Just get out of the way!

Posted on by Pete Cross

One of the early founders of modern management theory, in the 20th century, was Peter Drucker. A widely popular and respected academic who coined such terms as the “knowledge worker”, and explored in his books and articles, how humans are organized, across business, government and non-profit entities. He was the leading edge of the massive growth of whole schools of business managers and professed experts in the world of management.

There are of course drawbacks to what has become an obsessive need to create the “perfect” manager. But Drucker forseaw also saw a bit of the future when he wrote about misguided or “over controlling managers.” In a recent article in the Wall Street Journal another author points to the fact that, “workers are most often productive when their managers leave them alone”. It was entitled: “Bosses, get out of your Employees Way”. Both the Wall Street Journal and Drucker wrote about the characteristics of managers who are not working well; too much meddling, too many meetings, and “butt covering” reports.

In the world of politics, there are countless examples of how things go wrong when the politicos and the senior bureaucrats get together, often leading to massive and costly dysfunction. It is almost always the taxpayer and those workers that are at the lower echelon who bear the brunt of their decision making.

One should look no further than the recent ongoing saga of the Surrey Police Service and the Mounties; and in particular the influence of Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke.

In the Brenda Locke/NDP fiasco in Surrey, Mayor Locke fought what seemed to be an obvious policing outcome for 18 months and wreaked havoc on any possibility of a smooth and cost effective transition. She was the ultimate hypocrite, having voted in favour originally of a municipal force, but then deciding for pure political reasons, that she was going to fight it at every step of the way. She clearly demonstrated time after time, that she had no real grasp of the logistics and the day to day running of police operations.

Most Mounties, if being honest with themselves know that the RCMP have simply lost their way, maybe temporarily, but currently they are struggling on every level. They can no longer fulfill their mandate nor their Provincial contracts with any degree of certainty. They also know that the writing is on the wall, in that the Ottawa mandarins themselves want to go to a Federal police force; they no longer want the headache brought on by Provincial contracts. It will take years but that is clearly the direction they are going. They want to be the Canadian Bureau of Investigation.

Despite all of this, Brenda Locke was supported by the upper echelon of the Surrey RCMP Detachment and the managers of the National Police Federation union in her personal fight. The senior executives in that Detachment played silly bugger, in the faint hope that their puppet Locke would do their bidding. The Executives did not want to be pushed out of their biggest detachment and the union did not want to lose a significant number of their members. They fabricated their capabilities and they obfuscated the costing formulas in an effort to convince Locke that they and the Ottawa RCMP establishment behind them were the answer to Surrey’s policing issues. Somehow, they also convinced Locke that the Police Act did not trump her authority as mayor. In the end she had to do the dance of the damned. Millions of taxpayer dollars later, the Mounties are now getting ready to leave en masse, and the inevitable transition can begin. They have become the poster child for incompetence in police management.

However, there is a clearer example of when senior managers need to get out of the way and in this example the RCMP authored it themselves. It is the recent report on the James Smith Cree Nation killings in September 2022. It is what came of their internal review of those tragic killings. Interestingly, contrary to their normal practise they decided to release it to the public. (There is no need to comment at this time on the credibility of a report where the Mounties are judging their own actions). In their summations, true to form, nothing was done improperly, but in clear nouveau government speak said that “certain areas of growth were identified”. They said there were times where it was “unclear who was in charge”, and that it became confusing at times between their “three lead commanders”. That there aircrews were sometimes “flying with little purpose”. Let’s also put aside the oxymoron of “three lead commanders” and the fact that apparently the police were flying around with no goal in mind.

The response to the killings was for the most part handled properly. I believe the members on the ground did the job, like they did in Portapique . Although it may have been mayhem at the time, the job did get done, but with a large human cost.

The senior executives of the RCMP however, seem to never learn the basic lesson that should be taken from an Nova Scotia inquiry and the report now written in Saskatchewan. That lesson is that Senior managers in policing when it comes to urgent, time-sensitive and drawn out operational circumstances need to get out of the way. I have written many times, that in these types of situations especially, one needs to flatten the organizational pyramid and get rid of these gatherings of senior executives in these “Command Centres”. Transfer the decision making to the folks on the ground. I should also point out that my thoughts on this would not be popular in the current management teachings now being constantly extolled.

There are a couple of reasons I believe this to be the case, and it may go some way in also explaining the obstinance of the senior managers to accept any change.

First, in a para-military structure, which all police departments are, decision making is predicated on the thought that the higher the rank, the greater wisdom and experience and with it comes power. Under the current system of promotion and advancement in the RCMP and all police agencies, it can be easily argued that this is now not always the case. For the last couple of decades the process of advancement has been deeply flawed. The best and the brightest are not necessarily rising to the top and experience on the job is not the highest priority. It has been replaced by executives now given more credit for the ability to speak the lingo of government, the speech of political correctness, inclusion and diversity. They spend multiple years getting to that top, constantly trained in the appropriate messaging, spending more time in boardrooms, with white boards and group-think, mission statements and community policing modelling. In many ways they have to be political, we insist on it, and we have allowed many police agencies to become organizations only reflecting their government pay masters.

Secondly, the route up the ladder in policing means you leave the front lines, you become administrators, you are involved in policies and guidelines. You are removed from the day to day issues and the speed of operations, sometimes these individuals are many years removed. It attracts a certain type of personality to these roles, it certainly doesn’t attract those that joined policing to be “operational”or work on the front lines. The organizations are now structured in such a way, that if you want to stay “operational”, you simply can not go up the ladder.

In exercising their senior manager power, they now seem to have only one solution. Their solution, seemingly like all government departments, is always the call for more resources, greater supervision and a larger bureaucratic machine. The policing world itself has undergone a massive transformation in the last 30 years; the operational pyramid has been completely turned upside down. What used to take one person, now takes three, four, or five.

It should therefore come as no surprise, that in the Saskatchewan report they have decided that in the future, in their Division Emergency Operations Centre based in Regina, that they will now add a Flight Co-ordinator, a criminal analyst, and a major crime investigator to their list of senior executives. More bodies, more needed lines of extra communication.

When you have unusual or atypical criminal circumstances, like a Portapique or James Smith Cree Nation situations, paradoxically–the police put in charge decision makers who usually have been removed from operational policing, have only a cursory knowledge of the geographic area, the police personnel involved, and the makeup of the people and resources in that community. They now come from a world where split second decision making is not of the essence. They have to be briefed, establish more communication lines, and then set up their “command structure”. It is time consuming, confusing and it is needless.

So my advice in the end remains the same. Give the people on the ground the resources that are needed. That should be your only role. Harder yet, relinquish the power, but most importantly— get the hell out of the way.

Photo courtesy of Flickr Commons by aaron_anderer -some rights Reserved

Here’s to the Women

Posted on by Pete Cross

There was a small parade and ceremony in St. John’s Newfoundland the other day. An auspicious occasion as it was to mark the fiftieth anniversary of women entering the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. It was back in May 1974 when Commissioner Nadon had opened up the recruitment and application process to the women of Canada. By September 18th of that same year, Troop 17 was born, graduating on March 3rd 1975, and thus shoved themselves through the door and entered into the looming chasm which was the male policing world.

In training there were 32 of them, surrounded by 800 men recruits. The female recruits were all 19-29 years old, embarking on a novel career, but not likely thinking of any “glass ceiling”; in most cases seeing it as an adventure. In fact the term “glass ceiling” wasn’t even coined until 1978. As one of the officers said in a recent interview “they weren’t ready for us” and it is just as likely these female recruits were not ready for what they were about to encounter– both on the street, and just as importantly amongst the ranks of the male officers. They went in blind, but I am sure it did not take long for their eyes to be quickly opened.

Nowadays, the RCMP sees themselves as enlightened in these matters of discrimination and the power of women; however, in 1974 the move by the RCMP came about after having being pushed to do so by the Royal Commission on the Status of Women. They did not relent willingly. The Commission had been formed in 1967, but it still took the government a number of years to be pulled and cajoled into the age of women empowerment. They weren’t the first, the Vancouver and Toronto Police Departments had already brought women into the fold by the time Ottawa and the RCMP moved into the late 20th century.

In 1975 Captain and Tenille were singing about love keeping us together, and Jaws and One Flew Over the Cuckoo Nest were storming the box office. Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau was leading the Liberals, and Joe Clark was about to succeed Robert Stanfied for the Conservatives. Some would say it was a much simpler time, more black and white than grey. And to be totally accurate, there were female “employees” in the RCMP long before this, as they had employed “matrons” in the 1890’s for the processing of prisoners. The woman first believed to be the “first female member” of the RCMP was Dr. Francis McGill, who headed and help to establish the Forensic medicine department in Saskatchewan in 1946.

However, this group in 1975 after graduation were the front line officers and they were about to be dispersed throughout the country. It was not going to be an easy task and one could easily make the argument that the roughest part of their journey and their eventual indoctrination did not come from the street– but from their fellow officers. I was around in those early years, in 1978 I was a recruit assigned to the Newcastle New Brunswick Detachment (an area now called Miramichi City) and shortly after I arrived, the first female the detachment had ever seen, arrived as well. Newcastle was the epitome of the term rough and tumble; high unemployment and rampant poverty. It was a conservative blue collar place where a police officer could easily in the normal course of their daily duties be involved in a knock you down drag it out fight. The people who lived there were either miners, loggers or fishermen and they lived hard and played hard. It was a 23 person RCMP detachment, relatively small, but deemed large in terms of this “have-not” New Brunswick Province. The Mountie administration were initially reluctant even to send female officers to this area because of the constant environment of simmering violence. A few years later, the area would become infamous for being the home of serial killer Alan Legere .

I often have maintained and have stated categorically many times, that the toughest job in policing is to simply be a female officer. And it was in Newcastle in 1978 that I worked with “Sheila”, the first female Mountie ever to be stationed in this robust village; an above average height, slim, a quick to smile 25 year old, who immediately found herself now working with big strapping Mounties, who with little doubt, were to the right of centre socially and politically. The male officers there were quick to jump into a fight and quick to say what they meant loudly and in a clear voice. There were no niceties and they all became my friends. However, in terms of personal viewpoints, if they had done a survey in those times– almost all would have felt that women had no place in policing– and some would profess that between women being “let in” and the arriving of the Charter of Rights in 1982 it was the end of the golden age of policing. “Sheila” was from the start under an intense microscope, the subject of continual stares, in public, and even at social police functions, most pointedly by the female spouses of the other officers. She was seen as an obvious threat to domestic bliss, and she had the added burden of being attractive. Some of the spouses demanded that their husbands not be seen riding in the same patrol car with Sheila or meeting up for a work coffee break. She was assigned to the Traffic Section, because it was seen as being “safer” there. I never saw her show weakness or express exasperation; she never complained, she just kept doing her job and hoped for eventual acceptance.

When I try to analyze the root cause of the growing pains for females in those early years, it probably comes down to two simple elements. First and foremost, at that age and time, there was a clear delineation between what was the role of the male and what was the role of the female. Simply put it was a boy’s club and their treehouse and they were girls trying to climb the shaky wooden ladder to become a member of the group. In their dress Red Serge uniform, the females wore red blazers and black knee length skirts and in 1983 they gave them purses to carry their guns and handcuffs. They wore form fitting polyester blouses, with no pockets to avoid any unnecessary protuberances. They were being seen as female first, police officers second.

The second element, that flows from the first, is that policing was seen as a laborious lower level middle class job; a physical occupation, where size and weight were the primary measurements in your ability to do the job. The job back then was often simply defined as chasing “bad guys” and physically tossing them into jail. This is not to say that there isn’t a physical element to this job, there was then and there is still now. Women then and now are expected to be just as tough and willing to wander into a scrap, against someone usually bigger and stronger than them on a regular basis. But in those early years one should be reminded that there were no alternate weapons such as pepper spray, or batons, or tasers, or which came about specifically as a way to level the playing field. In those days the female officers were told to be tougher; they were punched, kicked and spit upon, and they were expected to go down fighting. They were continually being watched for signs of acquiescence or for showing female qualities. That was unfair but there are still some elements of this scrutiny even today.

There is also a female proscribed role in terms of familial and personal relationships which lingers to this day. Starting and maintaining families and households is still very much predominantly the role of the female, this while balancing a policing career in particular is a significant challenge. Throw in the sometimes still present misogynist male and night time shift work and you get some idea of how tricky it can be. Sometimes for some it has proven to be overwhelming. Female officers traditionally have not stayed in policing as long as their male counterparts, but there are few studies as to why this is happening, but clearly there are reasons for it.

For those that did manage to walk the fine line and especially to those that endured in those early years one can only show respect. Since those early days, I personally have worked with some extraordinary female officers through three decades of policing. They were hard working intuitive good investigators long before they were seen as female. Their gender was inconsequential. Many of them displayed different insights that being who they were provided them. I can’t explain it, I just saw it working.

All of this is a common saw. Since the early 20th century, women have been fighting to define their role in a male dominated society. Policing was one of the last of the true male vestiges of this 20th century. It was difficult to run at and break through those traditions. It was often an individual fight on an individual level. Those that put up that fight in those early years started that final pendulum. Today, females possibly enjoy an even greater chance of promotion and have the benefits and support networks to confront the duality of their roles. It is still hard, but all the female officers of today should be bowing in respect to the many that came before them, a time before many of the current officers were born.

I watched it from the sidelines, but I am also tipping my cap to “Sheila”.

I am sure she will smile back.

Picture courtesy of Flickr commons from the Vancouver Archives – Some Rights Reserved

Wandering the Corridors of 73 Leikin Drive…

Posted on by Pete Cross

Should one ever be given the opportunity to wander the corridors of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Ottawa, it will likely lead you to begin to understand what ails the world of the scarlet tunic. As you meander the halls, you will find yourself checking the departmental name plates on the offices. As you you sit in the boardrooms, surrounded by other boardrooms and their white boards watching endless power points you will first come to understand that you are in a different universe. Your senses will be bombarded by fancied talks of “initiatives”and “strategies” as presented by departments with long and bewildering names. You will feel alone and confused and then when you are finally released from this concrete Wonderland (no later than 3:00pm of course) you will find yourself wandering amongst the quickly diminishing crowds dazed and confused; trying to find meaning in what you just witnessed.

You later learn that you would have had a better sense of what was transpiring around you in those droning conversations, if you could have just picked up a copy of the “Royal Canadian Mounted Police 2023 Departmental Results Report”. However, a warning, you will not be able to read it at one sitting and don’t read it in bed.

Inside this gilded and embossed document, you will find groups and departments that you had no idea even existed. Maybe you knew that there was the Independent Centre for Harrassment Resolution” and that it contains 74 investigators. But did you know that there was an RCMP Strategic Foresight Methodology Team, or that you were part of a team for the Canada War Crimes program? You would probably be overcome by the amount of “strategizing” going on; layer upon layer of master plans and blueprints all being developed to guide the RCMP into the promised land of law and order. As an example there is the Methamphetamine National Strategy or the Ideologically Motivated Violent Extremism Strategy. The latter is tasked with only just building a “framework for countering these types of threats”.

There is the Canada Financial Crimes Agency, the RCMP National Cybercrime Coordination Unit, the Canadian anti-fraud centre, and that they are now “developing” a Canada Financial Crimes Agency. With all this expertise it is hard to imagine how Canada has become a well known refuge for white collar criminals around the world.

What started me down this road of discovery was the unveiling of the report by the afore mentioned Strategic Foresight Methodology Team, which was tasked with determining the future policing issues over the long term. A copy of the report was obtained by Professor Matt Malone from Thompson Rivers University through a freedom of information request. This esteemed team of RCMP “strategists” based their findings and conclusions strictly on media and public information reports that are readily available; and then as only government can do, heavily redacted the report as being confidential information. This group of thinkers came up with what they believed to be the six trends in Canadian society that they felt should be brought to the attention of the upper echelon of the RCMP to guide them in policing this nation of ours.

They predicted that there is going to be “continued social and political polarization” and an “increasing mistrust of all democratic institutions”. That criminals are going to use “technology to gain power and influence”. They also believe that the weather is going to be a big policing factor (thanks Weather Network)– in that there will be “increasingly violent and even concurrent storms, drought, floods and heat waves” and that the “extreme weather crises concurrent with other crises requiring deployment of police resources”. Of course this will have a greater impact on “Indigenous communities and the Arctic, while Canada faces pressure to help countries closer to the equator”. Finally number 6 on the list was the prediction that there will be “demands for expertise in artificial intelligence, quantum computing and blockchain”.

One has no idea how many people make up this group, or how much time went into their thought processes, but one could pretty confident that a single individual scanning Apple news any given day, could have written this same report in half a day, or they could have also checked a Liberal party newsletter to obtain the same prognosis. Or better yet, asked ChatGPT to ponder the main political questions of the day.

Other reports or papers flowing from this group include, a “Feasible and sustainable model for forensic service delivery in Canada” which concludes that the RCMP and FIS could “lose very experienced staff if they chose to resign rather than move”. Other studies cited include the one titled “not everyone can do this job” which is a “qualitative inquiry into emotional labour from RCMP detachment service assistants”.

One should not be against academic study of policing and the RCMP, as it is clear some expertise in some areas is wholly needed. However, in these times of manpower shortages, increasing costs of policing, a broken police Crown relationship, un-enforceable laws, rampant drug and white collar crimes, increasing gang violence, disconnected policing functions, a loss of expertise in almost every field, and morale at abysmal levels– is this the time for studying the obvious? Is this the time to for additional frameworks or developing strategies as if the issues were un-predictable and unanticipated? Of course it isn’t, but never before has the RCMP been so firmly embedded in the machinery of the Federal government. In terms of policy, they are not unique, they are merely following and mimicking the other Federal departments. Meanwhile, the problems in this national police force go back decades and have only led to bloated bureaucracies and greater political entanglement. The bureaucracy in Ottawa needs to be broken apart, specific mandates given over to smaller investigative groups with minimized reporting structures. The RCMP, simply said, can not be all things to every person in this country with an ability to provide whatever level and type of investigation that is needed. They simply can not do it on their own and I am not sure that they even can see the vast array of policing problems outside of the cocoon of Ottawa– let alone fix them.

This corpulent body of an organization has as its greatest accomplishment–like the rest of the Federal government– they have grown the offices to non-sensical proportions and ballooned the rank structure to their obvious benefit. They have become political puppets, made to dance and wave their arms akimbo all while convincing themselves that they are still the experts in their field and the policing world needs their guidance. This is not unique to the RCMP, it runs across all Federal departments and it is mostly due to the political influence under which they have fallen and then been rewarded. The very organizational structure and existence of the RCMP is being threatened in Alberta, British Columbia and Saskatchewan and all while Nero (or in this case Commissioner Duheme) fiddles; concerned instead with things such as the “Knowledge Circle for Indigenous Inclusion’s Career Navigations Program”.

Ronald MacDonald wants to go to court more…

Posted on by Pete Cross

Of course the title of this blog is not referring to that icon of our childhood, the “… Happy Hamburger Clown” of Golden Arches fame; although he has had his legal issues too (he was sued civilly for promoting child obesity.) No, this is in reference to Ron MacDonald, the current head of the Independent Investigations Office (IIO) for the Province of British Columbia. This is the group, with an annual budget of about $10 million, that is mandated to “conduct investigations into police-related incidents resulting in death or serious harm to determine whether any officer may have committed an offence”. There is a general consensus growing that the group is in trouble, it is not fulfilling it’s mandate, in fact many say they are failing and failing miserably. Mr. MacDonald himself has recently been speaking out on his own frustrations.

The police could not and should not investigate themselves was the repeated slogan coming from those of the political left of centre a number of years ago. It stirred the politicians to act in September of 2012. Like most political policy, it was the result of a political reaction to a rather immature and naive understanding of police wrongdoing. The theme had been pushed forward by a vocal minority, which in turn was then given an audience by the Davies and Braidwood inquiries, which looked into the deaths of Frank Paul and Robert Dziekanski respectively.

Paul was a 48 year old Mi’kmaq who Vancouver Police officers tried to book into the “drunk” tank, but they were turned away when the on duty Sgt said that he had only just released Mr. Paul, two hours before from cells and he wasn’t going to book him again after such a short period of time. So the officers took Paul away and returned him to the downtown alley. He was clearly still intoxicated and he subsequently died of exposure and hypothermia in the alley. However, after a total of five Crown reviews of the case, all concluded that “charges were not warranted” against the Vancouver City officers involved.

Dziekanski was a more widely reported incident where police responded to a disturbance in the Vancouver Airport, when Dziekanski a Polish immigrant who had just arrived, was wandering disoriented around the terminal and then began causing a ruckus. Four officers attended and tasered him saying they felt threatened. Dziekanski died of heart failure. The four officers believed they were both justified in their actions and within the limits of their training. Some of the officers were charged, but not for the death, but for perjuring themselves during the Braidwood inquiry. Judge Braidwood at the inquiry conclusion said that the officers “didn’t intend to cause his death”.

So what prompted the birth of the IIO was a political demand, which used as it primary evidence two cases– both of which showed there was no wrong-doing on the part of the police.

Irony aside, the first IIO chief was Richard Rosenthal, who left the job early to return to the world of academia and probably did not leave the best impression. He was then succeeded by Mr. MacDonald in 2017. MacDonald came from the legal world, he was a defence counsel for 6 years, and then a Prosecutor for 17 years and had a distinguished record. All of which makes his recent comments a little more perplexing.

In short Mr. Macdonald is now making a case and has gone public with his concerns about the lack of charges being approved in the IIO cases that were presented to Crown Counsel. What prompted his comments seems to have been, once again, a political reflex to some media pressure centred around two Indigenous cases.

One case involves a 38 year old Wet’suwet’en named Jared Lowndes, who during his arrest the police had to use a taser, a police dog, and then after ramming his vehicle, he was eventually shot in a Tim Hortons parking lot. The Crown in that case concluded and stated that they were “unable to prove that officers committed any offence in relation to the incident”.

The second case involved Dale Culver, a Wet’suwet’en and Gitxsan indigenous male who during his arrest was pepper sprayed and punched when checked by police who were answering a call where it was alleged that he was “casing vehicles”. During the course of their investigation the IIO went to three different pathologists all of whom identified the primary cause of death as “tiny blood clots in lungs”, but that the blunt force trauma by the officers was a “contributing factor”. The IIO felt that the officers should have been charged based on the “contributing factor”. The Crown in their review went to a fourth pathologist, who identified the cause of death as being “cardiac arrest due to the effects of methamphetamine”. So after seven years, the officer was given an absolute discharge.

During this time, the officer’s career has been put on hold and he had been subjected to death threats. The Union of BC Indian Chiefs, who clearly feel that they have not only the right to disagree and inflame the issue, but also feel that they should be the ultimate arbiters of any criminal case involving their own, issued a statement saying: “We have a system that says when you have a gun and a badge, you can kill any Indigenous person in any town in B.C. and not go to jail”. The stupidity of the statement went un-challenged by the government.

Mr. MacDonald regardless of whether these particular cases motivated him, says the system isn’t working. He tips his political hand a bit though when he states the people have “lost faith in the system..in particular Indigenous communities.” He may have lost faith, but far be it for me to point out to a lawyer an obvious truism. The Crown has always operated on the premise of “substantial likelihood of conviction”. They have a legal need to prove a case of guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt”. Does Mr. MacDonald not see the reasonable doubt in the Culver case?

The IIO has been on shaky ground since its inception. The mandate given from the beginning was much too broad, and this was pointed out even by Rosenthal in his departure. He said at the time that it was going to cause a backlog of causes when there was no ability to “triage” the cases.

There was also a large problem in the staffing this organization. The government of the day said that the overall intention, once established, was to have all “civilian investigators”. Remember the police could not be trusted in their theoretical framework. So they limited the ability of ex-officers who could apply, especially those from B.C. If you carry this logic forward, the thought was that investigating an “officer related shooting” did not require any policing experience or knowledge of police operational structures.

There were also internal problems in the beginning, which seem to be continuing today. In 2015 there were investigations into allegations of “bullying and harassment”, allegedly due to the culture clash from hiring former police officers. During this time 17 investigators, and five non-investigative staff left the organization, only a couple of years after its inception. Flash forward to 2023 and Mr. Macdonald began speaking out and complaining of the lack of investigative resources. By then there were only 19 investigators working and 17 unfilled positions. To add to the resourcing problems, officer related shootings had increased by three times from the previous years.

The IIO in 2023 had been called in 232 cases, of which 193 led to further investigations. At the time of the article, they had 90 open investigations involving 38 deaths. In 2023, 50% of the staff were still ex-police officers and Mr MacDonald and his management staff were in turn being internally and publicly accused of bad behaviour “which created a hostile work environment… with their “belittling behaviour”.

So now in 2024 Mr. MacDonald’s has further complaints which he recently took to the air waves on the local radio station CKNW. Mr. Macdonald is now complaining about the lack of charge approval which he says is leading to a failing in “police accountability”. In the last five years, the IIO has recommended 39 cases for charge, and only 18 were approved for charge. Even more startling is the fact that since the IIO inception in 2012, only 15 cases reached the court stage, and there were 0 convictions. There was no mention of the length of time for these matters to get through the court process, which the IIO is hesitant to speak about, at least on their own official website.

If one assumes these stats to be correct, there are only a few possible answers to Mr. MacDonalds problems. One being that cases without merit are being forwarded, or the investigations being forwarded are flawed and incomplete; and simply do not meet the charge approval threshold. Or b) the process itself is not working. If it is the former, then it also may be possible that in the vast majority of cases the police are in fact innocent, and simply doing their job and doing it properly.

If it is “the process” then there are significant layers to that problem. Understaffing is clearly one of those problematic layers, as there is no possible way that you can take on every referral with such limited staff and capabilities. So you need to cut the mandate or “triage” the files more expertly as was suggested by Rosenthal.

You also need to forget the “civilianization” of the investigative team. You need to bring in ex-police officers with high levels of expertise and with significant standing amongst other current police officers. They are out there, but you need to go and find them. Building credibility is absolutely key and they have not done that since their inception. Currently the IIO is fighting the police forces, or specifically their unions on two fronts; on the access to police notes and in the area of “lethal force experts” –who are usually ex-police officers brought in to testify. They should not have to fight these fights, and better quality investigators with greater credibility will go a long way in working through those issues.

The problems within IIO are not new. They are similar to the problems which in more recent times arose from the “de-funding” era. It is a fundamental failure in common sense. The IIO mandate and their make-up is clearly flawed and has been from the beginning. One may even have to conclude that the best people to investigate the police may be the police themselves. Whether the public perception changes and the media narrative becomes less inflammatory towards the police, or whether the government understands this, is quite another matter.

Photo courtesy of Flickr Commons by David Jackmanson – Some Rights Reserved

Productivity

Posted on by Pete Cross

One of the recent headlines in Canada originated from a speech given, in fact it was termed a “blunt” speech, by the Sr. Deputy Governor of the Bank of Canada Carolyn Rogers. The speech centred around the drop of productivity in Canada in relation to other countries, in particular the U.S. and the G7. She described the weak labour productivity in Canada and said that in fact it had reached levels that should be considered an “emergency”.

Productivity in the economy is defined traditionally and measured in economic output per hour worked. In 1984 our Canadian levels were at 88% of that of the Americans, but in 2022 we are at 71% versus the Americans and we are lower than the G7 countries with the single exception of Italy. Again, the speech was one dealing with purely economic theory– productivity down, labour costs up, prices up, and the continued growth of inflation. However, this led to the question of whether or not productivity can be measured in policing or in the wider legal system.

Can labour and its level of efficiency be measured in policing, or at least to some degree? There is labour, there is time and there is an output, even though it is not an economic output? Can it be as simple as a calculation such as number of officers up, crime up, therefore police productivity down? Public Safety Canada does not even use the term productivity. So it can probably be assumed that currently there is no measure of “productivity” in terms of individual officers, or as officers in terms of a particular unit. Public Safety Canada and other police agencies, instead use the term “performance”.

There are two major differences in productivity versus performance . Performance is both qualitative and quantitative while productivity measures the impact or output of the work done and the labour resources employed.

The Federal government indicates that there are both direct and indirect measures of “performance” in relation to policing. They say direct measures are such things as crime rates, number of arrests, fines issued, clearance rates, and calls for service response times. They say “indirect” measures include, surveys, observations of social behaviour, situational studies and independent testing. I am going to ignore the latter measurement tools, the indirect tools, because it would seem to be a much more subjective set of tools and would be a lengthy topic all on its own.

In terms of direct measurement tools, there are some units in policing which are easily measured such as calls into a dispatch centre. For instance, they measure time response in answering emergency 911 calls. In the last stats reported by E-Comm , it was on average 5 seconds or less. This despite there having been an 11% increase in calls for service. A good result, with a positive spin. On the other hand they do not measure how long a non-emergency call takes; such as reporting a break and enter, or how long that person may wait on hold under those circumstances. Nor do they give statistics on how long before an officer even attends a break and enter, in fact in the cities, they may not even attend– often telling the victim to send in the details. This is just to say, measurement tools can be flawed, in-complete or mis-leading and can often be tailored depending on your viewpoint. But the fact that there are some measurements in place in terms of performance is re-assuring.

In a different example, in September 2023 report done for Police Services concerning the CFSEU (Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit) was obtained by a freedom of information request by the Vancouver Sun newspaper. In that report the agency came under heavy criticism. In the 123 page report it was stated that the agency “is neither effective in suppressing gang violence and organized crime nor is it providing the Province with an adequate return on investment”. A damning statement but what seemed more interesting is that they clearly undertook what must have made some cost/benefit analysis of the work being done by CFSEU– and clearly found it wanting. The report had been undertaken after a spate of murders, such as the one at Vancouver International Airport, and the shooting of Tequel Willis, who was only 14 but already a member of the Brothers Keepers. At the time and with the required concern expressed with this increase in blatant and brazen murders, they announced the launch of “Operation Spectrum”.

The review however, found that Spectrum operation “had no investigative component and only amounted to increased intelligence sharing between agencies” and that the entire project “fell short”. The report went further and said that “there are issues with CFSEU’s leadership and senior management model…and…a lack of continuity in policies and procedures”. They even added that their mandate wasn’t even clear. This is no small unit, there are 440 officers assigned to CFSEU, and they have an annual budget of about $90 million and are primarily responsible for gang activity in British Columbia. It is a large unit that according to this study were vastly under performing.

The CFSEU managers when questioned by the media weakly replied that they had not received a copy of the report. Is it possible that Police Services had this report, and were simply hanging on to it, and never felt the need to act on it? For the record the agency has been led since 2021 by A/Commissioner Manny Mann, who by default also oversees the Organized Crime Agency. One would have thought that there would have been some sort of repercussions coming from this report which was issued back in September 2023, when the questions were clearly pointing at the lack of performance, productivity and the eventual measured outcomes. As this is being written, so far nothing has been done and there has been no public accounting or explanation offered by the RCMP upper levels, who must have got a copy of the report by now.

Is this a measurement of the individual members of CFSEU? Not really, we can not draw that conclusion. Most everyone who has some insight into this unit knows that there are members of this unit who are hard-working, spending countless thankless hours and many night shifts trying to keep tabs on some of the many gangsters who run about this Province. That being said we also know that there are some members in that unit and other government units, who have their feet up, enjoy the overtime, and dream of a lucrative retirement. Let’s face it, every agency has the players of the system, the ones who are around for a free ride, the officers always being the “backup” car to keep away from the paperwork, and those that don’t simply like to leave the office.

We also know that the hard workers, the often quiet ones who toil away and make little fuss often go unrewarded. Promotion is “allegedly” based on performance, yet time and time again a great many of the laggers still find their way up the chain of command. One often is forced to the conclusion that performance is not being measured accurately or with any consistency.

Another complexity to any kind of measurement is the fact that there are many officers doing many different jobs sometimes inside the same unit, with different skill sets and different mandates and efficiencies. How do you measure a group who write warrant applications with another group that spend the majority of their time doing surveillance, or others who may be doing strictly administrative jobs.

Individually, every year every officer of the RCMP is subject to a Performance Review. It is assumed that municipal agencies have some similar process. In the RCMP the immediate supervisor outlines the good and the bad of the individual sitting before them. It is completely subjective and therefore often falls prey to individual likes or dislikes. Every supervisor also wishes to keep their charges happy, especially in this age of victims and apparent unlimited stress leaves, so inevitably these annual documents are positive. They are also rather lengthy documents and every supervisor dreads having to complete them. I have seen and heard many supervisors tell their underlings to write their own document and they will just sign it. Measuring performance in this atmosphere and style is clearly problematic and many would consider it as a form of process an abject failure, yet it has survived for decades.

Then consider the unlimited numbers of sections in the RCMP and to a lesser extent the municipal agencies, and how does one compare performance or productivity between all of the various Provinces and specialties. How does one measure the productivity or performance of someone on the Musical ride, or in Media relations, and how would you compare it with someone in uniform answering calls in Prince George or in Bella Bella or in London, Ontario. The pay structure however is uniform. All of the same rank make the same salary regardless of the unit, or the importance of that unit to the overall policing mandate. Performance or productivity does not factor in to how much one is paid. One can easily see the problem and the level of complexity. It is just as hard to find any willingness or intent to change it, or even make an attempt to measure it.

Public Safety as stated earlier, for the most part simply report on performance, they do not act or comment on those performance measures. They do direct measurements through such tools as the CSI (Crime Severity Index). If we glance at those statistics, the CSI was up 4% in 2022 the highest since 2007. Violent CSI, a different index also rose, with Robbery up 15%, Extortion up 39%, Homicide up 8% and sex assault up 3%. Non-violent CSI which applies to such crimes such as property theft is also up 4% and motor vehicle theft is up 24%.

The “volume of crime” index shows an increase of 5% to 5,668 incidents per 100,000 population. In any view, these statistics do not seem to lead one to believe that performance in policing is on the upswing, in fact it would be easier to assume that they are in fact trending negatively. However, there is no real accountability, except when for some reason a light is shone on one particular problem. In Ontario recently it is high end car thefts. An officer at a community meeting gathered some unwanted attention when he recently suggested that the public keep their keys by the front door to limit the damage from home invaders trying to steal keys. The message seemed to be, we can’t catch them so it is up to the public to limit them. Not the best statement if one were talking about trying to measure performance.

The usual answer you get when police executives face these poor numbers is to always go to the standard answer of it being due to dwindling resources, not a poor performance. In that, there is some but limited truth. In May of these same years, there were 70,566 officers, 406 more than in 2021– but still representing a 1% decrease, largely due to growth in population. Does a 1% decrease in resourcing explain the reason for what most would consider a poor performance?

This blog has always maintained that productivity and performance of units needs to be measured. In this age of sophisticated and minute data collection, one would hope that it is becoming increasingly possible and at some point there would be some attempts made to judge efficiency. It would seem key to having any viable and fully functioning organization. It also seems more necessary now than in past years to have some form of cost benefit measuring tool. There are many problems currently facing policing, but this should be considered one of the major issues, along with the need for much greater transparency. It has been plaguing policing for decades and at present, disappointingly there is no indication that they are yet willing to consider change and truly embrace the constant call for modernization.

Photo courtesy of Flickr commons by Mark Dyer – Some Rights Reserved

Amateur Sleuths, whether the Police like it or not

Posted on by Pete Cross

Curiosity is a human trait defined as a desire to learn or know something. We all have it, just some of us are blessed or cursed to have it more than others. Everyone slows and cranes their neck driving by a car accident, just for a fleeting glance of the injured or the damage. Every newscast at a crime scene will show the draped bodies on stretchers leaving the residence. All feeding the dark curiosity in all of us. There are some people with heightened curiosities, outwardly “normal” in all appearances, but consumed by the desire to know more and having the ability to question. Many have warned us about having too much of that curiosity gene. The old proverb “curiosity killed the cat” is just such a warning to those that want to ask too many questions.

There have been amateur sleuths around for centuries, persons inquiring and digging into all sorts of things, always questioning what others took for granted. We have all had at one time experienced the “nosy neighbour”. Then along came the internet monster, a multi-headed dragon with the ability to access, share and distribute information at lightning speeds, and to make everyone in the world your neighbour.

It is also well established that the police have always sought help from the public, and asked for “everyone with any information” to call. Now at every criminal event the police media types besides seeking anyone with information, now ask for anyone to provide “dash cam video”. So the police solicit all forms of information from the outside, but once received, from that point on they don’t want to share, especially any investigational detail. So the question is, have we reached a stage where that dynamic between the public and the police needs to change, or at the very least be re-considered?

In an article in LEXIPOL by Ted Bremer, he points to the growth of the amateur sleuth networks and narrows it down to a couple of incidents which he sees as the point origin for that growth; the Boston Marathon bombing, and the murder of Gabby Petito case, both American cases. He explores how amateur sleuthing in those cases, now armed with the strength of the internet, reached uncontrollable levels, and in the end turned into what he called “digital vigilantism”, and thus in turn a problem for the the police. In the Marathon case, massive amounts of photos and videos during and after the bombing were being analyzed and shared on the web site Reddit. In the Petito case, the police further spurred the public inquisitiveness by giving access to the police body cam footage. Later, the Moab City Police Department were examined for their actions on a “miniscule” level, and in the end it led to the resignation of the police chief, the entire department coming under fire, and multiple civil lawsuits.

Clearly the dangers in getting amateur sleuths involved are obvious. There are a couple of other things that need to be considered and balance the scales of concern: the internet is here to stay and the tools of this computer age are unharnessed and getting increasingly more and more sophisticated. Secondly, peoples curiosity and the need to feed it is a driving force on many societal levels. Just go look at Netflix or Crave, or the multiples of podcasts. Everyone wants to be a cop in some form or rendition and just as importantly, they don’t need to obey the rules of evidence nor are they under any form of judicial constraint.

Bremer in his article talks about the case in Idaho where four students were murdered inside a rented campus residence in November 2022. In that case one single amateur sleuth group who got involved in the Idaho case, which formed in November 2022 and by December 28, 2022 had grown to a 137,000 members. There were 10,000 posts within 30 days not to mention thousands of sub-posts. Mountains of information, some relevant, most irrelevant, swirling around the ether. In that case, it led to problems for police investigators in terms of being able to monitor and judge the reactions that came from it. In the Idaho case, almost all the information turned out to be of little or no value, in fact it led to misidentifications of suspects.

That being said, as of 2022, there have been numerous cases where the amateurs solved the crime, sometimes when the police have ignored the file or have gone down different investigational paths. The Golden State killer case is a prime example– a case that was in the end solved by forensic genealogy and DNA. Barbara Rae-Venter was a 74 year old retired patent lawyer, who also happened to have a Phd in biology. Over many months that dragged into years, Venter, and some other volunteers searched the databases of genealogical sites such as GEDMatch, and Family Tree DNA to try and find a match for the killer’s DNA. They shared their information throughout with the police, who at times provided file evidence to help them in their search. A finding of a distant fourth cousin led to the identity of Joseph James DeAngelo. He was a former police officer who eventually would plead guilty to 12 murders and having raped over 50 others during a crime spree that began in 1974 and ended with his arrest in 2018. Without the work of those volunteer sleuths, that case likely would never have been solved. DeAngelo was 74 when arrested and may have gone to the grave taking any confessional evidence with him.

In the highly acclaimed documentary “Don’t F**K with Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer”, released in 2019 on Netflix, Deanna Thompson, a data analyst for a casino in Las Vegas, and John Green in Los Angelas became obsessed with a YouTube video which showed someone, disturbingly and in graphic detail suffocating two kittens. Their persistence and obsessive work ethic led to the eventual incidental solving of the murder of a university student Jun Lin. He had been killed and dismembered by Luca Magnotta, a Canadian porn actor with a sadistic and disturbing bent. They managed to lead the police to the recovery of all the evidence in the case. (Magnotta has recently been in the news over being moved to a medium security facility in Canada).

Crystal Theobold was murdered by gang members in a case of mistaken identity. Her mother, Belinda Lane, posing on-line as someone else, managed to befriend members of the gang and learn the identity of the shooter and others that were involved. It ended on charges of 1st degree murder on the shooter, and charges against others in the gang.

There is digital media consultant Billy Jensen. Jensen uses geo-targeted ads on social media to generate potential witnesses; and now claims to have solved 10 murder cases.

Needless to say the list is now very long of cases where some of the better amateur sleuths , unhindered by the normal rules of evidence gathering, have honed their amateur abilities to a level that in many cases would be un-matched in most police investigational units. Of course, there are also many others who are uncontrolled in their frenzy, often putting forward unsubstantiated theories, or making false allegations on innocents. Their laptops and their phones are their only weapons and equally concerning also their only repositories of that evidence.

To date, the police organizations, say little, and as directed by their managers, share no investigational information. On bigger cases, they will sometimes assign persons to “monitor” the social media content. Often, the amateur sleuths are met by police attitudes bordering on arrogance and with smirks of derision. In this current time and age, in particular in our relations to the internet, that seems short-sighted. Somehow the police need to harness these sleuths, possibly bring them into the fold and maybe also in terms of sharing some information. In the previously mentioned Idaho case there were 137,000 participants, but only two administrators for the site. Would it be out of the realm of possibility to bring those administrators into the police fold, specifically for that case? There would need to be rules and regulations obviously in terms of direction and evidence gathering and retention but it could be done. Deanna Thompson, Billy Jensen, or Barbara Rae-Venter would fit and be an asset for any police investigational team.

Police investigations have to work within the constraints of a budget, and human resourcing issues. You will never be able to hire all the expertise internally, it will logically have to come from outside the police environment, even if it is on some form of contractual level. It would mean that the police need to climb down off the pedestal a bit and lose the us versus them attitude. Nobody should believe that they have somehow cornered perspective and expertise in terms of any level or type of investigation, no matter what area or field of inquiry. A dogged determination and an unbendable curiosity are invaluable and seemingly they are getting harder to find. The rules and roadblocks facing todays police officers are seemingly greater than they were any number of years ago, the police often burdened by over reaching rules and legal and managerial supervision. It has created a very noticeable and pronounced sense of futility amongst many investigators especially when trying to push cases through the system. Maybe a little contracted help from the “outsiders” would be both welcome and may in fact be needed.

Photo courtesy of Leiris202 via Flickr Commons – Some Rights Reserved

To Dig or not to Dig…

Posted on by Pete Cross

The field of policing is rich with irony and the irony in this story will become readily apparent with the telling. The subject of this blog, besides being ironic deals with the more precise issue of when politicians feel the need to interfere with police investigations and judicial processes. It is an obvious fact that politicians have a dangerous habit of dabbling in investigations. When they undertake something they are not supposed to do, they always remember to preface their actions by extolling the virtues of an independent investigational arm, one free of influence or interference, and in compliance with the Canadian constitution.They even boldly proclaim that in no way would they be associated to any strong-arming of the police to meet any political agenda.

The Federal Liberals seem to have reached a new low in terms of maintaining a pretence of an independent investigational arm. The Emergencies Act was a recent example where the politicians not believing what they were being told by the police, in fact not even asking the police, took arbitrary actions to to rid themselves of those politically embarrassing and unruly western outsiders. They self-declared them radicals and terrorists, in essence, to bring in and legally support the Act itself.

Currently in Manitoba, at the Prairie Green landfill site just outside of Winnipeg, the Federal government, the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, and the relatively new NDP Provincial government led by Indigenous Premier Wab Kinew have decided that they needed to get involved in a police investigation and a court process. They are telling the Province and therefore the Police that they need to excavate the site to possibly recover two missing Indigenous women, both believed to have been murdered. It would seem like a simple ask, but of course, the facts are a little more complicated, especially from a homicide investigators perspective.

Earlier, a Federally commissioned report said that any excavation of the privately held landfill site, which contains 712 tons of asbestos, a significant health hazard, would require an examination of 60,000 tons of material to be searched and that it would cost in the area of $184 million to complete. A massive expenditure for any level of homicide investigation. The search, as indicated earlier, was to be focused and based on the possibility of the bodies of Morgan Harris and Mercedes Myran having been disposed in the landfill site by the suspect. The search was also not “guaranteed to succeed”.

Logistics aside, the most relevant factor in this discussion is that Crown counsel has already layed four charges of 1st degree murder against Jeremy Skibicki, 36, for the killing of all four women. The jury trial is in fact set to begin in April 2024. In other words, the Crown and the police are ready to proceed without it being necessary to find the two bodies. An experienced guess would be that the police and the Crown have some form of confession from Skibicki before approving and now proceeding with those charges. So the excavation of the landfill is not necessary to proceed criminally, and therefore the best argument that remains for carrying out this massive examination of the landfill site is that of giving some sort of “closure”. The Manitoba government, who have legal jurisdiction had decided that the cost and the health risks involved did not warrant excavation of the site. Of course that is not where the decision ends.

The debate to exhume the landfill site has gained significant media coverage– only and simply because this is an indigenous issue. The local Indigenous have been vocal, protesting, tying it to reconciliation, saying that the government is systemically racist, and joining it to the perpetual conversation that emanates from the Missing and Murdered Indigenous women and girls Inquiry. They have a website and two separate protest encampments set up demanding the site be excavated.

The Liberal political hacks in Ottawa, sensing opportunity, echoed their support for the Indigenous protest group, and a day after the new Premier Kinew was elected, the first Indigenous Premier, miraculously announced $740,000 for the Long Plain First Nation to do another feasibility study on possible excavation of the landfill. The Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs then teamed up with , Investigative Solutions Network (who advertise themselves as “North Americas Leading Private Security and Investigative Services firm), and a company called Maskwa an Indigenous business which specializes in training for “emergency response” and offers “training services”–and together they issued a clearly self-serving feasibility report.

They now estimate the cost to be half of what was previously suggested, that it would only take $90 million, and then in small print say that the figure could go up. This also based their estimate on the work being completed in one year, a rather unlikely scenario. Their report demands “intervention from both the Manitoba Premier’s office, and the Federal government to close gaps and bureaucratic systems to ensure “immediate funding” for an excavation of the site. Their conclusion– if the funding was not provided, that by not going ahead: that it would “risk setting precedent that would be serial killers fixated on killing First Nations women are left with an impression that not only will the bodies not be recovered, but the inaction will effectively obstruct recovery of victims”. Their reasoning is clearly flawed and clearly the authors have no idea how killers behave or seek out their victims.

The Feds when they filed their initial report stated that it would take at least 6 months to prepare and train staff before they began the excavation; cost them $1200 a day for an anthropologist, $1800 a day for elders, search technicians, and up to $3600 per day for a project director. Make no mistake, any search of this scope would be, for some, a very profitable business undertaking.

The proponents point to the successful excavation of the Pickton pig farm in Coquitlam, British Columbia as an example that they could follow. Just for the record, the farm in that case was started in February 2002 and went into November 2003, cost about $70 million, and there was a possibility that there was evidence of 49 women having been killed there. There was no asbestos at this site.

Meanwhile, on the far side of the country in Kamloops British Columbia, at the site of the Tkemlulps te Secwepemc residential school, ground zero for two years of allegations of “cultural genocide” and the site of where 215 children are allegedly buried in a “mass grave”– not one piece of earth has been moved. The site which spurred headlines around the world, where ground radar examination was heralded and duplicated in many sites around the country, the site which spurred flags at half mast for over six months, and led to the Federal government ponying up $320 million for future explorations — not one shovel has been put in the ground. So the evidence which could be laying 3′ to 6′ underfoot, and an investigation which is in the hands of the Band itself (The RCMP have embarrassingly, but at the same time brilliantly, washed their hands of the investigation) –nothing has been done to forensically examine and identify the “victims”.

To be fair, the Indigenous groups in their public pronouncements have since the allegations began, walked a long way back from the initial cries of “mass graves”, which stirred up images of murder and chummed the media. They now talk about the “physical, sexual, psychological, and emotional abuse” that was unleashed on these children. Despite some mellowing of the narrative, at the same time the Justice Minister is considering a recommendation from the Special Interlocutor Kimberly Murray. She believes there should be laws brought in, to make it a criminal offence for residential school “denialism”. She compares it once again to the deniers of the Holocaust and feels that people should be charged criminally for “downplaying what happened in the institutions”. She called denialism the last step in “genocide”.

There are many members of the Band that never want an exhumation of the site, but Chief Casimir has said that they are now beginning to do “some of the archaelogical work” some two years after the fact. It seems that it is becoming increasingly obvious that the Kamloops site is not about exhumation, nor about investigation. It is about preserving a specific and particular narrative. The site in Winnipeg is being sanctioned because it is a continuation of the narrative. If and when you forensically examine a site is clearly a political decision in this country in these two cases, not an investigative one.

I am sure you can see the irony now.

Photo courtesy of Flickr Commons –Some Rights reserved

The Killings at James Smith Cree Nation…

Posted on by Pete Cross

If one ever wanted a clear picture of the utter desperation and the scope of problems facing First Nations in this country, one only needed to follow the coroners inquest that has just finished up in Melfort, Saskatchewan which was looking into the slayings at James Smith Cree Nation.

Unfortunately, but predictably, the recommendations coming from it are more reflective of our current political progressive climate, and less about the core issues. For the most part they missed the mark. We can not possibly be surprised, being that this is the age of the “victim”, this is the age of blaming, of never look inward, of instead pointing at the “system.” Let’s be honest, the Indigenous leadership in this country have turned victimization into a professional art; one which they have effectively practised at every opportunity. Their constant themes of cause and effect are always the same, then continually repeated, and the outcome sought is always the same.

Simply put, the James Smith Cree massacre is the story of a single individual with “psychopathic traits” and an “anti-social personality disorder”, a personality sculpted by abuse and crime, exposed to alcohol at the age of 13, and not soon after, transitioning to cocaine and methamphetamine. On one particular day this violent psychopath decided that he wanted revenge for some ill-defined wrong, and was also mumbling on revenge against the “Terror Squad” (part of the extensive group of Indigenous gangs that have proliferated throughout Winnipeg and Manitoba). So on September 4, 2022 after guzzling back some liquid courage with his brother, then went on a killing rampage–starting with his own brother.

Myles Sanderson had 78 previous convictions between 2004 and 2019 and at the time of the killings was “unlawfully at large” and as an occupation was dealing cocaine on the Reserve for three months prior to the killings. Most recently he had been serving five years for assault, robbery, mischief and uttering threats. In 2021 when seeking parole, he was considered an “undue risk to society”, but later in August of that same year, was still given statutory release, having served 2/3 of his sentence.

Four months after that release he was found once again in breach, re-arrested– and then in February 2022 released again.Throughout his prison life, his get out of jail card was that he was treated as an “Indigenous offender” therefore someone that the courts have been directed to deal with differently; not like other Canadians, part of a special group who had suffered “generational trauma” and through no fault of his own was one of the over “represented” in the Criminal court system. Geraldine Arcand, an elder employed by the Saskatchewan Penitentiary testified at the inquiry, about having given him his first “healing plan”.

Myles Sanderson and his wife had moved back to James Smith for the stated purpose of dealing cocaine. Despite all these efforts at understanding and empathy and despite all the socialized efforts at reform– that night he went out and killed his brother Damien, and then stabbed 10 others to death– and in the process wounded 17 others. He leaves behind his common law spouse, Vanessa Burns and their five children. At the inquiry she testified to having suffered 14 years of domestic abuse, and having reported him 12 times for domestic violence. Her suffering wasn’t over with his death, Myles on that dark day, also killed her father during the rampage.

After the killings, Myles went and hid in the nearby woods for 3 days and 7 hours. He subsequently died in police custody, after driving into a ditch in a stolen vehicle while being checked by the police. There will be a separate inquiry later this month concerning his death, because we are just as concerned about the police behaviour during his arrest, as we are of the massacre that Mr. Sanderson had perpetrated.

So this Coroners inquest, headed by Blaine Beaven, with six jurors came up with 14 recommendations, and then the Coroner added 15 more for consideration. Can you guess at what was recommended? They quickly went to the usual blaming template, aiming at all levels of government who are within easy reach. They declared that they needed “More programming and resources for offenders”..”more collaboration” (between the various agencies)…”more resources for prisoner integration”…”changes to how the RCMP deal with wanted suspects”…and in this case there is the need to “hire more elders” for the jails.

The Saskatchewan government for the record, as is also easily predictable, is “supportive” (of the recommendations)and added that they are so on top of the needed action that “some are already being implemented”. The Saskatchewan government says it wants to see more “crime reduction teams” and the RCMP for their part says it wants “greater communication”. The National Police Federation, representing the Mountie union, want “$100 million” more dollars to fund 300 more police officers, 138 of which would be there to “supplement First Nation policing resources”. (It is currently estimated that Saskatchewan is running 10% short in staffing, and an additional 7% from “soft” vacancies such as maternity leave etc.)

Another constant theme was brought up by Chief Peter Chapman who pushed for First Nations policing, which seems to be now referenced as “self-administered policing”. Chief Burns echoed his fellow Chiefs thoughts and also talked about the need for further funding of their own policing service; a police service that would be “suitable for our people”. This was followed by the usual complaint about no support and not enough monies coming from the Federal government.

Would having their own police service stopped what happened at JSCN? Would further funding and recruiting of Indigenous officers by the RCMP as Assistant Commissioner Rhonda Blackmore suggested have stopped Myles Sanderson? Would more “elders” in the prison system, more “healing plans” stopped Myles Sanderson? Would increased programming for inmates stopped him? No, of course not, Myles Sanderson was a psychopath who on that particular day was “triggered”.

All governments in Canada, Provincial and Federal are going down the road to Indigenous policing. They all agree that the 600 First Nations in this country should all have their own police services, not to mention their own laws and outcomes.

Small town police departments in this country has been fading and dying out throughout this country for many decades now, as the size and cost of policing has grown to greater and greater proportions. Practically speaking few are left because of the financial costs alone; now roughly estimated to be about $200,000 per officer per year in terms of salary and support; without adding in the costs of the initial infrastructure that is needed. Small town and village tax bases can not support this level of expenditure, it is simply economically un-feasible. Then add in the major issues of retention, staffing and training and the prospect of having multiples of small independent forces becomes patently unreasonable.

Another serious consideration is who has and can exert political control of small departments, where the officers are policing their friends and relatives, and thus opening up of the opportunities for corruption. The sole reason for having a smaller police unit in any town or village is that it is more accountable to locals, and that it can be then “tailored”. There is no other attributable reason. There is no hiding the fact that the Indigenous want political control of the police force and simply disguise it as being more “culturally sensitive”. They also don’t have the normal financial constraints, they argue that the Feds and the Provinces just need to give it to them.

Our current crop of political leaders throughout this country apparently agree, and therefore believe a separate police force, or many separate police forces, in often isolated and uneconomic regions of this country are needed as some form of twisted reconciliation logic, and they are also o.k. with the Canadian taxpayers funding it. One needs to understand the numbers.The politicians believe that the 3,394 reserves and 600 First Nations, should all have their own policing units, or “police administrations.” That 331,000 Indigenous living on Reserves, with an individual average reserve population of 600 people, should have their own individual police force to enforce the laws in a way, that is more suitable to their culture and their community needs. The costs, the jurisdictional issues, and the very ability to function under these circumstances runs counter to current police management theory which aims at integration, specialized services and shared costs. This Indigenous model simply defies logic.

This is not to denigrate the individual officers who may be currently involved. However, the thought that a police officer, from a very small community, who will do doubt be related to many that he is to police, someone who will be subjected to the volatile politics of Band councils, will somehow be able to manage and enforce the laws in a fair and equitable way, is a difficult if not impossible task. The RCMP used to move officers every 3-5 years for the simple reason that there is a tendency to become co-opted, because familiarity breeds and leaves one open to the vagaries of community politics and can call into question one’s integrity. What could lead one to think that this proposed solution would somehow be different.

Although one can easily see all the pitfalls, the government is already far down this road, and they are not seeking the approval of Canadians. Currently there are 163 policing agreements, for 1250 Indigenous officers, representing 400 First Nations in this country. They are policing about 338,000 in terms of population, which means there is on average, one officer for every 270 people living on the Reserve. In most cities the officer per capita average that is possible is one to every 800-1200 persons.

The First Nations Chiefs of Police Association claim that the Federal and Provincial governments only provide funding of $130,000 per officer, and they want more. Currently the Federal government contributes 52% of the funding and 48% is provided by the Provinces or Territories. They argue that the funding formula is unfair and amounts to “discrimination”.

The Kahnawake Peacekeepers, who police a large area of 10,000 and who boast of everyone in their department being of First Nations descent, is considered a leading example of Indigenous policing that works. The Kahnawake are now arguing for their own dedicated “highway patrol” so that they can police the 100,000 “outsiders” that pass through their territory. They also want an increase in salaries.

In British Columbia, the BC First Nations Justice Council and the First Nations Leadership Council are involved in the reform of the British Columbia Police Act. They are asking that the RCMP be scrapped throughout the Province and there be a Provincial Force set up with “expanded Indigenous policing”. They argue that there is a need to bring about “de-colonization, anti-racism, community and accountability”. They want “jurisdictional authority and funding” to bring about “self-administered policing”. Some of their suggestions/demands is that police investigation teams be replaced by an “elder, a language speaker, a spiritual leader and one RCMP officer”.

The left-leaning Liberal appointed Supreme Court of Canada has stated that the laws of this country need to “braid together”, a combination of “Indigenous laws, Federal provisions, and international standards” that are compliant with UNDRIP (United Nations Declaration of Rights of Indigenous Persons”.

Should the average person in this country be concerned? Should the average person in this country be concerned that certain citizens have greater rights, have different laws, and now seek to transform the legal and police system in their favour? Should we not be concerned that it is also being done in quiet government conversations with no regard for costing and implementation?

The RCMP testified at the inquest that their investigation involved 548 police officers, also Municipal and Federal employees, 42 separate crime scenes, 1322 investigational tasks, 257 witness interviews and over 1000 exhibits. The theory is that in the future a hand full of officers hired to form the James Smith Cree Nation police department, armed with shiny new police vehicles, will now take over that task.

In brief, Myles Sanderson grew up and was created in a world of dizzying and utter dysfunction and all the while the community watched and protected him. Unless that world changes, there will be no stopping of people like Myles Sanderson– not even by a small local culturally sensitive police department.

Photo courtesy of R. Orville Lytle via Flickr Commons — Some Rights Reserved

Some late Vindication…

Posted on by Pete Cross

It took a 74 year old long-time lawyer and Justice, having spent a lifetime in security related matters, someone with two feet clearly planted on the ground, to finally call out the Liberals and their authoritarian ways. In the past week, Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley finally righted the wrongs of the imposition of the Emergencies Act. It was roughly two years ago that the “Act” was imposed on February 14, 2022, with grand fanfare and a concerned grimace by the Prime Minister. His forever kowtowing Ministers, and his NDP cohorts, profusely nodding in vigorous agreement standing behind him. This group of progressive liberals launched an Act designed, as it names implies, for a National Emergency, and when imposed, dictated full control over the lives of its citizens and specifically their ability to protest. There should be no mistake, this was a move that was in this writer’s opinion purely political, a move meant to show strength and determination, and aimed specifically at a group that had the audacity to question, a group that did not support the governing Liberals–in other words, they were the enemy. To put it in even simpler terms, the Liberals and their ilk did not like these protestors, these anti-vaccine rednecks, who came from afar. They were not of them.

Judge Mosley declared in his ruling that the imposition was “unreasonable and infringed on protestors charter rights”. That it did not “bear the hallmarks of reasonableness–justification, transparency and intelligibility”. He confirmed in essence what many thought –there was “no national emergency”. The faithful readers of this blog will remember a blog some months ago entitled “Sledgehammer and the Peanuts” which argued these same points; that the blaring of horns, the smell of diesel, bouncy castle encampments, and the disruption of the workday for bureaucrats in Ottawa (who were working from home through all this because of COVID) did not fit the definition, no matter how broadly interpreted, of this being a national emergency and that it certainly did not need such an all encompassing and arbitrary legal hammer.

The protest and the reaction to it did show that in Ottawa, if you put too many police departments in the kitchen, the broth will in fact be spoiled. The frustration and lack of coordination by the RCMP and the Ottawa Police Service, combined with the Doug Ford non-response, bordered on farce.

Of course this ruling was a kick in the pants for those fearless crime fighters Trudeau and Freeland; they know that this is not good in terms of going into the next election. Freeland, undeterred by a lack of factual support for her argument, went immediately running to the microphone, saying in her pedantic kindergarten teacher voice, “the safety of individual Canadians was under real threat…our national security was under real threat”. Quite an explanation.

So the Liberal government immediately have said they were going to launch an appeal. Usually the governing party of the day and any governing party would be more cautious in challenging the judiciary, normally they would “take it under advisement” or would be “studying” the case. It demonstrates the level of incomprehension amongst these Liberals as to someone having challenged their decision making, a court saying to them, no, you were wrong, and in fact you breached the Charter of Rights. How dare Judge Mosley describe the decision making at the time, as only based on “speculation” and that it had led to “unreasonable search and seizure”. The Liberals, of course have not released their legal grounds for that appeal, so I am suspecting that the Justice Department is now assigned to go find those grounds.

It is good to remember that there are four grounds to impose the Emergencies Act as clearly written: a) a public welfare emergency b) a public order emergency c) an international emergency, and finally d) a war emergency. CSIS in the Act is the defining authority in terms of what constitutes a security emergency. Clearly the latter two conditions, c) and d) didn’t apply, so the Liberals will have to continue to argue that it was a public welfare or public order emergency on a national scale. It was very interesting at the time, that CSIS Director David Vigneault in front of the Rouleau Commission, in a classic case of double-speak, said that even though the circumstances “didn’t meet the definition of a threat to national security”– nevertheless he supported the government decision. So in the end he supported what turns out to be a serious breach of rights of Canadian citizens, when he didn’t feel that there were grounds to do so. Time for Vigneault to step down.

So what will be the Liberal strategy be to fight this public relations nightmare. They are going to point to two arguments, and they have already started down this road.

First and foremost, they will point to the earlier mandated government appointed Commission that was chaired by Justice Paul Rouleau. The “appointed” Commission predictably found that it was “a failure in policing and federalism”, that it was in fact a “national emergency”. This was a bit of sleight of hand. The Commission mandate was to “examine and assess the basis for the Government’s decision to declare a public emergency…appropriateness and effectiveness of the measures selected by the government”. It was was not in fact a “legal” finding. The Federal Court with Judge Mosley on the other hand was to determine the legal “threshold” having to be met for the imposition of the Act.

Rouleau interestingly also said that it was a “difficult decision” he came to and that the “factual basis” for his finding “was not overwhelming”. I guess the lesson there for everyone is to never let the facts get in the way of a good argument.

The Commission was politically tainted, it appeared to have been set up purposely to ameliorate the decisions by the government of the day. The allowed testimony was not subject to being tested in terms of any extended cross-examination. The Minister of the day, now former Justice Minister David Lametti, during his testimony even refused to reveal the legal opinion which prompted their taking of the action, arguing lawyer client privilege. It was pointed out to him that he could have waved the privilege, but he would not. Mr. Lametti, who was so traumatized during the days of the convoy, that he moved back to Montreal, in a recent interview he now of course “disagrees totally” with Judge Mosely and is “confident” that they will win an appeal.

The other argument that the Liberals will bring is the example of what was going on at the time in Coutts Alberta and the roadblock there. It led to an investigation of an extremist group who wanted to attach themselves to the protest, and they were intercepted and charged by the RCMP. This Liberal argument is also disingenuous. The investigation and charges were brought about through the Criminal Code not the Emergencies Act. The police used the existing powers to bring that investigation to a close. So as Judge Mosley points out in his decision, the “existing laws were sufficient”, to deal with the Convoy protests, that the regular laws were open to the police and could handle the situation. The protestors that were charged, Tamara Litch and Chris Barber won’t necessarily be helped by this Federal Court decision, because they were also charged under the Criminal Code, not under the Emergencies Act.

Judge Mosley also added that “economic disruption cannot form the basis of extraordinary measures”. The Liberals during this “crisis” often argued that the Windsor border blockade was disrupting trade going into the United States. Ms. Freeland trotted that argument out again at her recent press conference, again arguing that Canada’s “economic security” was threatened. Maybe, she had not read the entire decision?

It is also interesting to read the various takes of those in the Liberal support groups, who were supportive of the government measures at the time. The CBC called it a “a divisive decision” and that illustrious leader of the NDP, Jagmeet Singh now says that he only “reluctantly supported the Act”. The Ottawa citizens who formed a civil class action against the protestors, which is seeking $290 million for their Wellington Street disruption, are still saying this ruling does not hurt them. Their lawyer Paul Champ argues that their case is about “honking, its about parking on the street, not for an afternoon of protest, but for weeks”. If one ever needed convincing that the citizens of Ottawa, and the bureaucrats who are governing this country live in a hermetically sealed environment, this is the case.

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association, a group which I rarely find agreement with, but brought the case forward to the Federal Court, said that the actions of government in this case, that the imposition of these types of laws “…are dangerous to democracy”. This decision, if looked at in a broader scope, should be seen as an examination of the very tenuous nature of democracy. The solitary Judge showed us how thin that thread really is, and for that we owe him a debt of gratitude.

Photo courtesy of Michael_Swan of Flickr Commons – some Rights Reserved.

A New Year…

Posted on by Pete Cross

Welcome to 2024, and I hope the it finds you healthy and happy and full of energy to face life’s winds, in this the year of the Dragon.

I do find that you reach a certain age in life where one spends more time looking backward, rather than looking forward, but let’s be honest, there is no such thing as the good old days. With the new year now in front of us, I feel that we need to spend some time on what is to come.

The easiest prediction is that the cost of living is going up, and house prices, despite the claims of some aren’t really coming down. The cost of policing is also on the rise and will be adding to that cost of living, usually in the form of property taxes. At some point those costs are going to be the subject of debate. In terms of groceries, never fear, Mr. Singh, our Rolex wearing NDP leader has teamed up with our expensively well tanned Prime Minister and is going to go after those bandits of the check out aisles– as soon as he and Trudeau have fixed all of our teeth.

Speaking of policing costs, in this part of the world, the transition to the Surrey Police Service will once again provide many headlines as Ms. Locke does her best imitation of Don Quixote and keeps tilting at the windmills of change in that fair city. Do you remember that this all started in November of 2021? She is clearly committed to the idiocy of her argument and is now spending $500,000 for a poll and advertising to retain the RCMP– despite the recently past legislation and having been removed from the police oversight board. The poll questions are clearly skewed to give her the results she wants, and says that 46% wish to retain the RCMP, 29% want to go forward. Of course, you will see that leaves 25% unaccounted. So they changed the questions around a bit, to show that the majority want the RCMP now. It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad and desperate. It has clearly become personal.

The other counsellors in the city are being surprisingly mum on the subject, and one has to wonder if they are sitting back waiting for the next civic election to get rid of the un-glued Locke and are just using this time to plot the coup. Then there is the RCMP leadership in Surrey who seem to at least be supporting the shenanigans of Ms. Locke –and the RCMP in Ottawa who must be still trying to find Surrey on the map and are doing their best ostrich impressions of hiding their heads, hoping I guess that it will all blow away.

So the headlines and the talk will continue, as the city petition likely heads to the Supreme Court with the city arguing in part, that the Province is limiting their “freedom of expression”. Millions of dollars are going out the door with the duplication of services, not to mention the lucrative consultants and lawyers hovering on the sidelines. No one is moving the needle, and clearly nobody is worried about the cost. The individual officers are trying to make the best of this ridiculous situation. On the positive side, again remember my resolution, the Surrey Police Service with all their present hiring needs, has found the time and put a priority on hiring Ragnar, an Occupational Stress Injury dog.

In terms of sad trends, in the past year, ten officers were killed in the line of duty, mainly in the Provinces of Quebec, Alberta, Ontario and BC. One can only hope that the new year will see an easing of this alarming trend. Police involved shootings are also up; 35 in 2022, 26 in 2021 and 15 in 2020. It would seem that unstable Canadians are turning to gun violence more frequently and it would seem that the police are using deadly force to counter it, also at an ever alarming rate. It is a bit of the old chicken and egg discussion. Is it a matter of demographics, or is there something more sinister afoot? There is definitely no evidence of it changing, nor is there any evidence of people trying to even address the situation.

The homeless situation, sorry, I mean the “un-housed” situation will continue, inextricably intertwined with mental health issues, and rampant drug use. You would like to feel that enough attention is being given to it to force some level of change, but there seems to be no political authority in sight willing to face the wrath of the liberal cognoscenti and the cries of injustice that bellow forth every time someone moves a tent. The Vancouver east side will continue to be a cesspool and an embarrassment in the eyes of the world, but freer drugs is still the current liberal cry, even though it has even proven to be statistically ineffective. So people will continue to die in this Province at the rate of 7 per day, and every month there will be a wringing of political hands asking, what can we do? That too is an easy prediction.

More body cams are being given to the police now. Some will argue that this is great thing, with Vancouver PD being the latest to proclaim their commitment. The advertisers and sellers of the technology, say it will create greater “transparency” and an “increased civility”. However, we all know it began with the cries of the woke and the vocal demand for greater police “accountability”. With little doubt it will probably cut down on frivolous internal complaints, but that comes at a very great price. Winnipeg got rid of their body cams in 2017 because of the $11 million dollars to keep the program running annually. In Baltimore, the city implemented body cams in 2016 at a cost of $11.3 million, four years later in 2020, the cost had grown to $35.1 million. One should be cautious, and realize that there is a lot of money being made by companies in selling these cameras and the enormous infrastructure around it, and also be mindful of the fact that the verdict on their effectiveness has yet to be measured. (I won’t mention the New York officer in Staten Island who had his camera burst into flames while he was wearing it, leading to the recall of thousands of them– because that would be being cynical.)

It seems that in the New Year, we will continue to immerse ourselves in being victims, part of a larger traumatized society, that is always in further need of comforting. Despite all the relative prosperity of this country. If in doubt, here is one of the more recent examples, brought to us by the CBC who search the world over in pursuit of the most needy victims. Two Canadian law professors at Dalhousie University in Halifax, feel that the requirement to verify ones Indigenous status, in other words if you claim to be Indigenous for the purpose of using it as a stepping stone in furthering your academic career, that you shouldn’t have to actually prove the substance of your heritage claim. They say that “the schools proposal, the process of verifying Indigenous heritage, risks re-traumatizing staff, students, and faculty subjected to it”.

In more international news, the National Counsel of Canadian Muslims is calling on the Federal government to remove “a cap on the number of Palestinians that can seek refuge with their Canadian extended family members from the violence in the Gaza strip.” Now, that may be a group that could legitimately argued that they have been traumatized, it would also prove a perfect escape route for any fleeing members of Hamas.

Like death and taxes, an equal inevitably for the coming year is that the size of the Public Service in Canada will continue to grow. In fact it is at a “record high”, and it will cost $151 billion this year, a 31% increase in the last seven years. Coincidentally, more of these dedicated public servants have also been “investigated” for wrong-doing, in fact more than at any time since 2015. Let’s chalk that up to COVID, which is also keeping those civil servants away from a full return to the office.

The dirty money will continue to roll through Canada this year. It is now estimated to be between $46.7 billion to $54 billion, which is the equivalent of the Nova Scotia gross domestic product. According to a recent book entitled “Dirty Money” which has been authored by a group of financial investigators and academics in Canada, their conclusion is that little has changed, and Canada remains a haven for criminals. It has grown so large that it is “corroding” Canada. The FINTRAC president on the other hand, says all good in their office, and reveals that they handed over 2,085 financial disclosures to the police authorities; who apparently have done very little with it, and the information has remained “unused or un-acted upon”.

HQ and O Division of the RCMP will continue in the new year to make headlines. We are still awaiting the sentencing of Cameron Ortis, the once favoured child of former Commissioner Paulson. That was until the Americans caught wind of Mr. Ortis and his international shenanigans, and then let the Canadians know that there was a devil in their midst. He was found guilty of four counts of breaching Canada’s secret laws, in a need to know trial, and his defence counsel was flabbergasted, and will of course launch an appeal. He is facing twenty years.

HQ will continue to prove their commitment to the war on terror, and maybe gain some favourable publicity along the way. They went on full attack mode and went after and arrested a Grade 10 terrorist. A minor, that can not be named, for planning an attack on the Jewish people “by communicating instructional material related to an explosive substance”. How else can one explain the dramatic arrest which was an operational production befitting Broadway, with a perplexed Mom and Dad standing on the sidelines saying, “I don’t know w hat happened”. Clearly, they weren’t paying attention to what their son was doing in his room, and clearly the Federal Mounties treated it as though they were going after the Baader-Meinhoff gang.

O Division also recently charged one of their own. RCMP Constable Yahsif Israel Mane Monter arrested for firearm violations, human trafficking and animal cruelty (in relation to his dog breeding business). He worked previously on Project O-HELIX which was a labour trafficking case out of Hamilton Ontario and apparently drew some ideas for his own business. What happened to the days when cops were just being charged with assault, or impaired. Oh, the good old days.

The RCMP is also starting the new year, proving to be a bit of a leaking ship, either that, or they have come up with a new police operational method which includes announcing when they are going to make “arrests”. The Globe and Mail has been told of an upcoming arrest in the BC murder case of Hardeep Nijar by “no less than three sources”; who also maintain that they have been watching “the suspects” for “months”, and that they will be “laying charges in the coming weeks”. Trudeau was the first leaker, now there are three others. One has to wonder whether the leaks are being orchestrated in order to “stimulate” the suspects into some sort of culpable action? If not, then the RCMP has a serious problem. Undoubtedly there will be further announcements or arrests as the Mounties continue to watch their suspects in the new year.

My personal resolution by the way, is to be less cynical, but I will admit, that like most of my previous resolutions, it is not likely to last. We and I do need to remember that we are not living in the Gaza, or in Eastern Ukraine. Nevertheless, there was a red flag on my Weather Network app this morning– a serious warning, because Vancouver is expecting 1 cm of snow, turning to rain. I began to feel my cynicism meter already flaring.

We need to remember in this new year, even though we are continually drawn into the realm of the disenchanted, that day in and day out, there are thousands of Mounties and coppers doing a good job, or at least trying to do a good job. The media and sometimes this blog spend very little time in exulting the good that is often done quietly and with little fanfare. It is usually less interesting, less salacious, and doesn’t grab ones attention, which is the unfortunate truth of it all.

So where does that leave us for the new year. Are we hopeful, timid, apprehensive, or eager in anticipation? One presumes that it depends on your viewpoint and your circumstance. My guess is that in the end, this year will be like most years, most of us will keep plugging away at what we do, head down, while trying to ignore the craziness around us.

Happy New Year!

Photo courtesy of Doug Anderson via Flickr Commons – Some Rights Reserved