As the media wolves circle around Justin Bourque and fabricate the least sympathetic motives they can come up with to project onto his actions, a handful of news commenters have posted and re-posted stories about the murder of Daniel Levesque, who may have been a close friend of Justin Bourque, on July 13, 2013 by Moncton RCMP, and the subsequent 'investigation' that, like virtually every other time police investigate other police, found the officers did nothing wrong.
The investigation was carried out by 'neutral' Fredricton police, but police are, as a culture, bonded together by a selection and training process that they believe puts them above most of society, and protecting each other is always a higher priority than protecting the public.
Beyond this individual case that may have been close to the man who was arrested this morning, unarmed, for the one man war on local police, there are many many similar cases piled up from over the years, where the facts don't match the 'findings' of investigators who seem to believe police can do no wrong, even when the coroner's inquest clearly shows, like in the case of Ian Bush in BC, the victim was kneeling when he was shot in the back of the head, the police always find a way to get their man off easy.
We see all the pictures of the crying families of RCMP every time one of them dies, but when the RCMP kill someone we rarely see pictures of their families in the days after. No publicly funded memorials for Daniel Levesque and Ian Bush, no moral prattling by Conservatives about the value of human life when they were killed in cold blood by 'public servants'.
The victims of police violence are instead dehumanized by media bent on giving the police the benefit of the doubt every time, regardless of the evidence, while police are overly-humanized, even portrayed as though they are the victims, because of the emotional trauma, when 'forced' to kill someone 'in the line of duty'.
This canonization of law enforcement is as old as the law enforcement profession, the 'sacredness' of a legal system that constantly contradicts it's stated values and holds the worst offenders above the law while using every excuse to lock up poor people as long as possible, and the cult of law enforcement has the same charactaristics in virtually every culture that has professional police.
Law enforcment culture is centered on a total disregard for human life or human rights, a natural hostility for democracy and a bias that is always in favor of more laws regulating more aspects of ordinary people's lives while allowing wealthy and powerful elites to commit major crimes that risk the health and safety of our entire society with little or no consequence.
Police violence is a growing problem in every part of the world, and while Justin Bourque's way of coping with it may be wrong, allowing it to continue while pretending the police are actually acting on the best intentions is definitely not right.
Fredericton police investigate fatal shooting of Moncton man by RCMP CTV AtlanticPublished Monday, July 15, 2013
http://atlantic.ctvnews.ca/mobile/fredericton-police-investigate-fatal-shooting-of-moncton-man-by-rcmp-1.1368331
Global News: Codiac RCMP not responsible for death of Moncton man: Fredericton Police, May 23, 2014 By Laura Brown
Ian Bush was targeted by RCMP: family lawyer, Canadian Press Published Thursday, May 24, 2007 http://www.ctvnews.ca/ian-bush-was-targeted-by-rcmp-family-lawyer-1.242520