{ texts for nothing }

Two hours ago I was walking home through Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. The DTES is Canada’s poorest postal code, crammed full of impoverished folks (many with addiction or mental health issues) living in appalling conditions. It’s not particularly dangerous if you’re just passing through and not bothering anyone, but there are always a lot of cops around because they always have plenty of excuses to hassle the locals.

Sure enough, as I was walking along with my hands in my pockets and a newspaper under my arm, a cop car pulled to a stop on the street beside me. One of the cops inside said, “Hey.” I responded, “Hey,” and kept walking. But they flashed their lights and got out of the car, so I stopped to talk to them.

One of the cops asked what I was doing and I said I was going home. He asked if I was from around here and I told them I live in the West End. Then he asked for my ID. I asked why and he said they were “looking for someone.” I didn’t like it, but I didn’t want to cause any trouble and I knew cops are dangerous when their authority is questioned, so I handed over my old but valid out-of-province driver’s license. (That was my second mistake, and it went against my better judgement. My first mistake was answering their questions in the first place. Don’t talk to cops.)

The cop got back in the car to look me up. While he was doing that, I struck up a conversation with his partner — another mistake, really, but it turned out to be for the best. This second cop was a rookie, still in training; he’d only been on the streets for about a week and a half. As a result, he was friendly and naive and didn’t have the usual cop demeanor. He even smiled when I showed a personal interest in him.

“What do you think of the job so far?” I asked him.

His face lit up. “I like it. It’s been pretty fun.”

“What do you think your partner would have done if I hadn’t handed over my license?”

“I don’t know. He’s kind of tough.”

“Why do you figure he stopped me?”

“He’s been around this neighborhood for a while and he didn’t recognize you.”

The first cop was still trying to look me up, so I got out my cell phone, called an anarchist friend of mine who I’d left at a bus stop ten minutes earlier, and told him what was going on — not so much because I was worried as out of sheer amazement that this was actually happening, and because I knew my friend would be very interested indeed. And I was right: he was angry that I’d been asked for ID for no reason, asked if we were living in a fascist country (we aren’t, yet), and reminded me of my rights. I already knew them, of course. (Note for people living in Canada: you don’t have to talk to the cops. If they stop you, ask if you’re being detained. If you are, ask why; if not, you’re free to go. If you’re under arrest, you have to identify yourself, but you still don’t have to answer any other questions.)

As I was hanging up, the first cop got out of the car and asked if I had any BC ID. I said I didn’t (“You don’t drive?” “No.”), and he gave me back my license and asked me once again where I live. I repeated, “The West End.” He asked for my address, but I was tired of cooperating, so I responded, “Am I being detained?”

Cops don’t give a straight answer to that one. This one acted surprised and said, “I’m just asking you some questions. Do you know why we wanted to talk to you?”

I told him what his partner had told me. I almost felt bad about it, because I knew the rookie would be getting in trouble for giving the game away like that.

“That,” the cop said, “and we’re looking for someone who matches your description.”

“What, a guy with a beard and a hat?”

“And glasses, and a blue jacket,” he added, as if those two extra details mattered — it still fit dozens of other people I’d seen in the last ten minutes. “I take it you won’t be answering any more questions?”

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

I explained that I don’t like it when cops stop me and ask to see my ID for no reason, and asked if I was free to go. He told me I was, so I got his badge number (I didn’t bother with the rookie) and left.

I was lucky. I wasn’t carrying ID with my current address, and I don’t have anything on my record anyway, nor did I have anything in my possession that might have gotten me into trouble. (The laptop with the Community Watch Area: Police Not Welcome sticker was at home.) Also, I’m white and I don’t look especially poor. Under different circumstances, the encounter could easily have turned into a disaster.

Still, I wish I had exercised my rights from the beginning. I was doing nothing wrong — unless simply being in the DTES is suspicious behavior (and for the cops, it probably is) — and the rookie’s comments made it clear that they weren’t actually stopping me for any particular reason, except to demonstrate their authority over the people they claim to serve and protect.

Remember when “Ihre Papiere, bitte” was a criticism of totalitarian states?

At 2am on New Year’s Day in Oakland, California, a transit cop shot an unarmed man in the back, killing him. The victim was lying face down on the ground;  a second officer was holding him down, and three other cops were standing nearby at the time of the shooting.

The victim’s name was Oscar Grant. He was, of course, African-American.

Fortunately, there were witnesses with video cameras. This video (an excerpt from a TV news show replaying eyewitness footage) shows the shooting. This video — a separate, longer piece of eyewitness footage — gives a good sense of the context. The five cops at the scene were in control and not in any danger from Grant or anyone else. Grant wasn’t even handcuffed. Far from acting violently, he had been cooperating with the police before they killed him.

“I couldn’t believe it. We was already following directions and everything, and they shot him,” Fernando Anicete, one of the young men with Grant, told KTVU.

Burris has spoken to witnesses who claim that Grant was trying to resolve the situation.

“He had been telling people to calm down. ‘Be cool. Just do what they tell you to do,’ ” the attorney said.

It’s been suggested that the shooting was accidental — that the cop who pulled the trigger didn’t mean for his gun to go off, or thought he was firing his Taser. But even if that’s true, there was no reason to draw a weapon in the first place: Grant was lying face-down on the ground and was being held down by another officer when he was shot. You don’t point a weapon at someone unless you’re prepared to use it.

The Bay Area Rapid Transit Police Department is promising an “unbiased, thorough and detailed investigation.” However, a week after the shooting, the killer had still not given a statement to investigators. Indeed, the New York Times reports that investigators’ “efforts to interview him about the circumstances of the shooting had been rebuffed by his lawyers and police union leaders.” Because nothing says impartiality like giving the perpetrator over a week to get his story straight.

We can add Oscar Grant to a long list that includes other, better-known names: Jean Charles de Menezes, unarmed, shot and killed by police. Amadou Diallo, unarmed, shot and killed by police. Rigoberto Alpizar, unarmed, shot and killed by US air marshals. Robert Dziekanski, unarmed, Tasered to death by police. Jeff Berg, unarmed, beaten to death by police. Ian Bush, unarmed, killed by a shot to the back of the head while in police custody. I could go on.

None of the cops in any of these cases were convicted of a crime. In the Menezes, Alpizar, and Dziekanski cases, they didn’t even face charges. Is there any reason to believe the murder of Oscar Grant will be treated any differently?

(Hat tip to Chris Carlsson for the video links.)

1. Become an RCMP officer.

2. Taser your victim five times. Make sure you start within 25 seconds of encountering him, even if he calms down after you show up; don’t wait until someone who speaks your victim’s language arrives; don’t try to talk him down or use any other means of dealing with the situation.

3. Confiscate any eyewitness video of the incident. Tell the witnesses you’ll give back the video within 48 hours, then refuse to return it until a court forces you to.

4. Lie to the media about what happened. Repeatedly.

5. Make sure Canada Border Services Agency “accidentally” deletes CCTV footage of your victim’s behavior in the hours leading up to the murder. It won’t help you one way or another, but it could help them — and it was their incompetence that got you involved in the first place.

6. Allege that your victim died as a result of alcohol abuse, even if he has no alcohol in his system when you murder him.

7. Make sure your fellow officers, rather than civilians, get to decide whether you should face charges. They’ll let you get away with it.

Several hours of surveillance footage recorded at Vancouver airport the night Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski was Tasered and died were inadvertently erased by the Canada Border Services Agency a week after his death, The Vancouver Sun has learned.

The CBSA is claiming the deletion was unintentional — a result of “confusion over how long the footage would be stored before being erased.” If this is true, then the CBSA is criminally incompetent. I sure hope it’s true, because the alternative is that the CBSA deliberately deleted footage of their own misdeeds. But the authorities would never mislead us about something like that, right?

Either way, the results are the same: Robert Dziekanski was murdered by bureaucratic incompetence and police brutality.

Fortunately, the cops aren’t worried about it:

The Integrated Homicide Investigation Team, which is investigating Dziekanski’s death, said Thursday it wasn’t aware the CBSA’s original footage had been erased.

However, IHIT spokesman Cpl. Dale Carr said the team is not worried because one of its investigators reviewed the complete footage before it was erased and was confident all clips of Dziekanski are on the DVD.

“What? They destroyed evidence that might have been crucial to our investigation? This is the first we’ve heard of it. Hey, Jim, you watched all that footage, right? Do you think we might be missing anything important?”

“Gee, Lieutenant, I don’t know. I only watched it that one time, and that was just a few days after the guy died.”

“Before he had that unfortunate reaction to a 50,000-volt shock, you mean.”

“Uh, right. And it was a lot of footage, too — six hours of it! And boy, was it boring.”

“That’s why you made this videotape of all the important parts, right?”

“Well, yeah, but if I’d known they were gonna delete the tapes on us, I would have been a lot more careful about — ”

“You’re not saying you might have … missed something, are you?”

“I sure hope not, Lieutenant.”

“Right. See, folks? Nothing to worry about. Everything’s under control.”

So about an hour ago, I was waiting for a bus on Robson Street in downtown Vancouver, on my way home from dinner with some friends. A cop car drove by, then turned around in the nearest alley and pulled up to the curb maybe ten feet down from the bus stop. There was a homeless guy sitting outside the 7-11 there, quietly asking for change; the cop in the passenger seat rolled down his window and called the homeless guy over.

Being a civil libertarian, I watched the conversation with interest. (I didn’t get too close, though — those guys are dangerous.)

After exchanging a few words, the cops handed the guy a piece of paper and told him to get lost. He grabbed his backpack and stormed off angrily down Granville Street. I caught up to him afterwards and asked him if they had given him a ticket, and indeed they had. BC has a law which, among other things, prohibits panhandlers from asking for change within 5 metres of a bank machine. There was an ATM inside the 7-11, and even though the homeless guy was more than 5 metres away from it, he was close enough for Vancouver’s finest.

The penalty? A $115 fine. Which, if you’re sitting on the street asking for money, is obviously way more than you can afford.

Naturally the cops were grinning at each other as they drove off.