I finally managed to get my photos from the February 13th anti-Olympic protest off my cell phone. They aren’t very good pictures, but this one is pretty interesting: RCMP with no badge numbers These police officers are not displaying names or badge numbers. There’s only one reason why they would do that: to avoid being held accountable for their actions. If you’re a cop, you don’t need to hide your badge number unless you want to be able to use excessive force without facing the consequences. And this was a deliberate strategy: it’s not like these guys just happened to all show up without their badge numbers that day. The officers in this photograph know that as long as they don’t get caught on camera, they can beat up protesters and get away with it; their superiors have made it implicitly clear that they will cover for them.

What we have here is a recipe for tacitly sanctioned police brutality.