A couple of weeks ago, I described my frustrating, one-way relationship: the police were happy to write my family an endless series of tickets, but when we fell victim to crime, they did nothing.
I listed a few of the things that happened to us over the past 20 years or so: five garage break-ins, four major frauds and more bike thefts than I could remember. There was actually more, but I’d made my point – I used to consider the police our protectors, now I look upon them as latter-day sheriffs of Nottingham.
Last year, I got a traffic ticket because another journalist had removed a test-car’s front licence plate for a photo shoot. The plate was in the car, and I offered to install it, but the police officer said no. “I’m going to write this up,” he told me.
I decided I would write it up, too. I put it in my column, describing what it took to finally get the ticket thrown out by a crown attorney: two days of my time and three trips to a court office where I invariably found several city vehicles in the no-parking zones.
Writing that story was therapeutic, but I wondered what would happen after it was published. I soon got my answer – more than a thousand e-mails, phone calls and comments to The Globe and Mail site flooded in. There were a handful of critics, but the vast majority were people who shared my frustrations.
“Same sort of thing going on in Edmonton,” wrote one reader. “With the highest murder rate in Canada, our police still have the time to set up speed traps, and give out tickets for the most minor of transgressions. Like citizens in Toronto, we are quickly losing respect for the cops.”
“My very responsible neighbour was ticketed as she backed out of her driveway without first having done up her seatbelt,” wrote another. “Her current insurance was in her house but she wasn’t allowed to get it. And one headlight didn’t work. There you go ... three tickets and three convictions. No mercy and no common sense.”
Reader Phil Palter told me about the trap that police operate near his building in downtown Toronto, similar to the scene I described where officers line up on Toronto’s Shaw Avenue to catch drivers who make the mistake of going straight through an intersection at prescribed times. In Palter’s example, they bag drivers who make the mistake of turning right onto St. Paul’s Square (one of the shortest streets in the city) during restricted hours.
On some days, there have been three cruisers, each from a different police division. Palter decided to find out why. After sending two letters to Toronto police chief Bill Blair, he got a call from a sergeant who explained that the street borders on three police divisions, and that each uses St. Paul’s to make their quota.
“I object to the waste of resources,” Palter said. “There are up to five police officers sitting there sometimes. This has nothing to do with public safety. We pay them to protect us, not collect revenue at our expense.”
The story had obviously tapped into a deep well of frustration and resentment. One reader suggested suing the police: “We need a Canadian version of Ralph Nader, someone with a law background who will go after the Toronto police and sue them for dereliction of duty for neglecting duties regarding things that actually hurt/damage people like break-ins and identity theft, instead doing things that raise revenue. ...”
There were even some messages from police. One was pretty ticked off. “Every profession has its slice of mediocrity,” he wrote. “You are yours. When you need help, try calling 912.”
