What’s wrong with the
Wong/Tong guilt-mongering?
Lots more people owe natives an apology.
Among them is B.C. human rights
commissioner Kasari Govender
November 8, 2022
Vancouver cops Canon Wong and Mitchel Tong handcuff a grandfather
and granddaughter for no reason: It was an asshole thing to do,
but higher-ups get away with much more.
This is Canada, so no one asks the big question this issue raises: Can there ever be reconciliation without magnanimity? But since this website addresses police accountability, let’s pose another question: Aren’t a lot of other people besides Canon Wong and Mitchel Tong overdue for apologies?
Yet the second question is as taboo as the first—to B.C.’s political, legal, media and poverty pimp establishment.
Wong and Tong were the idiot Vancouver cops who handcuffed Maxwell Johnson and his 12-year-old granddaughter nearly three years ago. They’d done nothing wrong and were co-operating with an unnecessary police investigation.
They’re native, so the cops got accused of racism. And maybe they are racists, although their actions might have been based more on social class, as evidenced by multitudes of other people who get unnecessarily handcuffed.
But even that possibility can include race as a factor. Maybe, to idiots like Wong and Tong, membership in the wrong race relegates those people to the same mistreatable status that’s more generally defined by income. (Some cops, as affluent assholes, express contempt to low-paid workers in addition to street people.)
Anyway, the B.C. Human Rights Commission decided race was the reason idiots Wong and Tong handcuffed the grandfather and granddaughter. In defence, the VPD apparently offered no data on how often they unnecessarily handcuff low-income whites (very often, I’d say), or how often idiots Wong and Tong handcuff Chinese grandparents and grandchildren (never, I’d bet). So the HRC decision stands.
A September media release from the commission stated, “Today, parties to the complaint are announcing that they have reached a settlement agreement, which they are making public.” Who made what public, and where, wasn’t divulged. If the HRC, VPD, VPD Board or Heiltsuk Nation posted the decision, it’s hard to find. That leaves media accounts as the only source of info.
According to those reports the VPD paid an undisclosed sum to the grandfather and granddaughter, along with $100,000 to their band, the Heiltsuk. That’s on top of an undisclosed payout from the Bank of Montreal, whose unnecessary 911 call triggered the police response and showed the VPD have no monopoly on idiocy.
The HRC apparently called for apologies. At least one media report said Wong and Tong did so in writing. The Heiltsuk said the two cops didn’t apologize.
Nor did Wong and Tong join the delegation of something like 20 Vancouver cops led by chief Adam Palmer at a Heiltsuk ceremony in Bella Bella, most of them travelling by chartered plane to comply with an HRC demand.
The October 24 ceremony lasted five hours. Photos from media and the Heiltsuk showed Johnson looking distraught, maybe overly so. The Heiltsuk criticized Wong and Tong for their no-show and, in protest, returned a gift that Palmer had presented. There was no mention about returning any of the cash settlements.
So in addition to a 20-cop contrition delegation and maybe (depending on whom you believe) a written apology from Wong and Tong, the Heiltsuk got at least four cash payouts along with a VPD commitment to change its handcuffing policy (to everyone’s benefit, let’s hope) and a formal plan for better (special?) treatment of natives.
But, without Wong and Tong travelling 480 kilometres to apologize in person at a five-hour public event, official Heiltsuk grievance remains. Again, the taboo-breaking question arises: Can there ever be reconciliation without magnanimity?
But back to the apology deficit. In no way can Wong and Tong be considered the only such malefactors. Among far more serious outrages, here’s just one—VPD officer Taylor Robinson’s assault on Sandy Davidsen. Robinson did, although very belatedly, express credible-sounding remorse and he was penalized. But a lot of others got away with their role in a cover-up that smacks of contempt for women, the poor, the disabled and natives.
None of those involved have been held accountable, and many of them hold higher social rank than cops. That’s why the 2010 incident still casts a stench on B.C.’s already stinking establishment—the perps represent Vancouver Police Professional Standards, B.C.’s Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner (fully supported by all B.C. political parties as well as the Law Society of British Columbia and the media), the Pivot Legal Society and, maybe the most hypocritical of them all, the B.C. Human Rights Commission.
So here’s a list of people long overdue for apologizing and penalties:
VPD Professional Standards officers
Their names remain secret due to OPCC insistence. Some cops from that unit learned about the Robinson assault within two days of the occurrence but withheld the incident from the OPCC, contrary to B.C.’s Police Act. They covered the incident up.
B.C. police complaint commissioner Stan Lowe
As OPCC boss at that time, he holds responsibility for the agency’s central role in this cover-up. The OPCC learned about Robinson’s assault 19 days after it happened but kept it secret, joining in the VPD cover-up already underway. Lowe didn’t order an investigation into Robinson until more than six weeks after his assault, nearly six weeks after VPD Professional Standards found out and nearly four weeks after the OPCC found out—but just days after the media found out.
Lowe never ordered an investigation into the VPD Professional Standards officers who initiated the cover-up. Of course he couldn’t, without implicating himself.
Deputy police complaint commissioner Rollie Woods
A former head of VPD Professional Standards and a serial liar, Woods was Lowe’s second-in-charge during the cover-up. Woods shares guilt for all of Lowe’s ethical corruption, plus he lied brazenly about the Robinson case to the Georgia Straight and Victoria Times Colonist.
Pivot Legal Society poverty pimps
Scott Bernstein and Doug King
Both of these hustlers came to Vancouver instead of trying their SJW opportunism in the black and Hispanic inner-cities of their own country. Bernstein initially “represented” Robinson’s victim and brought the assault to the OPCC’s attention. But Bernstein stayed silent as the OPCC joined the VPD cover-up.
King later took over as the victim’s “representative.” But he actually praised Lowe’s handling of the case, knowing full well the high-ranking establishment lawyer and his OPCC staff had conducted a cover-up.
By ingratiating themselves with power, Bernstein and King both employed a common poverty pimp tactic: they manipulated a social problem for their own ambition.
Politicians and journalists
who knew but wouldn’t speak out
There’s lots of them at the BC NDP, BC Liberals and, joining later, Greens. Media courtiers also proliferate, especially at Vancouver Postmedia and the Victoria Times Colonist, whose staff behave as outright sucks towards Lowe and Woods.
And then there’s Kasari Govender,
B.C. human rights commissioner
Govender actually attended the Heiltsuk’s five-hour guilt-mongering event without acknowledging any of her own. She stated she was there to “audit” the VPD response, which she ordered. It must be fun to have little real work to do, a generous travel budget and the chance to watch people squirm.
At some point prior to her HRC appointment Govender acted as a director for the Pivot Legal Society, the same opportunistic career vehicle used by white American poverty pimps Bernstein and King. When she sat on the board isn’t clear. Her “full bio,” posted on the HRC website, doesn’t say. But given her career trajectory it was probably during and/or after the Bernstein/King/VPD/OPCC cover-up of the Robinson assault. Even if her time on the board happened after the case had supposedly been resolved, she should have known about the nature of Bernstein’s and King’s involvement, as should other Pivot directors and staff.
Anyone following police accountability in B.C. has to know about the Robinson case and three other OPCC cover-ups I’ve brought to light. If Govender didn’t know, she was inexcusably negligent. If she did know, she had a duty to speak out.
Pivot has an ethical obligation to denounce Bernstein’s and King’s actions, and pledge to work honourably. Pivot also has an obligation to speak out against the OPCC’s lack of transparency and accountability, not to mention its cover-ups.
But career ambitions prevent Pivot directors and staff from angering the OPCC and its powerful connections in B.C.’s political and legal establishment. Had she acted ethically with Pivot, Govender would not have gained such a privileged position as human rights commissioner.
In that job, she’s continued her service to establishment corruption. Govender’s HRC submission to a legislative inquiry into B.C.’s Police Act advocated different procedures for different races but said nothing to challenge the OPCC’s secrecy and immunity, let alone the cover-ups they allow. Nor did she challenge the legislated weakness of B.C.’s Independent Investigations Office, demonstrated manifestly in the IIO’s inability to hold seven Vancouver cops accountable for the particularly vicious beating that killed Myles Gray.
So B.C. has a human rights commissioner, of all people, who’s not only cozy with corruption but tainted by a case of racial discrimination. This is indeed a place where ethical sleaze runs deep and wide.
That’s further demonstrated
by B.C.’s poverty pimp premier-in-waiting
David Eby began his career as another Pivot/B.C. Civil Liberties Association social justice phony.
In his early SJW years he discussed individual cases of police misconduct without daring to mention OPCC secrecy, immunity or corruption. Later, Eby evaded media questions about police misconduct by consistently changing the subject to mental illness. None of B.C.’s courtier journalists noticed the tactic, which avoided conflict with the powerful people Eby wanted to join.
Now he’s oozed to the top of the provincial slime heap as B.C.’s poverty pimp premier.
Read more about
B.C.’s Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner
Read more about the Pivot Legal Society
and B.C. Civil Liberties Association
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