Good Cop, Bad Cop, Heroic Cop

Sympathy and lingering distrust for the Toronto Police at the funeral for Sgt. Ryan Russell.

An emotional Lorne Gunter writes in the National Post of how his faith in Canada’s police forces was restored by the “tragic nobility” of Sgt. Ryan Russell, the Toronto officer killed while trying to stop a hijacked snowplow on the morning of Jan. 12. Forces across the country have been hit with a slew scandals recently, culminating in the G20 fiasco. “It easy to see how these incidents would shake the faith I once took for granted,” writes Gunter. “Sgt. Russell’s example … remind[s] us that most police officers remain solid members of our communities who put their lives on the line to protect us and our safety.”

Sun Media’s Rob Granatstein rebukes those who depicted the massive funeral for Russell as a PR stunt to restore the force’s image after the G20, writing “There is absolutely no basis to mix one event with the other … They are two separate issues.” With due respect for the genuine outpouring of grief and support at Russell’s funeral, we in The Mark Newsroom can perfectly understand why many people’s minds leapt to the G20 when watching the memorial. Such a reaction is almost involuntary: the last time we saw thousands of cops on the streets of Toronto was during that disastrous summit, after all. But there is another symmetry at play, which is that the solidarity on display between the 12,500 officers who attended the funeral is the virtuous flipside of the same impulse to close ranks in the face of adversity that led to a virtual wall of silence when investigators attempted to identify the cops who beat G20 protestors. In any case, if the police have lost the public’s confidence, it’s up to them to win it back. And it shouldn’t take the death of an heroic officer to do it.

Sadly, any goodwill generated by Russell’s sacrifice may be short-lived. Today the Toronto Star reports that an investigation has been launched into a video showing a cop telling a G20 protestor he has no civil rights, which on the list of scary things you don’t want a police officer to say is just about number one.