There’s no place for brutality by police

People of a modern civilized world abhor impaired drivers, just as they should “no cash bail” for heavily funded bad people streaming in and out of the “system,” or publicly funded drugs and all else mandated to “save” dope addicts and the like.

Likewise, they should abhor police overreach and brutality. When five — yes, five — burly cops pulled a flyweight 18-year-old farm kid headfirst out of a mammoth tractor at the scene of a “game changer” draconian Bill C-46 “mandatory” drunk-driving test along Highway 2A near Didsbury, throwing the kid to the ground, pounding him, then leaving him cuffed in a sweltering squad car, if the video hadn’t surfaced, I wouldn’t have believed this could happen in Alberta!

In an era denouncing rogue police actions and activities, an era where those fed up with an increasingly amorphous system scream to defund public police services, holding as evidence inhuman brutality by thugs issued expensive publicly owned vehicles, firearms I’m forbidden and a badge of authority, etc., I’m beginning to understand the outrage. Why can’t officers understand they’re being watched and recorded, and straighten themselves up? Why doesn’t the government step up with meaningful recruitment and training, why doesn’t ASIRT step up, why don’t the courts step up …?

The prevailing tractionless government currently ponders the possibility of replacing the Royal Canadian Mounted Police with a provincial police force. Don’t we have a loose-knit provincial force in the form of the Alberta Sheriffs department — the authoritative enforcement powerhouse few know much about? If how five overreacting miscreants representing Albertans and their law enforcement “service” along 2A with their guns, cuffs and authority, brutalizing the innocent hardworking farm kid, Jeremia

Leussink, is any indication of how a provincial force might conduct themselves, you can colour me embarrassed, ashamed and damn mad I’m any part of the funding of it, or that the brutalization seen there is viewed in any way shape or form as serving or protecting anyone from anything.

Alvin W. Shier

Lethbridge