Report supporting police ignored by most of media
Dr. Christine Hall, an experienced emergency room physician, released a report earlier this month detailing her findings from a study of incidents when the police interact in a violent manner with the public.
You likely haven’t heard of Dr. Hall or her study. The bulk of the mainstream media ignored her largely because she found that despite all the interactions police have with members of the public, less than one tenth of one percent turned violent and in most instances the police are restrained in their response and do not use excessive force. And unfortunately, supporting the police, for the most part, is not what is done in the mainstream media. It’s unseemly. After all, the police keep secrets from them. They must be covering something up.
Oh dear, whatever will David Eby of the BC Civil Liberties Association do now? His delusional perception that all police are jack-booted enforcers of the Establishment has been – horrors – wrong!
Eby is still perplexed why there haven’t been any complaints to his organization about police brutality during the Stanley Cup riot of June 15. Hint: the police were very restrained and the knobs weren’t. Most of Vancouver wished the VPD might have been a little less than professional and would have got some societal payback for every embarrassing waste of good oxygen who took part in that shameful event.
But the VPD, as an organization, is made up of professional men and women who want to help society, to make a difference.
Dr. Hall, now based in Victoria, examined hundreds of thousands of interactions between the police and the public over the past four years. She identified fewer than 1,200 incidents of use of force among 1.8 million police-public interactions. She says the vast majority of the incidents when police had to use force involved people who were drunk, mentally disturbed, or violent in their own actions toward the police.
The reality is that people are the authours of their own misfortune in the vast majority of cases and Dr. Hall’s study shows exactly that. The police are not society’s enemy. They protect us under the most trying of circumstances and every time they are forced to be violent they have to listen to the bleating of fools.
And the mainstream media dutifully record every syllable while Dr. Hall is largely ignored.
Leo Knight
primetimecrime@gmail.com
Crime & Punishment 
Tell it to Djakowski, or whatever the name is (was) of the 35 year old Ukrainian immigrant who spoke no English, and was wrongfully imprisoned @ Vancouver Airport, and then tasered to death by 3-4 RCMP officers. Tell it to 2-3 unarmed young men who were shot in the head and killed in BC in the last 5 years.
Don’t bother repeating it to me, as a 54 year-old man who was falsely arrested, falsely accused (by a screaming lesbian RCMP corporal named Kitchen who also claimed I was ‘resisting’), falsely arrested, and had my back broken by these fraudulent RCMP “officers”. I am now crippled for life.
Exactly who was it that was funding this so-called perfesser?
DWMillar
July 22, 2011 at 3:51 am
Unfortunately, stating only the eventual outcome of the so-called “incident” with the so-called “lesbian corporal” leaves a lot of unanswered questions. What were the circumstances leading up to this supposed “false accusation and arrest”? How did you find yourself in the company of the RCMP in the first place?
In my experience, the people that yell the loudest about false accusations and false arrest are usually the most suspect people involved in any incident. The fact that you would try and reverse a factual, proven study with a rebuttal that appears to have been written in haste with little attention paid to providing details or any proof, suggests that you’re simply attempting to stir the pot. Like so many other sometimes miguided bleeding hearts, you automatically cast blame when someone yells “wolf” without actually examining the evidence or facts of the incident.
Before you rant about excessive force, or false arrest, or hormonal imbalance in female members, consider the fact that the education and collective knowledge that goes in to setting these controls on use of force and the policies and procedures that are set down by the most knowledgeable of lawmakers, will almost always have been given more thought than the spontaneous ramblings of “cophaters”.
Mike R
August 6, 2011 at 1:23 am
You’re an idiot
Carcross
July 27, 2015 at 7:03 pm
Mr. Millar’s Post appears to lack credibility! The reference to a “lesbian R.C.M.P. Corporal” is suspect. How did the gentleman know her alledged sexual proclivity? Did she infrom him while reading him his Rights? Was it on her name tag? And if such information was shared, what is the connection to the alledged incident? Is the writer homophobic?
The descriptor of “fraudulent” R,C,M,P, officers result in the arrest of the individuals posing as R.C.M.P. officers?
Did you File a Charge of fraud against them?
I think not…………………….. and that speaks volumes.
Good day to you.
Gary L.
July 30, 2011 at 3:34 am
Reblogged this on Ponderings from a Procrastinating Prognosticator.
samatwitch
July 27, 2015 at 6:07 pm
Thank you Dr. HALL. About time somebody published something about the stupidity that police everywhere deal with on a daily basis!
J.D.
July 27, 2015 at 10:01 pm
Do you mean the study referenced here: http://www.nationalpost.com/m/wp/blog.html?b=news.nationalpost.com//news/canada/excessive-force-a-rarity-for-police-study
And how it was paid for by the Canadian Police Research Centre?
I’m all for citing good research when it comes to this sort of thing, but maybe don’t talk about 1 study from 4 years ago with funding from a biased group.
Leo, I appreciate getting both sides of the story and I agree that the mainstream media focuses on the bad much more than the good. But every time I’m drawn to an article on your site it’s just as biased, if not more so, than the media in general.
Please LINK to your sources. Anything less than that is poor reporting.
Dale
July 28, 2015 at 6:01 am
No, I based the comment on the actual study not the media report, which btw, was not well reported. You suggest somehow the study is less credible because it was done for the CPRC which is in part funded by the CAPC and the NRC. Really? And you question the credibility of Dr. Hall too? A career ER physician? Are you being serious or are you just another anti-police nutter? Just asking . . .
Leo Knight
July 28, 2015 at 3:15 pm
Where is the actual study? Link Please – otherwise this is noise.
docfunbags
July 28, 2015 at 5:58 pm
Hi Dale, Just to clarify, funding for our study (which was unrestricted in terms of publication results – which means funding was not dependent on outcome found), came from the federal government, initially through the Canadian Police Research Centre and ultimately, final technical reports were submitted through Defense Research and Development Canada. The study went through 4 different University based Institutional Review Boards and Scientific Review Boards prior to its completion in each involved city to ensure that it was appropriately conducted and rigorous, scientifically and statistically sound and ethically correct so that we could publish our results in medical journals not police journals. We have since published an update in the data with over 3.25 million police public interactions studied in total. Other manuscripts have come from that prospectively completed research. Both papers relevant to this discussion are searchable with my name as the principal author, in any medical search engine and can be found in the Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine. Thanks for your interest and the discussion. Christine A Hall MD MSc FRCPC; Principal Author, RESTRAINT study.
Christine Hall
July 29, 2015 at 3:04 am
Thank you Doctor. Your study was excellent as I wrote. Unfortunately some folks try to shoot the messenger when they don’t like the message.
Leo Knight
July 29, 2015 at 3:46 am
Having met Dr.Hall while attending a Force Science Institute certification. I would be hard pressed to believe that study was anything short of complete and Exhaustive regardless of who funded it, and suggestions otherwise are nothing more than conjecture at best!
John
July 28, 2015 at 3:57 pm
In the firt instance, it was written in 2011. I don’t keep research forever. In the second instance, it’s not my responsibility to do your research.
Finally, and I do mean finally, if you want to engage me, lose the anonyminity. Otherwise it’s just noise.
Leo Knight
July 28, 2015 at 6:55 pm
Yikes, somebody’s a little testy. It’s just basic journalism. Sorry that you feel you’re being held to Wikipedia’s standard.
You’re trying to promote a side that doesn’t get a lot of coverage. Most of the people agreeing with you are, or were, cops. If you want to win others over (me) back up your words. Or don’t.
And for the record, I wasn’t insulting so please don’t accuse me of being “another anti-police nutter”. I was just trying to get more details. It’s fine if you don’t have them, just say so.
Dale
July 29, 2015 at 12:33 am
Actually Dale your post was the insulting one, towards Dr. Hall’s research, credibility and professionalism as well as towards Mr. Knight’s article and him with your journalism comments. You commented on something you obviously knew little about as is typical on the internet and then again when you state ” Most of the people agreeing with you are, or were, cops.” How exactly do you know that? Knowing something about this you will find the majority of people know this to be true due to their own experience…something that is also sampled. You may be a pilot, work at McDonalds or a plumber but whatever you do, stick to what you know because your opinions make you look bad.
J Alfred
July 29, 2015 at 3:56 am
Great opinion piece. Give yourself some credibility and post a link to the study. One that’s easy to find. You’re automatically discredited as a former Mountie so you gotta cite where get this from. Not just cuz I can verify it…but also so I can use it and shut some of these people up.
Cody
July 30, 2015 at 3:43 am