Raise the Hammer

If a football team can cow council, you can bet that the police force will have no trouble at all.

http://www.thespec.com/opinion/article/517321--police-board-s-budget-security-obscene

Looking at today's Spec, I was struck by the readiness with which HPS divulge stats that are in their interest – in this case, itemized data related to a meticulously timed $3 million meth bust (and, uh, yeah, the police *never* inflate the street valuation of illicit drugs... one more reason to never buy junk from a cop... such as the HPS constable arrested in the meth bust) – but are notoriously closed when it comes to releasing data. Even to the communities they serve.

Cruise the HPS website's "Communities & Neighbourhoods" sub-page and take a gander at the kind of discrepencies that your tax dollars support. Even at the system's highest level of transparency – Westdale (home to McMaster and, if I'm not mistaken, Mr. Dreschel) – Beat Tracker results are available for 2007 (the year all HPS beat crime reporting seems to stop). And they're incomplete at that.

http://www.hamiltonpolice.on.ca/HPS/Communities/Division+1/D1S1Westdale.htm
http://www.hamiltonpolice.on.ca/HPS/Communities/Division+1/divethreebeattracker.htm

No other neighbourhoods/beats in the city have access to such detailed information. In fact, most other neighbourhoods receive no information at all, except by way of the HPS’s city-wide news releases, FOI inquiries or the Spec's sensationally selective Police Blotter. And don't even bother with HPS Media Relations, a PR flack that may as well be Chief DeCaire's sock puppet.

As Mr. Dreschel points out, the Toronto Police Services at least can claim the high ground of line-item transparency. As corruption- and scandal-plagued as that force has been, at least its demons stand chance of being exposed. Who knows what lurks behind the shield on King William? Law enforcement's mercenary self-interest ("To Serve and Protect" is, after all, non-specific) is a Moebius loop. That fosters not only inefficiency, but worse – as individuals like Kevin Dhinsa, David Doel, Rick Wills, Hoang Pham, Douglas Sephton, Kevin Farrell and Andrew Pauls flout the laws they have sworn to uphold.

http://www.thespec.com/opinion/editorial/article/512359--nothing-left-but-a-bad-smell

http://www.ancasternews.com/news/article/209475

http://www.thespec.com/news/local/article/508455--cop-faces-9-police-act-charges

http://www.thespec.com/news/local/article/507423--cop-on-house-arrest-appeals-sentence

http://www.thespec.com/news/local/article/478566--hamilton-cop-charged-with-arson

http://hamilton-on.ca/2011/04/police-officer-faces-nine-misconduct-charges-after-drunk-driving-arrest/

http://www.thespec.com/news/local/article/510441--shamed-constables-ordered-to-stay-out-of-trouble

http://www.900chml.com/Channels/Reg/NewsLocalGeneral/Story.aspx?ID=1402371

Hamilton's finest.

But, by all means, keep us distracted with the real wrongdoers: buskers and jaywalkers.