Rethink ‘vulnerable persons registry’
Re Safe streets for everyone, Editorial April 12 A “vulnerable persons registry” (VPR) is a great idea except for the unfortunate people whose lives will be permanently stigmatized, if not ruined, by finding themselves on it.
Profiling the mentally ill in such a crude and callous manner will likely make them permanently unemployable, bar them from ever entering the United States and make them more, not less, vulnerable to suffering the whole gamut of personal, professional and public indignities already endured by the mentally ill.
It will also create yet another disincentive for people experiencing mental health issues, including drug and alcohol addiction, to seek proper treatment. More damningly, it will not save anyone from being shot to death by trigger-happy police, apparently incapable of distinguishing between an act of criminality and the erratic behaviour of a person in crisis (or high on drugs), which is the real root of the problem.
But then it is easier to blame the victims — this in a country that supposedly has no death penalty even for the most heinous crimes. What then gives the police the right to gun down anyone, much less the emotionally distraught?
I doubt anything short of tattooing a giant “M” on a person’s forehead could elicit a more appropriate and sensitive police response beyond the “one size fits all” barking SWAT team paramilitary approach that has infected law enforcement in Canada and done much to erode social trust between the police and the citizenry.
It is not the “vulnerable” that are problem. The problem resides in police policies, practices and procedures that have made them, indeed all of us, vulnerable to getting killed in an encounter with law enforcement.
The cops already have their VPR. It is the full list of you, me and every other imperfect, and hence vulnerable, human being in Canada whom our police forces have been sworn “to serve and protect,” not to traumatize, threaten and then kill in confrontational standoffs that they themselves have either created or deliberately escalated.
The Star’s bizarre endorsement of this accountability-shifting VPR is surely looking at the “murder by cop” problem through the wrong end of the telescope. Edward Ozog, Brantford, Ont. A good idea — too bad the Toronto police have made many streets unsafe. The Star should send this message to Toronto police Chief Bill Blair and other chiefs whose front line officers refuse to learn how to communicate with and de-escalate emotional crises in our communities. When will they ever learn? Don Weitz, Toronto