We All Have a Role

It’s Victim Awareness Week in Canada. What happens with the person is victim of the police or legal system, and not some random criminal? Or both? Yeah… you gotta think on that one, don’t you?

Let’s be clear – while I go on about victimization below, I want you to be aware that the police that I’m referring to are all still on active duty (to my knowledge) and most hold ranks such as captain, chief and sergeant now. A lot of what I speak about below happened twenty or more years ago, but I know for a fact things similar continue to happen to this day.

It is 2013.

This was supposed to be a fresh era; a bright, new, enlightened time.

In all my years, I have never seen the police or justice system actually work for the victim of crime – the person it is there to protect. I’ve only ever seen it traumatize, damage, attack and sublimate the people who have gone to them for help.

Women in this area often don’t bother calling the police, because they know they won’t be taken seriously. See my post of April 5 – Rage Quit. This wasn’t the first time that particular victim had been to the police for help. Protection from someone that had threatened to kill her, with witness present? Sorry. nothing they would do. Protection from the same person for other issues? Couldn’t be bothered to even look into it. She’d requested help on issues of bullying, theft and vandalism – never once did she receive any form of help.

I can not blame her for deciding to never seek the police or legal help again.

I once had a voice message left for me, explaining how someone would use a gun to kill me, and then set everything I owned on fire. I played it for the RCMP, and the guy LAUGHED. He said I was being hysterical. At the time, I was (and apparently rightly so) terrified of the person who left the message. I later had that gun pointed in my face, and to this day believe the only reason the trigger wasn’t pulled was because there were witnesses. Same RCMP officer, only this time the witnesses didn’t count because one was underage and related to me, and the other didn’t want to be involved (scared? I think so, but the aggressor was his friend, too… so who knows).

I’ve seen cases of police brutality and law-breaking with my own eyes. We were victims of the very people there to enforce the law.

In 1992, my now ex-husband was attacked in the back alley behind our apartment building in Winnipeg. The man attacking him was walking a dog. J. was coming home from a friend’s place not long after midnight, and the back alley was the route he always took. The friend’s apartment was at the other end of said alley, on the opposite side. In later statements, the man first said J. just didn’t respond to his speaking to him. Then he said J. attacked him first. Then he changed his story again. I mean, seriously. But he was believed, each and every time. Why? I’m getting to that.

The man sicced his dog on J. The dog tore into J., knocking him to the ground. The man did nothing to help, in fact continued to encourage the animal. Why? We found out later this man was a police officer – no uniform, no identifying badge or the like, and he most certainly did not identify himself.

J. fought back as one would, particularly at night and in that neighborhood, defending himself against an unknown person and his dog. Shortly thereafter, more police arrived and J. was arrested for assault and petty theft. Apparently MY extension cord and MY walkman were stolen property (my grandfather and mother begged to differ, since both were gifts the previous Christmas – but since there were no sales receipts, the charges stuck). Eventually the case went to trial, and of course – J. was found guilty. He was sentenced to six months, but was released after six weeks – thanks in part to a wonderful social worker at the hospital where I was in pre-term labor with our eldest child, and a lawyer with some nuts between his legs.

When I was fifteen, I was ‘detained’ for questioning, threatened with all sorts of lovely things, and repeatedly told they “knew” it was me who had called in a bomb threat to my high school. Good cop, bad cop… didn’t work, and I didn’t sign the confession they wrote out for me. The ‘good cop’ drove me back to the school (which was less than he did for other suspects that day, taking some miles out in the country and leaving them there to walk back). I was in the front seat… and he parked a block away from the school, away from prying eyes. He tried doing a “you’re such a pretty girl, you need to tell us the truth, we’ll help you” routine.

I still didn’t give in, and when he finally did pull up in front of the school I learned a hard lesson in police tactics from my cousin (one who was VERY familiar with youth law at the time). What they had done simply by taking me to the station and questioning me like they did, was illegal. I was fifteen. A minor. I should have had a guardian or my mother with me. I should have been allowed to call at least. I didn’t know that I was able to refuse to get in the car with them. They used that to their advantage.

Had they done even an iota of digging, they would have realized that I was en route to the school at the time of the first threat, and actually in class during the second. The bus driver and the teacher were both angered by what had happened, and both spoke up for me. Unfortunately, the incident became public knowledge and my mother pulled me from school, two weeks before exams, two weeks before I’d pass that grade.

A girl I went to school with was arrested for vandalism at sixteen, for spray painting a large piece of plywood leaning against a garage door. The wood and paint were her own, and the home? Hers. Her parents were working, so they weren’t at home. The police were driving by, saw the girl spray painting what was in fact an art project, pulled in and arrested her. Six hours later her family finally managed to get her released without charges.

On the flip side of that, back in my (much) younger years when I was relatively familiar with alcoholic beverages and recreational drugs, there were two people I knew always had the best stuff. One was a local town cop, and the other was an RCMP officer in a town I lived in briefly. Pricey, but worth it. So, is it okay then, to sell drugs to minors (or anyone) as long as you’re a cop? I guess so…

What does one do to stop the victimization of people at the hands of the police and legal system? Who the hell knows. If people want to stop victim harassment, blame and ridicule, I think the first step would be to make sure there is some form of police review, where they are made to own up to their sometimes blatant ‘the law does not apply to us’ tyranny. Oh yes, I know there are boards and reviews and blah blah blah… but how about putting people on said boards that aren’t the crooked cops to begin with?

Yeah, that might help a wee bit.

So I guess this ends my rant, and in fact, I’m done ranting on the whole thing from now on. It’s time we looked at it as being a survivor, not as being a victim. Which is exactly what we will be doing.

Have a safe week, everyone. And hug your daughters, even if they don’t like it. <|;^)