Big Brother, here art thou
Giant statue of police officer watches over citizens at Portage and Edmonton
Jim Sanders
I’m sure many of you out there in Windahar are wondering
what’s up with the giant cop statue in front of Portage
Place.
One rumour circulating is that former New York mayor Rudy
Giuliani told Mayor Sam Katz at the 2006 City Summit that
Winnipeg really needed a ten-foot-tall police officer staring
into oncoming traffic and acting as a sort of crime-fighting
scarecrow.
‘It worked like magic in New York!’
Next thing you know, Winnipeg has its very first monster police
officer at the corner of Portage Avenue and Carlton Street.
Word on the street is that soon all neighbourhoods are going
to have their own giant police statue, kind of like the Bears
on Broadway program. I think the city is calling the new initiative
Cops in Communities.
It’s quite ingenious, actually. Maybe Winnipeg can solve
its crime problem in a more artistic and cost-effective manner
than simply hiring more officers or purchasing expensive crime-tracking
software. Maybe youths from the
communities can decorate each statue in their own unique way,
creating a bond between the giant officers and our city’s
young citizens.
In all seriousness, a well-funded city-wide art initiative
involving youths would be light years more effective in reducing
youth crime than Sam Katz’s plan for more police on
our streets. If Katz could stop his police force from spending
countless hours surveilling and harassing cyclists and instead
get them to focus on real crime — such as the illegal
actions of motorcycle gangs — we wouldn’t need
to spend millions more tax dollars on our police force.
Oh, I forgot — police don’t go after
bikers; they hire them and then give them job recommendations
once they realize one of their own is actually one of the
bad guys.
Remember Michael Sandham, who was charged with first-degree
murder after being linked to the Bandidos murders that occurred
in April in Southwestern Ontario?
Sandham worked for the East St. Paul Police Service before
police realized he was a member of the Bandidos biker gang.
The former East St. Paul chief of police said he had no regrets
about giving Sandham a reference for a job at a private police
company after he retired from the East St. Paul force.
This sort of police behaviour is referred to as the ‘Blue
Wall,’ a police version of a Code of Silence. In this
subculture, defending the image of the police force and the
reputations of one’s colleagues overrides at all times
the force’s duty to serve justice.
If there’s one segment of society we would hope is above
this antisocial behaviour it would be those entrusted with
enforcing the law.
Unfortunately, the recent testimony of
Winnipeg police chief Jack Ewatski at the inquiry into the
wrongful conviction of James Driskell does little to instill
confidence that our police force has progressed since it was
first implicated in the coverup following the shooting of
J.J. Harper in 1988.
Considering the testimony of former Crown attorney George
Dangerfield,
it’s becoming quite clear that Ewatski is still covering
up questionable behaviour by our police force and our government.
Something tells me Driskell was not the first or the last
innocent person to be sent to jail.
The family of young Matthew Dumas, who was killed by a police
officer last year, can also attest to the frustration of confronting
the Blue Wall of the Winnipeg Police Service.
Maybe they should go ask for help from the giant police officer
on Portage Avenue. They might get more of a response.
I can’t wait until we get our own giant police officer
in Wolseley, where I live.
I wonder how I’m going to decorate it.
Jim Sanders is a local documentary filmmaker and co-founder
of Dada World Data Productions. |
Uptown
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