|
 To
Serve and Protect A
report on policing in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside
To Serve and Protect, published
in October 2002, compiles affidavits from 50 residents,
documenting incidents of police misconduct, with a series
of specific recommendations aimed at improving the policing
of the Vancouver Police Department (VPD)
EXTRACT FROM THE REPORT:
Executive Summary
The police occupy a uniquely powerful
role in our society. As public servants sworn to serve
and protect the interests of all citizens, they bear
the heavy responsibility of enforcing the law in an
impartial manner.
And as peace officers authorized to carry
weapons and use force in the course of their duties,
they bear the equally heavy responsibility of exercising
their powers within the limits of the rights and freedoms
central to our democratic
society.
Entitled To Serve and Protect,
this report prepared by the Pivot Legal Society, examines
whether the Vancouver Police Department (VPD) meets
the high standard of conduct expected of our police
force.
It presents the results of a nine-month-long
research program in which sworn legal statements about
interactions with the VPD were
obtained from 50 separate individuals.
|
|
|
 To
serve and protect whom?
[Pivot Post, Summer 2005]
Read an article summarizing
law-changes resulting from the publication of
To Serve and Protect.
|
These statements, carefully documented
and sworn by lawyers, present the direct personal experiences
and observations of each individual.
The results: evidence of systemic
abuse of authority
The results of this research are both
startling and disturbing. Each of
the 50 statements reports conduct by members of the
VPD that meets
the legal definition of abuse of authority.
Beatings, torture, unlawful detention,
illegal strip searches, illegal entry into homes, abusive
language and unlawful confinement, these sworn statements
paint a disturbing picture of a police force that routinely
abuses the legal rights of the very citizens it is sworn
to protect.
The implications of a police force relying
routinely on illegal acts to
control a marginalized population reach far beyond the
individual victims, and affect us collectively as a
society.
Continued...
| 1 | 2
| 3
| next
|
