The not so Great Racism in Canada Thread

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by lio45

I also confessed to obvious tolerance of homophobia, and obvious tolerance of "mental incapacitation" (as milomilo would call observing Ramadan)

I'm probably not the only one who is more outspoken on this board than I am in real life. What you describe is 100% accurate to how I feel, but I have an otherwise intelligent friend who observes Ramadan (despite breaking a load of other Muslim taboos), and while I wouldn't say to him I support it, I'm not going to call him an idiot for it either.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by milomilo

I'm probably not the only one who is more outspoken on this board than I am in real life. What you describe is 100% accurate to how I feel, but I have an otherwise intelligent friend who observes Ramadan (despite breaking a load of other Muslim taboos), and while I wouldn't say to him I support it, I'm not going to call him an idiot for it either.

My sister when she was doing her M.Sc. (in Genetics) had a fellow grad biologist from Saudi Arabia (he was pretty worthless but he came with KSA money attached so the university was keeping him around) who genuinely was convinced Allah had created everything exactly "as is" ~5,000 years ago. The exact equivalent of an astrophysicist who's a flat earther. What a joke!

I'm fine with this kind of "mental incapacitation" () when you're in a line of work that doesn't require that much mental capacity, but in pure sciences, come on.........

[Corndogger]

There's a petition out calling for defunding of the Regina Police Service. Their budget for this year is $96 million. Seems like a steal compared to the US$6 billion NYPD budget. But DeBlasio said the NYPD is getting a cut.

[once]

Considering NYC has 40x the population that isn't far off.

That said, I think it's valuable to reconsider the funding towards police and how it really relates to other things like education and social programs.

Similarly I support drug legalization instead of funding police to go after addicts. We should be looking at treatment not punitive damages for people who need help.

The same is true of police in general. We should be funding the eradication of root causes of criminal activity, police is the last resort after we've failed as a society to provide the environment required to be successful and avoid crimes. This philosophy isn't reflected in a lot of municipal budgets (especially in the USA).

[scryer]

Go ahead and defund all cities' police forces. See what happens next.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by once

The same is true of police in general. We should be funding the eradication of root causes of criminal activity, police is the last resort after we've failed as a society to provide the environment required to be successful and avoid crimes. This philosophy isn't reflected in a lot of municipal budgets (especially in the USA).

For the record, that's true for health as well. A dollar spent on prevention is worth like ten spent in a reactive manner after a condition that could've been nipped in the bud has been left to greatly worsen. (Don't quote me on the exact ratio, but you get the point.)

[casper]

Originally Posted by lio45

Except I do, because I'm totally a "in the trenches" manager. Few things on the floor escape me - even when they take place in Punjabi (I have my snitches). (But you're right in most cases.)

I doubt the only entity that's above me on the totem pole (the Client) would truly care that much about the fact that the excellent, high-quality product we're delivering on time at an unbeatable price point was made by a mildly homophobic workforce - even if they knew (which they won't).

Let me add to my earlier comment.....

I have never managed construction. I have been part of the management team on some very large projects where one manger looks after construction, someone else industrial equipment and I look after software and commissioning.

The language and approach you describe is not unusual to what I have seen the constructions guys have to do.

At the same time it would never fly with my team, suppliers and part of the organisation and my approach would not work on the construction side.

[Truenorth00]

I'm not down to "defund" police. But I am down for some healthy skepticism on their ever expanding budgets and the possible effects it has crowding out other services.

Or the generous clauses they have. Toronto police are guaranteed the highest pay in the GTA. Why aren't they required to live in the 416?

[vid]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I think some people might be quite surprised at how much "tolerance for intolerance" there is in the workplace. That's not necessarily because employers condone racism, but because intolerant, ignorant and even racist employees have rights too.

It's not so much that they have rights, but that their rights are more respected than they are respecting the rights of others. I know I'll lose my job if I talk back to the homophobe, just as I was always the one that got in trouble when I was insulted in school, so I don't bother doing it. I've been fortunate that the only coworkers I had who were ignorant have since left or been fired.

Originally Posted by once

Considering NYC has 40x the population that isn't far off.

That said, I think it's valuable to reconsider the funding towards police and how it really relates to other things like education and social programs.

Similarly I support drug legalization instead of funding police to go after addicts. We should be looking at treatment not punitive damages for people who need help.

The same is true of police in general. We should be funding the eradication of root causes of criminal activity, police is the last resort after we've failed as a society to provide the environment required to be successful and avoid crimes. This philosophy isn't reflected in a lot of municipal budgets (especially in the USA).

My neighbourhood in Thunder Bay used to be the worst in the city. Now, it's among the safest of our low-income neighbourhoods. Despite a major insurgence of Toronto-based gangs.

It's because our neighbourhood has strong community-based programming. Gangs have a harder time infiltrating us because we get to the kids before they do. We need this strategy nationally. They join gangs because they don't feel they belong; we need to make them feel they belong. They join gangs when they don't have safe and stable homes, so we need to make homes safer and more stable. Kids don't learn when they're hungry, so we need to make sure they're fed. Property crime happens in areas that are run down and poorly lit, so we need to help neighbours keep their properties maintained and ensure infrastructure is kept in shape.

Neglect is why we have a gang problem.

[vid]

Thunder Bay's police have pretty much admitted that a lot of what they do is stuff police shouldn't be doing, but there's no alternative to the police to do them. We need to shift funding away from police and into different groups of people with different skills who deal with social and health issues affecting the community, and only rely on police when their particular set of skills are required. In many situations, police arrive to calm a situation, but their mere presence escalates it before they even get out of the car.

Should police even be the ones responsible for responding to a protest? All you need is traffic control and conflict resolution skills, you can have a different group of people do that to maintain peace and only involve police when there is an outbreak of violence. (Assuming we can trust the police to not secretly incite that violence; there is evidence of American police doing that.)

Direction of police efforts is another issue, in the US it seems that they turn a blind eye to white supremacists who are often the group inciting the looting and violence (several of the antifa twitter accounts are actually run by white supremacist and anti-government groups trying to incite violence with them) so even with police involvement, they're doing the wrong thing with regards to the protests and its making the situation worse. I think the main reason Canada has had more peaceful protests isn't because we're more police, but because our police don't have the culture of riot incitement that American cops do. Our police don't have quotas requiring them to arrest and imprison x number of people each year like many places in the US do (which, that tactic itself undermines any crime prevention efforts because crime prevention itself undermines the prison industrial complex so it's no wonder it's so opposed by those in power).

[Dengler Avenue]

Ah, it’s nice to hear some silver lining from T Bay.

[ssiguy]

When you consider the amount of influence and power that the police hold in our society, the academic qualifications are exceptionally low. All you need is Grade 12 and 22 weeks of training ans voila.....you're a cop.

At the very MINIMUM, the police should have to have at least 2 years of either college or university and most of that in criminology and the social sciences, several psychology classes and especially ones dealing with mental illness and only then should they be able to apply for their whopping 5 month police training course.

[casper]

Originally Posted by once

Considering NYC has 40x the population that isn't far off.

That said, I think it's valuable to reconsider the funding towards police and how it really relates to other things like education and social programs.

Similarly I support drug legalization instead of funding police to go after addicts. We should be looking at treatment not punitive damages for people who need help.

The same is true of police in general. We should be funding the eradication of root causes of criminal activity, police is the last resort after we've failed as a society to provide the environment required to be successful and avoid crimes. This philosophy isn't reflected in a lot of municipal budgets (especially in the USA).

When the conservatives were in power in the federal government it was common practice each year to go to each department and ask for three budgets: (1) No increase, (2) a 5% cut and (3) a 10% cut. The department would then have to identify what programs/positions it would give up under the three scenarios. Finance would then pick between the three budgets. The cost savings would then be used to fund new programs. Perhaps the same type of discipline is needed for some of these police forces in Canada.

Any organisation with a $95 M budget is going to have things that over time have become irrelevant to its mission. $9.5 M for a city the size of Regina is a good size fund to dedicate to new programs that avoid crime in the first place.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

When you consider the amount of influence and power that the police hold in our society, the academic qualifications are exceptionally low. All you need is Grade 12 and 22 weeks of training ans voila.....you're a cop.

At the very MINIMUM, the police should have to have at least 2 years of either college or university and most of that in criminology and the social sciences, several psychology classes and especially ones dealing with mental illness and only then should they be able to apply for their whopping 5 month police training course.

2 yrs? Nah. Full degree. The current police foundations program at most community colleges is 2 years.

The US Military went on to target a fully degreed officer corps after Vietnam. In no small part motivated by incidents like My Lai. Canada ordered exactly the same for our military after the Somalia inquiry.

I don't even think a three year college diploma is sufficient. Nurses and teachers require more. And the level of trust police officers are given with their monopoly on the exercise of state sanctioned violence, should require a higher threshold for training.

I'd say either a 4 year applied degree at a community college or a 12 month post graduate program for those who enter with a degree.

[vid]

In Thunder Bay's budget they do something similar for every department every year as part of the budget process, but the police are an outside board so they aren't subject to that, they just make their own budget, tell the city what it owes them, and the city is all but forced to pay it.

Usually when they do ask the police to cut something, they cut community outreach and repairs to existing buildings and vehicles first.

[Truenorth00]

There's also the political aspect. What mayor wants to be seen cutting or even refusing to fund requests from police departments?

If their request gets denied, they will sometimes, work to undermine the local government. In Chicago, for example, after being forced to wear bodycams they didn't like, cops started to simply not respond to calls or would show up and stay in the cruiser. Of course, crime goes up and then they blame those "Democratic politicians".

[Corndogger]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

There's also the political aspect. What mayor wants to be seen cutting or even refusing to fund requests from police departments?

Now? Probably quite a few. Police budgets could easily be cut by a third and they would still be overfunded.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by casper

Let me add to my earlier comment.....

I have never managed construction. I have been part of the management team on some very large projects where one manger looks after construction, someone else industrial equipment and I look after software and commissioning.

The language and approach you describe is not unusual to what I have seen the constructions guys have to do.

At the same time it would never fly with my team, suppliers and part of the organisation and my approach would not work on the construction side.

I'm not surprised at all. What you say also matches both someone123's experience (shared earlier in this thread) and also my own (having been somewhat involved in the high-tech startup of close friends of mine a while ago, I'm well aware it's going to be a very different type of employee in this world - as for ours, at first sight I would guess that little company's average employee education level was somewhere between MSc and PhD).

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by esquire

The more I hear and read about "defunding police" the more I am led to believe that it's really about adding more community policing (like the Bear Clan Patrol that keeps an eye on things in Winnipeg's North End) and more trained social workers to respond to the situations where cops are expected to play a certain social work role, like mental health distress calls.

For such a revolutionary sounding concept, the details speak to a fairly incremental approach to things.

If that's the case, it makes sense. Though I would still say it's being seriously misiniterpreted or mischaracterized by a hell of a lot of people on both sides of the issue.

With the "school's out... forever" Alice Cooper kids on the one side, and the lawless Escape from New York fearmongers on the other.

Regardless, I still think some points are being missed.

For example, the fact that all of these programs people are saying are needed already exist in most communities - especially troubled ones. Could they be improved and benefit from more funding? Sure.

If I listen to some commentators, you'd think that all the police and public officials do is watch the hornets' grow and grow unhindered, and then when it gets too big they unleash the pressure washer to crush it.

The way some people are talking it's as if places like Minneapolis don't have any community-police dialogue, youth programs, etc. Whereas they have lots of them. Perhaps they are ineffective and need to be re-thought, though.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

I'm not down to "defund" police. But I am down for some healthy skepticism on their ever expanding budgets and the possible effects it has crowding out other services.

I do think this is a valid point. Just listening to the news in my area and it seems like every year the Ottawa police goes to their city council asking for pretty big funding increases. The justification is that gang violence and especially shootings are ever-increasing in the city. Which they are, of course.

I think there is a struggle to find an appropriate balance between prevention and repression. Especially in a context where there is only so much money to go around. Looking at Ottawa it seems like the level of municipal financial support for community policing and engagement initiatives has gone up and down quite a bit according to the mood of the times.