Alex Reid

A million years ago, I got stopped by an angry Winnipeg Police Service officer who blantantly harrassed him.. I’m not even really sure why.. I guess for looking at his badge number. A year later, I fought the traffic ticket in court and won based on the absurdness of the officer. When the judge threw out the traffic ticket, he openly dismissed the police officer as a liar. Now, LERA (Manitoba’s Law Enforcement Review Agency) called me last month to tell me that “there’s more than enough evidence against (bully-meathead cop) to carry this to a hearing.”

I suppose this is amazing.. statistically.
Of the 450 Complaints made each year against Police Officers in the Province of Manitoba, only one or two cases make its way to a complaint hearing. Of course, more than 80% of these complaints get dropped due 1) lack of evidence (aka: your word versus the high-standing respected police officer) or 2) because of the incredibly long wait you have to endure to complete the damn complaint (I’ve been waiting 18 months now!). If students applied to University had to wait two years before knowing whether they were accepted, we’d have a high dropout rate. I think it’s a damn travesty and people I know who can make a change, don’t.

And my friends think this is a “win” for me, but I feel quite the opposite. I think this is a further waste of my time and I am only more bitter with the Winnipeg Police Service.

The cops are called to help someone who is trying to kill himself. The cops arrive and instead of attending to their duties, one cop starts chatting it up with a guy holding a beer in the street, without threat of arrest. I happen to be biking by when I mumble something about their wonton parking (they parked on my walkway). One cop flips out and starts chasing me down the street, yelling at me to repeat what I said. When I refuse and look at his badge, he flips out more and starts to pat me down, pushing me around. When I refuse him, he steals my bike from underneath me. I go in my place and call my lawyer. When I return to the police to get my bike back, the cop starts yelling at me (with my lawyer on the phone) while trying to grab the phone from me.

In the end, while a man was dying, I’m given a traffic ticket for “failing to keep right when meeting a moving vehicle” on MY BIKE! Even the woman who called the police came out to ask if they could help, and the cop shushed her and told her to wait. Real professional policing you got there, eh?

I have more than a valid complaint here, and a very credible witness who is equally astonished – but not really surprised – at the lack of professionalism this cop has expressed. I make a complaint, I even go in to fight my traffic ticket… and I’m still waiting a year and a half for a resolution. It’s a damn joke, and I feel insulted to have to wait and do so much to do the police a favour by letting them know they have a bad cop. More and more, I’m disappointed with the local police. They have an incredibly bad reputation in the inner city and they rarely make an attempt to be helpful. I made the complaint and that’s it. The cop has already been caught in a lie, heck his partner won’t even back him up and I have still have to prove something?

I just don’t get it; it’s not like the police will actually do anything about it anyway. They always treat “their own” with kid gloves. Why do I have to go though so much for them to realize they have a bad cop? They should be doing this themselves, instead of making me some rare statistic.

It’s a two-tiered justice system we have here in Manitoba. That’s reason #5 I don’t vote NDP provincially in Manitoba. The local NDP spend too much justice-time on bikers and gangsters, and not enough on general social justice, which is rather interesting given the NDP’s traditional views on this subject. And the police themselves are at fault. They have a really crappy moral going around to let this kind of behaviour loose, and they do nothing about it.

This isn’t the first complaint or meathead cop I’ve had getting in my face about nothing more than a chip on a shoulder. It’s just the first time I had a witness, which largely helped my complaint. But nevertheless, I feel less and less the passion to be helpful to the Winnipeg Police in return as I have in many relationships with community policing in different ways. Now, the way I see it is if the cops want my help from me, they’ll have to fill out a form, attend an introductory hearing where nothing happens, wait two more years before I reply. And even then, I’ll give them some gooblygook or double-lawyerspeak like they fed me.

What goes around, comes around.