If some early observations today are any indication, I think we can expect the same level of ineptitude and fawning accommodation from Ottawa cops for the "Nazi Truckers Convoy" that we saw yesterday.
I went walk-about around my 'hood this morning (Byward Market), and what caught my eye were a number of big rigs parked on the right-hand side of St. Patrick, between Dalhousie and Sussex, all comfortably nestled up to the sidewalk. And what's the problem there? I'll tell you what the problem is there.
It's that St. Patrick is a two-lane, one-way street, and those rigs were rendering the right-hand lane heading towards Sussex completely inaccessible to traffic, meaning that all traffic in that stretch will be forced into the left-hand lane as long as those trucks are there. (Oh, and did I mention the numerous "NO STOPPING" signs along that entire stretch? Not "NO PARKING", but "NO STOPPING".)
And the icing on the cake? The Ottawa cop cruiser that, while I was standing there taking all this in, casually moseyed on past that entire line of stationary rigs and not doing SFA about it.
Perhaps they'll be cleared out later, who knows? At the moment, I'm going to keep my optimism to myself.
P.S. "SFA." Look it up.
BY THE WAY, it's unclear whether there is an official agenda for the Dumbass Nazi Convoy today (Sunday) other than milling about unmasked and giving each other COVID-19, so if the cops let boys be boys for one more day, I suppose we can all hold our noses and lock up our pets and put up with it. But I think it's safe to say that this better not last into Monday, when everyone who actually lives here wants to get back to normality.
Because numerous organizers (and truckers) have promised that they're here to stay until all mask and vaccine mandates are rescinded (not going to happen), so perhaps some enterprising journo can ask someone from Ottawa Police for their plans starting Monday morning. And they better have one. We, the people who live here, have had just about enough of these hillbillies.
3 comments:
Policing tends to be conservative in both a good and a bad way. "Keeping the peace" and maintaining order, as a broad principle, favours the establishment, property, and the status quo. On the other hand, it also means that police services are usually inclined to defuse and avoid conflict if, in their opinion, that approach best maintains public order.
While all cops share their own "uniform culture", each big city has its own flavour of policing. Montreal (Riot City) cops hhave always been much more inclined to move in, bust up, kettle, corral and arrest. Thunder Bay cops tend to search the crowd for natives, and beat the shit out of them as an object lesson to everyone else.
I find Ottawa cops, by and large, adopt a pretty sensible "laissez-faire" approach, probably because they're trained to deal with mass demos in the Hill area. They're quite lenient with parking, traffic, and noise offenses at the Pro-Life marches, on Canada Day,at the Idle No More demo, and other mass gatherings where rigorous enforcement is more likely to trigger a violent backlash than a more hands-off approach.
A large number of the droogs in this group are just looking for an opportunity to play Free Speech Hero/Martyr.
Don't hold your breath. I'm betting a whole bunch of these "truckers" are now unemployed, having had their contracts cancelled by companies pissed off with the fact they are several days' drive from showing up for work.
Policing contains a lot of stupid goons with inflated senses of self-importance. This means a lot of them are anti-doing sensible things in the face of a global viral pandemic. LIke getting vaccinated. Covid is one of the biggest killers of cops in North America.
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