'CUFFING THE COPS

It must be increasingly frustrating and confusing to be a police officer
these days. On one hand, you have average, law-abiding citizens desperately
calling for authorities to crack down on crime while, on the other, you
have an army of left-wingers, lawyers, judges and assorted bleeding hearts
doing their utmost to handcuff the cops.

Recently, police were hamstrung even further by the justice system and
there is a movement afoot that would deprive them of a useful law
enforcement tool.

In the first instance, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled police can no
longer search people on the street unless they have reasonable grounds to
suspect that they pose a safety threat. To do so would be an invasion of
civil rights, the court said.

As we've come to expect, it's a ruling that primarily protects criminals,
not innocent citizens. The latter have nothing to fear from such street
searches because they probably will never experience one and, secondly,
even if they do, there's very likely nothing for an officer to find.

It's the punks and whackos packing guns, knives and other weapons whom this
law shields.

How many searches won't be done as a result of this ruling, with what
consequences? And how many potential charges will be kicked out?

Meanwhile, the heat is on the police over the use of the Taser gun. A
handgun that immobilizes a person via electrically-charged darts or direct
contact, the Taser is now under fire because a number of people (four in
B.C. in the past two years) have died after being shocked. Predictably, up
step the civil libertarians, human rights advocates and the major media,
all in a froth. Ban the police use of Tasers, goes the cry.

And what would they have police do with the ultra-violent people in
frenzied, drug-altered or psychotic states, who are oblivious to all reason
and are hell-bent on destruction? Try to physically subdue them, putting
officers at extreme risk? And when that clearly is not an option? Shoot them?

Is the guy in a cocaine or methamphetamine-fuelled rage more susceptible to
heart failure after being hit with 50,000 volts? Probably. Does he have a
better chance against a bullet? Not likely.

A good many lives have been saved as opposed to being lost through Taser use.

The vast majority of people facing the business end of the police and their
weapons have put themselves at risk through their own choices. Yet, the
civil hand-wringers blame the cops and the Taser.

Lawmakers constantly create restrictions that prevent officers from doing
what most citizens want them to do.

The police put the criminals into the justice system and the system spits
them back out in short order.

It makes you wonder how the men and women in uniform go to work each day.

Yet, thankfully, they do.