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Last week I was nearly the victim of a
tragic workplace accident. After a long day of hard work I
carelessly drove my roller chair backwards over the hardwood floor,
completely forgetting that my foot (which was not covered by a shoe
at the time) was in the way. Quickly I manoeuvred my foot out
of the way, saving me from any permanent damage to my toes, though
the emotional damage from the panic I suffered over what could have
happened carried on for minutes.
A friend had a similar workplace accident
where he was faxing copies of a document to one of his clients, and
unknowingly caught his tie in the fax machine. It would not have
been so bad except for the machine's jam mechanism designed to
give slack to jammed paper, and reattempt to pull the paper in
again, over, and over. Screaming for help as his head continually
slammed back and forth into the machine, one of his colleagues
heroically dove for the power plug and saved him from the
humiliation of coming into the work place the following day with a
bruised face.
Let's face it, for most of us, the worst
workplace accident we'll ever see comes awfully close to these
incidents.
Now, imagine a work-world where the
worst-case scenario involved being beaten by a gang of thugs caught
vandalizing our community, or jumped by a bunch of inebriated bar
buddies, or stabbed by an unsuspecting youth undergoing
questioning, or worse yet, shot while trying to break up a domestic
dispute by a large, drunken, and very enraged, husband. If you are
out of your mind, or maybe just happen to be one of those rare,
completely selfless individuals interested in serving and
protecting the community (with almost no thanks), you might
actually want to be recruited by the Medicine Hat Police
Service.
When police are on the scene, they are not
your friend, they are not your counsellor and they are certainly
not a politician who, with clinical accuracy and an over-abundance
of time, carefully plan every word spoken to the public to buy your
personal social acceptance.
As stated clearly on their website, they
have one purpose: to serve and protect our community. They are not
trained to be social, nor are they trained to necessarily be
polite. They are trained to keep the peace, and survive doing it.
They are not telepathic, and therefore cannot immediately know
"what went down" and if you feel like you are being treated like a
suspect that is probably because, well, you are — for their
protection, and yours.
Would you prefer they ask the man chasing
you with a baseball bat what his intentions are prior to tasering
him? Or perhaps you would prefer to read about a police officer in
the obituaries because they failed to properly take down a
potential suspect who turned out to be armed? Perhaps after you
finish reading the obituary, you can explain to the officer's wife
and child that being polite and following due process was more
important than their survival.
For those who want to see Tasers banned
for police use, first of all, do you understand what the
alternative is to a mild jolt of electricity? It's a shoot-to-kill
policy that comes into play when an officer's life is in danger.
Tasers are designed to give police an alternative to using lethal
force. Tasers have been used in more than 4,000 documented cases
since 1999 in Canada alone where lethal force was called for. And
no officer should be asked to get into a close-quarters wrestling
match with a 320-pound drunk man, or a man armed with a knife, bat,
or other weapon because you took away "the right tool for the right
job."
The next time you feel to allege police
brutality against our force, or the next time you want to strip
them of the tools they need to safely and successfully carry out
their job, consider that the work they do in one late-night hour
comes with more danger than you will likely be subjected to in your
entire career, and that ultimately, they do it to serve and protect
you.
Brad Leitch lives in Medicine
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