Here is the state's playbook. Exploit fear to increase the power of the state at the expense of personal liberty, and then immediately use that increased power in ways other than how it was originally justified. Today's local new provides one tiny example.
As I understand it "RIDE programs" allow police to detain motorists in the absence of reasonable suspicion. Presumably citizens don't like being detained by men with weapons, but accept loss of liberty associated with these programs in the hopes of reducing impaired driving and making roads safer. If such programs failed to make roads safer (an empirical question), or if such programs were used for other purposes, it would violate the terms under which the liberty was surrendered.
Well, here in my hometown, police openly - and rather proudly - acknowledge that they can and do use these programs for other purposes.
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The article ends with how this strategy cops are using will probably end up, a case will make it to court and get tossed because the police are violating the law. Then again, I remember hearing about the case in 2002 and thought it was over and done with...
Even the anti-gang angle is kind of bogus too, because the test-cases of Harper's recent toughing of the anti-gang laws have failed to lead to successful prosecutions in BC.
If the cops in Guelph really have so little to do, but to act in ways the courts have already deemed inappropriate -- why not send them to East Hamilton to walk the beat there? Gawd. They'd probably be eaten alive.
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