Snitch bitches

By Sean Condon

Saturday February 24, 2007

The province’s Solicitor General has announced that a public inquiry will be held into the death of Frank Paul – eight years after Vancouver police officers dumped his drunk, limp body in a rain-soaked back alley. Despite repeated and passionate pleas from Vancouver’s native community for a hearing, the provincial government and the Vancouver police gave them some blankets and took their land.

Even the Police Complaints Commissioner, Dirk Ryneveld, asked for an inquiry three years ago, but his request was turned down by then-Solicitor General Rich Coleman (a former RCMP officer) because it would cause “public acrimony”.

Dear Mrs. Coleman, Do you know what causes public acrimony? White cops and politicians covering up the death of an innocent native men. Go fuck yourself. Signed, The Public.

It wasn’t until the guard who dragged Paul’s body into the police van recently came forward and said he had never been interviewed by police investigators that the new Solicitor General finally decided to act. The moral of the lesson? Cops only get punished when one of their own snitches. When a rookie cop reported that six police officers took three Granville Street drug dealers out for a beating in Stanley Park, two cops got fired. But when some crack head or Guns ’n’ Roses fan says he got his teeth knocked out by an amphetamine amped ape with a badge, no cop catches a charge. Fuck, eye witnesses saw a Vancouver officer beat the life out of Jeffery Berg, repeatedly kicking his unconscious body in the head “soccer style”, and still no punishment.

We all know that cops, like rappers, hate a snitch. There is a code of honour with the boys in blue that what happens in the paddy wagon, stays in the paddy wagon. So what to do? Either wait for another fink cop, or set up a civilian complaints system. Earlier this month, after an almost two year investigation into the province’s municipal police forces, former BC Supreme Court judge Josiah Wood said the complaints process is “flawed” and that one in five investigations is fucked. But instead of recommending a civilian complaints process (like in Ontario and Quebec) he bitched out. Some cop must have threatened to rat him out about his genital warts. These fuckers are way too close.