In an interview Thursday night, union leader Steve Boucher said he sent the e-mail to remind officers to keep their heads up, serve with pride and look after each other on the job.
...Boucher wrote in the e-mail to his members that Lajoie’s comments drove a wedge between the police and the community. He wrote that the union leadership is consulting with its lawyers; it’s not clear to whom a complaint would be filed.
“Please continue to support each other and reach out to those whose names and reputations are being stomped on by opportunistic individuals with a bone to pick who are using the media to further their cause,” he wrote to the officers he represents in the Ottawa Police Service.
Notice the headline writer took pains to include blubbering Boucher's attempt at low-comedy by saying his membership was being "stomped on." That takes some doing on Boucher's part don't you think? Whining about how his membership is being figuratively "stomped on" while the whole problem arose from individuals within the membership literally stomping on people, and innocent people at that.
I was a union official once. There was a training weekend for us when we started and in once exercise we were given the example of an alcoholic member with extensive attendance and work problems who refused treatment. All of us in that seminar said that if the guy wouldn't get help and kept screwing-up we'd defend him according to the letter of the law, but we wouldn't actively try to sabotage management's attempts to fire him. If they did their paperwork, and went through the proper procedures, we weren't going to damage our own integrity by keeping a drunken incompetent on the job come hell or high-water.
That's how Boucher should be behaving right now. If he had any sense of decency, or shame, or honour, or justice. He apparently doesn't. And while I think that he was deliberately trying to be provocative with that "stomped-on" nonsense, I also think there's a fair bit of genuine, self-pitying blubbering in his address. The same old maddening, blind, self-righteousness that has the architects of the death and misery of millions of people at the hands of US-American imperialism wailing and gnashing their teeth about how Wikileaks has "blood on its hands" for exposing evidence of their crimes. I think Boucher both does and does not appreciate what a sickening monster he is.
And, as the head of the Ottawa Police Association, I guess we can take Boucher's comments as representative of the people he, well, represents. Which means that unless there's a massive repudiation of his outburst, we're to assume that unlike the dream that "special" Constable Melanie Morris and Staff-Sgt. Steve Desjourdy are just a couple of "bad apples" among a barrel of shiny, fresh, crisp, delicious apples, that maybe the whole police service is rotten beyond saving. That they're a pack of twisted thugs for whom four big men sexually assaulting a five-foot tall female is nothing to get upset about.
I notice Dr. Dawg is saying that Boucher is just doing his job. As you can tell, I disagree. No matter what your job is, there comes a point where personal integrity and simple honesty and justice tell you what you must do or must not do. A lawyer charged with defending someone who they believe is guilty of some heinous crime is obligated to provide a defence for that person. But a lawyer who can feign self-righteous indignation and will use every possible trick and every possible appeal to (deceived) human sentiments, to allow a monster to go free, is going beyond the demands of our legal system and, more importantly, human decency.
Boucher isn't "fighting" for those cowardly, lying thugs, out of obligation. He's publicly threatening judges and telling the police service to "circle wagons" around those scum-bags.
Finally, as another example of someone who, for the sake of decency, should just shut the fuck up, Ottawa police chief White warbles:
“We can’t lose sight of the fact that our members respond to thousands of calls every day, and do so in a competent and highly professional manner,” White said. “I have full confidence in the abilities and professionalism of the men and women who serve this community.”That's just it though! They answer thousands of calls everyday, and how often do they beat innocent people, sexually molest them, steal and take drugs, beat and rape sex workers, fuck the dog, bitch about how nobody respects them instead of doing their jobs, etc., etc.,?
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