Pubdate: Thu, 02 Aug 2001
Source: Vancouver Sun (CN BC)
Section: Pg A11
Copyright: 2001 The Vancouver Sun
Contact:  http://www.vancouversun.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/477
Author: Karen Selick, Canadian Lawyer magazine
Note: Selick is a lawyer and writer in Bloomfield, Ont. She is a regular 
columnist for Canadian Lawyer magazine from which this column is reprinted.)

POLICE FOCUS ON VICE LEAVES VICTIMS OF REAL CRIME ON THEIR OWN

Ask most people whose house has ever been broken into and they'll tell you, 
the call to the insurance company was the only one worth making. A call to 
the police may bring an officer around to take a report, but it rarely 
brings the satisfaction of getting your property back, or compensation for 
any vandalism, or seeing the criminals go to jail.

In fact, a Toronto lawyer recently told me that he had arrived at work one 
day to find two bullet holes in the glass door to his office. He called the 
police, but was told that they wouldn't send an officer to investigate. 
This sort of thing "happens all the time," the officer said on the phone.

Another friend told me he'd been the victim of identity theft, probably an 
inside job by someone working at his bank. Among other things, there was a 
withdrawal of $16,000 from his line of credit. When he called police, he 
was told they don't investigate frauds against individuals if they're under 
$250,000 or, for businesses, under $1 million.

These troubling anecdotes are corroborated by statistics. A 1997 study by 
Statistics Canada revealed that only 24 per cent of property crimes are 
ever cleared by police. For breaking and entering, the rate is 15 per cent.

Citizens faced with this kind of police unresponsiveness are turning in 
droves to other means of protecting themselves. Sales of home security 
systems have skyrocketed. Gated communities with private security guards, 
long common in the U.S., are gaining a foothold in Canada. Retailers are 
installing surveillance cameras everywhere. Banks are exploring a variety 
of ways to prevent credit card fraud -- from fingerprint identification to 
retinal scans.

In other words, crime prevention -- once considered an undisputed function 
of government -- is steadily, quietly, without any fanfare, being taken 
over by the private sector.

Meanwhile, how are tax-funded police officers spending their time? We get a 
hint in a recent national newspaper headline: "54 people charged in betting 
crackdown."

We get another hint in a case where a pair of undercover policemen attended 
a Marilyn Manson concert dressed like rock fans, in white face makeup and 
black wigs. They cajoled and intimidated a 14-year-old boy into parting 
with $10 worth of marijuana -- a third of the stash he intended to smoke 
himself. An appeal court eventually threw out the boy's drug trafficking 
conviction due to police entrapment. Meanwhile, not only had the police 
wasted a lot of manpower engineering this silly episode, but someone in the 
Crown prosecutor's office also thought this boy's dastardly deed worth some 
prosecutorial resources.

As citizens increasingly find it necessary to take over the job of crime 
prevention in their homes and workplaces, the primary job that's being left 
for government police is vice prevention. Drugs, gambling, smuggling and 
prostitution will eventually become the raison d'etre of the boys in blue 
- -- if they aren't already.

What do these offences have in common? The participants on both sides of 
each deal are participating willingly, voluntarily. Nobody considers 
himself a "victim" of the transaction. The only person who objects is the 
state.

Police argue that these vices are increasingly controlled by organized 
crime, leading ultimately to violence and murder. Therefore, the logic 
goes, we must pursue petty vices in order to prevent deaths.

But gangland turf wars occur only when we transform vices into crimes. The 
Prohibition-era liquor trade was steeped in violence, too. However, now 
that alcohol can be sold legally, Molson's and Sleeman's aren't shooting it 
out in the streets. Instead they're respectable citizens, listed on the 
stock exchange. Paradoxical as it may seem, it is the legalization of 
victimless crime, not the zealous prosecution of it, that prevents vice 
from escalating into crime.

But don't tell that to the cops or law-and-order politicians. They demand 
ever-increasing funding, and ever-increasing powers, to deal with problems 
they actually help to create. They're willing to risk transforming the 
country into a police state, apparently for our own good. Have they never 
pondered the fact that urine tests conducted in prisons invariably show 
that even in those microcosms of the ultimate police state, there's always 
a good percentage of the population that manages to get stoned?

Let's hope taxpayers eventually start questioning why they should have to 
pay twice for the crime prevention they really want -- once through their 
taxes to the ineffectual police department, and a second time to the 
company that monitors their home security service. Maybe then they'll start 
refusing to pay, both with their dollars and their liberties, for ventures 
that are beginning to look primarily like make-work projects for police.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Beth