category of lying is done to support the
DEAland prohibitionists interference in Canada’s internal affairs.

See
How
Canada Could Have A Major Impact On The World By Legalizing Cannabis. More Than
Its Own Sovereignty Is At Stake. What Washington Really Fears Is Freedom.
Supreme Court Cases Make This Urgent.
and
Canadians
Need to Examine The Role of the Police In Maintaining Marijuana Prohibition.
Paying For Lies That Distort Public Policies and Undermine Sovereignty. Analysis
by Richard Cowan

and
The
DEAland Threat to Canadian Sovereignty. DEAland Drug Czar Wannabee Threatens
Canada with (Trade?) War Over Cannabis Policies. No More Mr. Nice Country!

So while it is easy to prove that the narks are liars, it should also be very
clear that responsibility for this lying does not stop there. Canadian
politicians and media need to be held accountable by the people of Canada for
this official lying.

Until the lying
stops Canada will not be able to solve its prohibition problems, nor will
Canadian sovereignty and freedom be safe from its enemies foreign and domestic.

See
The Next Prime
Minister of Canada Talks War… On Us. Looming Prohibitionist Counterattack in
Canada Proves Need for International Debate On Cannabis Prohibition.
and
The
Agenda for the Prohibitionist Counterattack in Canada. Analysis by Richard Cowan
and
Police
Interference in the Canadian Electoral Process. The Royal Canadian Marijuana
Police Disinformation Campaign for Marijuana Prohibition. Analysis by Richard
Cowan.
and
Canadian
Justice Minister’s Bizarre Non-Response to Ottawa Citizen’s Dan Gardner.
and
RCMP
Annual Report On the “Drug Situation in Canada” Contradicts Staples Of
the Prohibitionist Party Line. Exclusive To MarijuanaNews.
and
As
Canadian Senate Gets Ready To Study Prohibition, Canadian Police Push
Prohibitionist Propaganda At Taxpayer Expense. 4 Items
and
Canadian
Police Lie to The Canadian Media Who Lie To Their Readers
To Justify More Power Over the Canadian People To Please DEAland Narks
An Utterly Wretched Piece Of Pseudo-journalism
and
Someone
Floats A Rumor That DEAland Wants To Blacklist Canada;
Washington Denies Everything, But Canadian Prohibitionists Seem To Cheer,
Sort Of… 3 Articles
and
Canadian
Press Links DEAland Military To Closing Of Vancouver’s Cannabis Café;
Narco-imperialism At Work. Canada Should Issue Its Own Declaration Of
Independence.
and
Toronto
Police Union Opposes Decriminalization Of Simple Possession Of Marijuana.
Cites “Gateway”
and