Predicted recriminations come, but are undeserved

It is beginning to appear as though I am a soothsayer. Which, of course, I am not. But not hours after I said the recriminations would start against the Toronto Police on the one hand saying they didn’t do enough when the Black-Blocheads went on their rampage at the G20 conference, and, on the other hand they went overboard and abused human rights etc., blah, blah, blah, the recriminations started and pieces of absurd journalism, like this appeared.

Now, first of all, this is a sad excuse of an example of journalism. It is nothing more than a reporting of the propaganda of a collection of socialist wing-nuts.

This collection of wing-nuts managed to get an audience with a mainstream media outlet that, in itself, defies logic, is trying to make a meal out of the fact the police did their job. Read this quote carefully and think about it. “Camille, a slight redhead who refused to give her last name, said police then rifled through her possessions and found some black clothing. She also had a lawyer’s telephone number scrawled on her arm and an anarchist book in the car.”

Now, I may be little slow, but, if they had black clothing, an anarchist book AND a lawyer’s phone number inked on their arm in case they got arrested, I suspect the police just might have, just maybe, in a pinch, thought they might be intent on committing an offence.

I dont know, colour me naive, but if you write a lawyer’s number on our arm, it is quite likely you are going to do something that might get you arrested, and, you recognize that, hence, the inscribing of the phone number of the one person that might get you out of jail once arrested.

And, if the police suspect that you, might, just might, do something that might be a breach of the peace (Sec. 31 CCC), they can arrest you.

Hmmm, is it possible the police just might have acted appropriately, prudently and professionally? I suspect so. And I suspect the whiners quoted in this piece should have been ignored and not given credibility in the mainstream media. But, hey, that’s just my opinion.

Leo Knight
primetimecrime@gmail.com

Damned if they do . . .

At the risk of saying I told you so, well, I told you so.

The insanity visited upon the streets of Toronto yesterday by the so-called anarchists was shameful in the extreme. Toronto Mayor David Miller more properly called them criminals and Prime Minister Stephen Harper was spot on when he referred to them as thugs in a prepared statement.

For everyone who whinged and moaned about the cost for security for the meetings of the most powerful leaders in the world, you have now seen the reason. The frustrating part of that though, is why do we constantly need to do this.

Throughout the day’s news coverage of events in Toronto, we watched as the biggest city in this country descended into chaos, into the very anarchy the police stand to protect us from. And yet, it seems to me the police are damned if they do and damned if they don’t.

When, in a coordinated move, the Black Bloc-heads split off from the main group of loopy lefty protestors and began their pre-meditated destruction in the financial sector of Toronto, the police backed off. They reinforced and brought in tactical-equipped officers and methodically took control.

The mob hit in separate groups in different areas creating a fluid, moving situation of chaos.

Media were saying the police weren’t doing enough, that they had lost control. The reality was that the police were playing a cat and mouse game with the main group of protestors who kept twisting and turning trying to get near the security perimeter where the leaders of the G20 were meeting.

Indeed, as the thugs set two police cars ablaze at Bay and King Street on the surface it may have seemed like that. But the reality was much different.

The initial crowd control for the main protest was being done by officers on bikes and normal or “soft” uniforms. Several thugs attacked a police car with the officer still in it. He was monitoring the protest as police do when the crowd attacked. Other officers not equipped with tactical crowd control gear, got to the car and surrounded it, got the officer out and retreated to a point of safety. That’s when the thugs trashed the car and set it alight.

This You Tube video shows the soft position initially taken by police and the moment things got ugly including the rescue of the officer as the thugs attacked his cruiser.

There’s no doubt the police were taken by surprise by the suddenness of the attack. But, there was no point to standing and fighting to protect that police car. They let the thugs have their way while incident commanders mustered their resources to respond. But all the while, they never moved their perimeter security from the security zone.

The police then gave up any pretense of a soft response as they moved to restore order. They worked well into the night making hundreds of arrests of so-called protestors.

By morning the police were on the offensive. At one raid at the University of Toronto, they arrested 70 people working off a tip. They also seized numerous “weapons of convenience.

At a later demonstration at the Detention Centre, officers fired “muzzle blasts” at the crowd and penetrated and arrested a male identified to media as the “leader of the Black Bloc.”

As the day progressed, police began making proactive checks of people in the downtown core and seized everything from black clothing in back packs to bottles of urine and bricks.

To this point more than 600 people have been arrested. The cat and mouse game continues but thus far, the police seem to be winning the day. There will be recriminations of the police for not doing anything when the Black Bloc-heads were were bent on their destructive tactics. All the while there will be those who will say the police acted too aggressively in responding to the violence.

As usual, the police are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. But, from everything I saw, the police acted with remarkable restraint and professionalism in very trying circumstances.

Leo Knight
primetimecrime@gmail.com

Security budget anger mis-directed

Much is being made about the upcoming international gabfest coming to Toronto later this month. The G8 and G20 conferences will cost around a billion dollars to secure according to media estimates. Which may or may not be true. As an example, every dollar in salary of every member of the Armed Forces or police officer seconded to the events is calculated in that cost. But since they were going to earn those dollars regardless of whether they were assigned to G8/G20 I’m not sure that’s fair to account in with those costs.

Equally, much has been made about the $2 million man-made lake designed to provide a rural Canadiana backdrop for international media. Turns out the lake will only cost $57,000. The balance is on time, materials and labour to build the media pavilion. But why let the facts get in the way of a good story?

A $2 million dollar man-made lake sounds much better to the baying media hordes desperate to inflict damage on a “scary” Prime Minister.

This is not to say this isn’t a colossal waste of money. At a time when the deficit is running at $48 billion and the national debt is soaring at over half a trillion dollars, I question any public spending that is not absolutely necessary. But, for good or for bad, this country’s government had committed to hosting the leaders of the free world and given the current geopolitical climate, we must ensure their well-being.

But,the irony is that the bulk of this money is being spent not to protect our guests from assassination although that is a part of this. No, the bulk of the money being spent on security for this event will be aimed at crowd control efforts and by that, I mean keeping the anarchist members of the loony left from getting too close or destroying the city of Toronto in the process.

These are the same Black Bloc-heads who keep turning up and starting a riot. They are the APEC-erheads who attacked police lines at APEC in Vancouver. Remember them from the so-called Battle in Seattle. The riot at the Hyatt? Quebec City? Same crowd.

These are the folks who decry globalization, forestry, mining, oil, government, police and just about everything that makes the West the dominant culture in the world and the most advanced society in history, the endeavours of al Qaeda notwithstanding. They worship at the altar of Noam Chomsky and Naomi Klein, the high priest and priestess of the loony left.

These are the people who firebombed a bank in Ottawa and attacked The Bay in Vancouver during the Winter Olympics. These are the people who have not contributed anything to society except to bore us to tears with their theatrics and rhetoric. And, likely as not they never will. They will always have their hands out, living off the avails of the taxpayer who pays twice for these idiots with the extra costs for security to keep them in check.

They are worse than the Chardonnay Socialists who permeate the mainstream media, the Liberanos, Jack Layton’s dreary Dippers and the femi-Nazis like Maude Barlow and her Council of (Communist) Canadians. No, these are the people who believe that the state should take care of everything and everyone and that profit and business are bad words. And, they plan and do resort to violence to try and make their ridiculous point every time.

If you want to get mad at someone for the security costs, restrain from flinging stones at the government. How about tossing some stones, and big ones at that, at the real parties responsible for the spiralling costs for security at events such as the Olympics and G8/G20.

Leo Knight
primetimecrime@gmail.com