The biggest consequence was a settlement payment to those mistreated. Which didn’t come out of the police budget or pension so basically they got to force the taxpayer to bail them out for their incompetence after the government already paid over a billion dollars for extra security.
Only one cop was punished. His sentence was losing 60 paid vacation days, probably 2 years without vacation at his seniority.
“It is difficult for us to conceive how convictions for the mass arrests, found to be unlawful, of hundreds of individuals in contravention of their Charter rights are not at the more serious end of the spectrum of misconduct.”
The panel that sentenced him admits his behaviour was heinous, but gave him such a slap on the wrist.
He argued in court that what he did was fair and it’s unreasonable to expect him to have done better.
The people who were arrested and forced to stand outside in the rain without food or water for hours won a 16 million dollar class action settlement and had their records expunged. But it took nearly a decade because the police was trying to weasel out of it. A decade with a wrongful criminal record sets you back more than 16k/person.
The Canadian and the American “left” are center authoritarians at the top. And the right’s leaders are fascists. There is no anti-authoritarian voice at the ballot box so we have to cast that vote by other means.
Hey now, don’t leave the French out of it, they work hard at being bâtards! I think the only ones I see actually trying to be respectable during protests are the Dutch (that I’m aware of).
The Dutch police have their ups and downs but nothing heinous like in the post has happened so far. The Dutch law also states that the police is not allowed to use more violence than absolutely necessary. Which is obviously difficult but seems reasonably well followed.
That doesn’t mean protests are not broken up, but there has to be a reason why. Recent pro Palestine protests at Universities are broken up because, well, they were making it (partially) impossible to to attend said universities. Same with extinction rebellion protesting on a busy highway.
The Dutch police definitely has their problems with racial profiling and stuff though.
I could definitely be wrong, please correct me if I am.
I’m remined of the Freikorps militia groups of Weimar Germany that would become the meat-and-potatoes recruits for the Sturmabteilung and early Schutzstaffel of the SS. On their own, The Freikorps served as law enforcement and peacekeepers, typically by disposing of town undesirables and locals in disfavor with the business class. In exchange, they got room and board and pretty much anything else they wanted (including the local womenfolk) since it was a really bad idea to deny them something they wanted.
They were more like paramilitary than militia since they employed armored cars, tanks, and aircraft from the regular military of Weimar Germany when needed.
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