A YOUNG MAN DOCUMENTS WITH PHOTOGRAPHS POLICE BREAKING THEIR OWN REGULATIONS - THE OVERSTATED DANGERS OF POLICE WORK

POSTED RESPONSE TO A STORY IN THE TORONTO STAR

Vikram Mulligan is the kind of young person I much admire. This is a great project to create unmistakable evidence of police abusing their own rules, and the fact should concern every citizen.

His effort will not of course be welcomed by some police and, I suspect, by the ineffective Chief Blair, but his are the kinds of effort which genuinely contribute to a better society. Our police are truly beginning to be out of control, and it is rather frightening.

Police are extremely well paid for marginally skilled people, and the privileges they have are excessive. We need to expect much more of them, and we should see police who break the rules dismissed, as they would be in so many other jobs with fewer privileges.

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The danger of policing is much overstated.

The stats demonstrate that firemen actually have a considerably more dangerous job. The deaths and serious injuries for other occupations far exceed those for police, as for examples for oil-rig roughnecks.

Yet we are bombarded with stuff about the dangers police face. It is a fact that in a relatively peaceful city like Toronto, most police never draw their guns.

The police abuse we saw during the G-20 was something no good policeman should be proud of.

So, too, threatening stunts like showing up at City Hall in uniform to demonstrate about wages, and that against direct orders. Everyone gets the respect they earn, and that has to be true for police at least as much as for anyone else.

Uniforms in many parts of the world are objects of fear. Let's hope that never becomes the case in Canada.