Here's a letter I fired off to the Redmonton Urinal following the gong show which was the sickening police presence on Whyte Avenue following Game 7 of the Cup finals. They never printed it, which is probably not a huge surprise. It's some of my better work though:
Quick, what's the difference between Whyte Avenue after an Oilers game and Warsaw circa 1940? Edmonton's Gestapo have to beat up on handcuffed little girls in uglier uniforms. This is a sad night for Edmonton, not only because of the Oilers loss but because EPS, including their Chief, see nothing wrong with their blatent disregard for constitutionally protected liberties and wanton abuse of power. Or has trying to cross at a marked crosswalk or leapfrogging over garbage cans become recently added to the criminal code? If there is any justice left, which I know there isn't, every person "arrested" and then subsequently let go will take successful legal action against the EPS members who imprisoned them, and the officers themselves being the ones facing the inside of a jail cell. Of the whole city, I'm sure the riot police feel saddest about the loss of most all of us: they don't get to intimidate peaceful revelers of what was supposedly a "free" country -- at least when I was in Soviet Russia two weeks ago, the officers making up offenses for the fun of it just blackballed a little cash out of you at let you go, rather than crow in the Edmonton Journal how so many people were jailed and such a victory for the police state was acheived. (Besides, in Russia you can legally drink on the streets, a European sensibility that would tragically have hampered EPS harassment). From what I understand, the biggest night of riots left Whyte Avenue with a phone booth lit on fire -- not much of a loss since phone booths on Whyte haven't worked in years. A woman also broke her ankle, which she could have done just as easily jogging in the river valley. After 15 nights (15 wins) of riots, that one can count the number of broken windows on one hand at the epicentre of 105th street is surely a testament to the hyperbole of EPS to justify their strong-arm tactics. I do feel for the people who were stabbed at Squires on May 12, particularly since the entire police force was just outside the door and yet these crack investigators still didn't manage to actually nab a suspect in the case: say what you will about the original version of the SS, but at least they managed to keep law and order whilst harassing the populace. Now there is a bright side in my mind from this activity: Oiler game nights were great times to flaunt traffic laws throughout our fair town, what with the entire force occupying 82nd Avenue with a penetration that would make Napolean blush. Of course, I wasn't the only one to notice this, and the people who killed somebody at a southside bar on Saturday were doing something a little more serious than turning left without signalling. Yet I hesitate to call what happened a "murder": I've long held that gang members who are killed deserve no public sympathy. They are less victims of a crime than a workplace-related-fatality statistic, since joining a gang brings with it a strong possibility of being killed. I don't think I'm alone in this sentiment. I also don't think I'm alone in the sentiment that this Cup run has shown that Edmonton Police is just another gang, a collection of people joining up for the thrill of having some power they can wield over those who are too weak to fight back. As these inexcusable actions and tactics continue, more and more people are going to come to the same conclusion that EPS does not deserve the benefit of the doubt in any situation that may arise, and the police ability to investigate actual crimes -- if by chance any members of the force still happen to do that (the last police invesigation I heard about was trying to track down somebody who had hung posters saying unpopular political opinions about homosexuals) -- will suffer as a result. The Overtime incident received a lot of column-inches by the media, but now we have another flagrant violation of police powers this time directed to those who might dare to celebrate in a public venue. I certainly hope that Edmonton's news media stays on this story and considers that for every complaint EPS receives, an untold number of other people with justifiable grievances will stay silent knowing full well that the Chief of Police and the court system have more than a tacit approval of what we have seen during the Stanley Cup run. Until I see some officers behind bars (suspensions just mean the "gang" is taking a vacation), I have no respect for Edmonton Police Services and the crooked mandate they have taken upon themselves to enforce.
