This BCCLA lie has legs
Media proliferate the B.C. Civil Liberties Association’s
disinformation about police accountability
Once again, British Columbia’s media have repeated the BCCLA lie that the province has ended the practice of police investigating police. (See the last sentence of this Canadian Press report published in the December 4, 2012 Vancouver Sun.)
By propagating this disinformation, the BCCLA’s establishment wannabes give the public false assurances, confuse public discourse on police accountability and ingratiate themselves with powerful but corrupt characters like police complaint commissioner Stan T. Lowe.
The media have repeated the lie numerous times since the very prominent and very dishonest declarations by BCCLA president Robert Holmes on June 18, 2010 and vice-president Jason Gratl on May 17, 2011. (More about that here.)
In this December 4 example, Vancouver’s biggest newspaper and possibly Canada’s biggest news agency seem to think the Independent Investigations Office has ended the practice of cop self-investigations. That’s understandable, if they believe BCCLA bullshit. But other news stories often state that the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner investigates police.
The OPCC has a duty to correct the media on this frequent mistake. But the OPCC doesn’t. Again, the misinformation spreads false assurances, confuses public discourse and suits the purposes of powerful but corrupt characters like Lowe.
The media have a duty too, to strive for accuracy. But with very few exceptions, B.C.’s media reject any info other than what they’re “fed” by the IIO, the OPCC and the BCCLA. The Vancouver Sun has previously run one or two corrections in its letters section, but that hasn’t stopped the paper from repeating the same misinformation. Other Postmedia outlets, Black Press and Canadian Press will not run corrections.
More than anyone else, BCCLA members are in a position to inform the media and the public, encourage accurate and insightful public discourse and offer a positive influence on policies regarding police accountability. They won’t do any of that. Sure, they’ll go after the police themselves. But cops make relatively easy targets. The most serious problem lies not with individual officers but with the powerful bigshots who run our corrupt system of police accountability.
Like a gang of poverty pimps, the BCCLA manipulates the issue for its leaders’ own establishment ambitions.
Read more about the BCCLA’s campaign against police accountability
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