The faces of power
Another police shooting in Toronto. I learned about it from CP24. Tag line below the announcer’s picture: THE VICTIM WAS ARMED The announcer: The victim was armed with what appeared to be a gun.
Now look at the sentence again. The announcer read it. Somebody had to write it down. Several people had to be involved in approving the public presentation of it.
The victim was armed…… so he was not a criminal, a perpetrator or an assailant. But he was armed! …. with what appeared to be a gun.
We can also learn from the reports that “Investigators said there was some sort of confrontation between the man and the officers and a police firearm was discharged.”
Three bullets were fired into his body. He was shot. According to the media, he was not shot, it just so happened that “a police firearm was discharged.” It makes it sound sort of innocuous. A shooting by definition has to be intentional. Someone has to hold the gun and pull the trigger. A ‘discharge’ just happens. A 'discharge' is what you get when you have a wet dream.
We can already tell that these policemen will get away with it. It happened at night, there were no witnesses, let alone video captures to prove what actually happened. It is the dead guy vs the police. From the language of the media, we can already know that they will not be challenged. He was not a member of any official victim group, so nobody will push the issue.
The fact that the Toronto police killed yet another unarmed man in a case which could even be the result of mistaken identity is no surprise any more. Police forces in North America are beyond and out of control. Incidents like this will keep happening until we get a non-unionized police forces with truly independent civilian oversights.
The way the media is handling it isn’t much of a surprise either. The manipulative nature of the reporting is so transparent that we cannot even call it manipulation anymore. Do they really believe that people cannot see through the sleaze their language represents? That you are either armed or have something that appears to be a gun? That you cannot have contradictory notions in the same sentence?
We do not know all the details and I’m afraid we never will. What we know already is that the police will keep lying and the media will keep bullshitting. A few compassionate comments here and a sappy human interest story there, but the mainstream media will not ask hard questions from the police.
I grew up in a world where the media were lying even when they were asking questions. Everybody knew that they were. It was expected. Everybody knew that they cannot be trusted or challenged. Still, there was news there if we knew how to read between the lines. I grew up in a world where the police, the media and the justice system were just different facets of the power of the state. I grew up in a world where it was ‘us’ against ‘them.’
In the world I live today, I have more reasons to fear a police encounter than I did under the communists. In the world I live today, the media cannot be trusted even if I cannot see any apparent coercive power behind them. In the world I live today, we do not have a single party autocracy yet, but the faces of power already stink of communist arrogance. The courts, the police and the media are no longer about justice, protection and truth. It is already ‘them’ against ‘us’. They are not our friends. They are our masters.
What do you think are the chances that the policeman whose gun was ‘discharged’ sending three bullets straight into the chest of the unarmed victim will go to jail? My guess is ZERO.
As for the media, judge it for yourself: SIU probes death of 21-year-old shot by police in North York - Toronto - Globalnews.ca Man, 21, dead after police shooting - Toronto Star SIU investigating after Toronto man killed in police-involved shooting - CP24.com Man shot dead by Toronto cops Yatim's pal - Toronto & GTA - News - Toronto Sun