THE REAL PROBLEM

Let's get the niceties out of the way. The police do a great job; they're
the last line of defence; our cops are tops; I wouldn't do the job,
whatever you paid me; there are only a few bad apples; it's dangerous; we
take them for granted.

The point is, however, that 99 times out of 100 you can praise the police,
but if you once criticize you become a police-basher. A great shame.

Two weeks ago, a fine man was shot in the face by bad guys. He was
protecting private property and keeping the rule of law. My heart goes out
to him and his family. One of the wanted men was described as being white,
the other dark-skinned. Yet by the afternoon, the police had pulled a black
man from a subway train and even before this happened talk-radio stations
were discussing the problem of "black crime."

This was the day after a white man was sent to jail for the brutal murder
of a young black woman in Toronto, and only days after it was revealed the
extremely Caucasian Karla Homolka made medical trips out of prison. Some
people have reason to be rather angry.

Let's be candid here. It is extremely rare to meet a black person,
particularly a young black man, who has not had some unfortunate experience
with the police. Being stopped in the car for no apparent reason, being
asked what you are doing when you are simply walking home, asked for
identification because you're not in the right area.

If I, white and middle class, have heard this from black guys I have met,
we can only imagine what those in the middle of the black community experience.

This is not to say the police service is racist. I don't know a racist cop.
I know cops who do their jobs. Perhaps unquestioningly but seldom with
malice. Yet somewhere something has gone wrong.

Just ask black men and women you know if they have ever felt wrongly
treated by the cops. That's if you know any people of colour. Therein lies
a great deal of the problem.

The police service has to mirror and reflect society in general, otherwise
it is at risk of becoming something separate and detached. That's difficult
to achieve, though, especially when greater society has its own problems.

I was in St. Jacob's recently with the kids. My nine-year-old daughter and
her cousin went into a store to buy some candy. As they walked in the
crowded place the owner followed them, only a yard behind all the time and
always staring at them. They bought some gum. Then they tried on a hat in
the corner.

"No trying on!" barked the woman, and grabbed the hat from them.

We tried an experiment. My wife went into the store five minutes later. She
was not followed, she tried on some hats and everything was roses.
Conclusion? The store owner didn't like kids.

Find out how often black people are followed in stores, watched as if they
were all potential thieves, treated like naughty and dishonest children.

It's not the cops who are to blame but all of us. We ignore the big-time
criminals in our rush to condemn. We ignore the arms dealers, the people
who actually control the drug trade, the serial killers, the sex criminals,
the people who start wars and colonize, the people who commit enormous
fraud and tax evasion. Loath as I am to appear racist, they tend to be as
white as snow.

Perhaps we should start to investigate the phenomenon of "white crime." Or
perhaps we should simply address the issue of crime itself.

Blame the '60s radicals who said single-parent families and the drug
culture were cool, blame the urban planners who put people in sky-high
monstrosities, blame an economy that forces both parents to work and blame
our own obsession with discriminating against those who are not only our
equals but our brothers and sisters.

For goodness sake do it quickly, before it's too late.