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In 2007, Benjamin “Monty” Robinson killed a man named Robert Dziekanski. Because he was an on-duty RCMP officer at the time, he was not charged with any crime.

In 2008, Monty went for a drive after having a few drinks. He smashed his Jeep into a motorcycle and killed a man named Orion Hutchinson. He fled the scene but returned a short time later; his fellow cops didn’t administer a breathalyzer test until 90 minutes after the crash. Monty’s driver’s license was suspended for all of 90 days, and he had the gall to challenge even that slap on the wrist. It has taken the authorities more than a year to press charges. Now, instead of facing a charge of drunk driving causing death — which carries a life sentence — Monty has been charged merely with obstruction of justice, for lying to his fellow cops after he fled the scene of his second crime.

Here we have a man who has killed innocent people twice through his own irresponsible actions — a man who ran away instead of taking responsibility for what he’d done. Has he been held to account for either death? No. He’s only facing the obstruction charge because he lied about what happened. If you or I did what Monty had done, we would be behind bars for the rest of our lives. But Monty has a badge and a uniform, so even if he’s convicted, he’ll be walking the streets again in a few years’ time.

One set of laws for you and me, another set of laws for the cops. That’s how it is.

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.”