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October 14, 2008: Montreal Police Strike- 1969

 
        October 2008 marks the 39th anniversary of the Montreal Police "general strike."  This was probably one of the few instances of a major metropolitan North American police force pulling such a drastic job action. It must also be viewed in context with the overall political climate in Montreal, and Quebec in the late 1960's.  There were liberal and radical sectors of the province's sovereignty movement; other labor struggles; the battle to remove Montreal mayor Jean Drapeau, a deep conservative who's policies predated Rudy Giuliani's decades later; plus a huge counter-cultural movement in Montreal at the time. I grew up learning about the class struggle, but being there then I watched it unfold.
   
       On the eve of the strike, Drapeau and budgetary henchmen were poised to cut police officer's benefit contributions, and double their work loads. The largely Francophone force, additionally protested growing wage disparities between their force, and that of police forces in Anglophone communities surrounding the city.   Long traditional two-officer patrols were slated to be replaced by one-officer patrols.  Sound like a familiar scenario?
 
    On October 7, 1969, police union leadership and rank and file met at Montreal's famed Paul Sauve Arena to decide how they would respond to the labor attacks. They sent last minute demands to the provincial government, which went unmet. The police force, numbering some 4000 officers ultimately decided to take a "study day," what we might call here a "sick-out."  Metropolitan firefighters joined in solidarity and went out on strike as well.
 
   There were many bank robberies; much looting in central Montreal; a gun store was ransacked; and Molotov cocktails were thrown. Doubtless there were uncounted scores of common crimes that went unanswered.  One of the chief street battles that took place was between members and supporters of the Taxi Liberation Movement, who took their struggle to the headquarters of the Murray Hill Company.  The latter had been granted an exclusive and financially valuable contract to transport airline passengers at Dorval airport, thus eliminating an important Taxi drivers' take. A general state of "anarchy" ensued, as local and provincial leaders as well as the media categorized it. Two people were killed, including a provincial police officer.  There was other gunfire, and a couple of million dollars in destruction resulted from the downtown "riot." 
 
    The provincial government did not delay in responding.  Before dawn of the next day October 8 Law 61 was in effect forcing striking police to return to work or face penalties and even imprisonment.  Provincial police were called in, as was limited federal army intervention by the famed 22nd Regiment, an all French Canadian unit. Officers quickly returned to work as compelled; nonetheless the general political climate in Quebec continued to simmer.
 
    What is the significance of the Montreal Police Strike of 1969?  More obscure, there was one in 1943 when the issue was the officer's demand they be recognized as public works employees which they were not at the time.  In a broader context the1969 strike, and the not long-after Canadian federal postal workers strike, or even much later, the US air traffic controllers actions that lead to Ronald Reagan's mass firings, are representative of government imposing strong measures on public sector workers.  Federal and local governments have concentrated their control over this growing sector of the work force, the public sector.  Their hard line, no job actions tolerated stance, and subsequent laws enacted have virtually crippled the sector's ability to exercise "theoretical" labor rights.
 
    But what does that mean specifically in the case of police officers?  Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, many are aware of the City Of Vallejo's recent declaration of bankruptcy, and city leaders calls to "Public Safety" employees [Police, Fire etc.] to take cuts.  The budgets of these public safety departments in the case of Vallejo accounted for well over half the city's total budget.  Some members of that community questioned if that was "out of whack" with city residents’ over all needs.
 
    Do we consider police officers or firefighters as entitled to certain privileges as workers?  If they perceive that their value in a community going under appreciated, do we expect them to not behave as other workers might in a similar context?  Historically, and today the composition of most police forces is overwhelmingly made up of individuals from working class backgrounds. Theories of policing change; go in and out of popularity, yet greatly effect officers’ daily activities. One might argue that distancing police forces from the communities they work in was considered a good thing, including as an anti-corruption measure. No doubt mistrust of the police continues in many sectors of the public. 
 
    By my perception of it, the Montreal Police Strike of 1969 was an aberration. It was a rare instance when law enforcement, which is in a critical position of protecting the status quo, threw in its lot with other sectors of the working class.  They made legitimate demands, and were swiftly repressed.  Will we see a renewed interest by such groups in the public sector, perhaps in future Vallejos, were the police might flex their muscle like in Montreal1969?  Given the current economic conditions, it might not be excluded.
 

 To view historical reportage use:
 
Archives de Radio-Canada [in French, Government Channel, and quite different than English]   
 
http://archives.cbc.ca/politics/civil_unrest/clip/12238/ [CBC- English Government Channel]

June 1, 2008: Cold Cases

    A cold case can be defined as an unsolved serious crime. The length of time it has gone unsolved varies, possibly as little as two years. Cold cases can be notorious incidents; most are unknown to the public. Many major law enforcement agencies have Cold Case Review squads or committees that now routinely reopen files. Both American and Canadian TV have presented popular shows depicting the work of such units.
 
    Regardless of media presentation, factual and fictional, or the current existence of cold case committees, such crimes can remain fascinating to the public on emotional and political levels. Examples of such cases include Jimmy Hoffa, the murder of Emmett Till, and the hijacking by DB Cooper. The latter seems to have a life of its own in the collective imagination, and recently new work has been conducted to try to solve that crime. Nationally the JFK assassination, although not considered a cold case, remains one in the eyes of a large sector of the population.  In local and regional areas, unresolved heinous crimes, serial killings etc. live on with the public, as is the case of the Zodiac killings in the SF Bay Area, which was made into a Hollywood movie.  Professor Martin Innes forwarded the notion of such cold case investigations as "fixing the past," both scientifically and socially through the production of a conclusion. Nazi hunters chasing old war criminals clearly evoke the image of righting past wrongs.

     I hypothesize that the interest in solving Cold Cases has arisen from a confluence of phenomena. These include technological/scientific advances, judicial shifts towards greater prosecutorial powers, the victim's rights movement, and to a lesser degree, a rising consciousness of wrongful convictions.  The single strongest factor appears to be technology, but others should not be ignored.  
       
    Technologies, especially related to DNA identification, have been used in many of these matters, and their use is indispensable in today’s police work. A Cold Case police detective mentioned to me that often cases are driven by new information from witnesses who were once reluctant to come forward. Individuals or groups grappling with deep psychological wounds describe the crying need to have "closure" so they can move on with their lives. 

    However, we need to proceed with care. Un-prosecuted, open crimes and cold case investigations might drive us to tamper with centuries old statutes of limitations, as suggested by Scott Turow. Although a few DNA-based exonerations garner much attention, budgetary limitations, prosecutorial stubbornness and socio-political factors have also prevented review in many cases. Cold cases might also do away with ideas of redemption and rehabilitation we cherish. Use of Restorative Justice measures, such as victim-perpetrator meetings, as used in Australia, go unaddressed in our current cold case formula.
 
    More research on exactly which cold cases are getting re-opened must be done.  Are there economic, demographic, racial, political, or other factors at play when resource allocations in pursuing specific cold cases are made?  I merely suggest we have honest, open, and broad public, academic, and legislative debate on this trend, so that we may fully understand its consequences.

December 17 2007: Culture, Rituals, and Contemporary Criminology

    While far from an epidemic, or a major factor in contemporary criminality, in the last few years there have been, throughout the Western world a number of criminal cases involving "imported," culturally-based ritual practices that violate our current norms of behavior and therefore attract a great deal of attention. "Honor killings,” and female genital mutilation are two well-known, obvious examples; inherited Albanian family feud vendettas are an example of a less widely known sub-category.

        These types of cases tend to stir up even more tension regarding certain immigrant populations, so they are worth pondering as their incidence is likely to rise in some places as new immigrant populations increase in certain regions. There is a risk that one day such an incident could exacerbate an already tense situation regarding immigration issues either nationally or in some locality.  Currently we have a paucity of data on these types of crimes and their prevalence, so more research in this area seems like a good idea.

        One has to tread very carefully in how to approach these questions, because there is a long and ugly history in the West of racist and gender-based accusations of ritual crimes that contributed to such atrocities as pogroms, witch burnings, lynchings and slaughters of African Americans and indigenous groups. That said; there are unquestionably certain ritual behaviors that do occur, and that have no place in modern societies.

    It is interesting to look back to an earlier campaign against ritual crime. In 1906, the renowned Cuban ethnomusicologist and criminologist, Fernando Ortiz, described ritual killings in Cuba in his book Los Brujos Negros. He had recently returned to Cuba from studying criminology with Cesar Lombroso in Italy, and was at the time deeply influenced by Lombroso's positivist criminology. Ortiz's aim was to end the violence employed by brujos (witch doctors) in relation to their "magical" practices. At this early stage of his career, he viewed the existence of these individuals as a moral dead weight on Cuban society, and their elimination the only possible road to Cuba's general progress, and that of its African descendants in particular. He later broadened his views about Afro-Cuban culture, but Ortiz's work offers us a case study that shows how difficult it is to separate legitimate crime suppression from cultural misunderstanding and repression.

       In fact in Africa, where there are still active subcultures of sorcery, it is only quite recently that it has become publicly discussed. This theme will be familiar to readers of the highly popular mystery series, "No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency" which takes place in southern Africa. The protagonist Mma Ramotswe, and her mechanic friend discuss "the involvement of the country's most powerful figures in witchcraft." Referring to a possible ritualistic murder she is investigating, she comments "people have been forgetting about this sort of thing...we can't do that."  Notably, attitudes are changing in Africa too. For example, in 2005 a new Gabonese association aimed at fighting ritual kidnappings and murders, whose acronym is "ALCR," came into being.      

     At this stage, "imported," culturally-based ritual crimes undoubtedly represent only a very small fraction of current criminal offenses, but their potential to exacerbate our society's already tense situation vis a vis immigrants, especially those from newer groups, make their further study by criminologists an important, and too often neglected, area of research.

August 28 2007:

       Schools are just now starting up for the glorious 2007-2008 year.  From pre-schools through universities most attention will get paid to instruction and budgets.  Others, reviewing school related events of the last year might focus on the sad killings of students by one of their own at Virginia Tech.  There have also been court decisions that will effect student life in high schools.  One ruling basically shot down a student's right to wear a garment with the words "BONG HITS FOR JESUS."  In another case, a school district was limited in controlling what kids could wear, after a court shot down the district for disciplining a student wearing socks with a TIGGER logo on it. While free speech issues are very important, I am choosing to focus on student "safety" concerns.
 
        Those concerns deal with the safety students SHOULD have from being detained, photographed, identified, interviewed or even arrested on schools, by overly zealous law enforcement officers.  Not all regular officers, or SROs [School Resource Officers, who are those uniformed police now found on many High Schools around the country.] engage in aggressive and often racist practices. San Francisco Unified School District has had a policy that says that students have a right to have a parent or adult of their choosing present during law enforcement "contacts."  Based upon my own research, this policy is not always enforced, although again many very diligent administrators are aware of the policy and follow it carefully.
 
        Police don't like these rules, as they view them as impeding their right to "investigate" crimes.  Schools have problems with it, because it puts them in the middle of parents, police and students, and they rightfully see their jobs as education.  I was pleased to learn of , and view it as a step in the right direction, a new policy in the City Of Fairfield [CA] setting out new "guidelines" for what police can do on campuses.  It all stemmed from an incident in March 2007, when two groups of Latino students were lined up and photographed as part of police anti-gang work. Now, clear standards are apparently in place to protect students from this type of police practice.
 
        There is no doubt that crimes happen at school, and police will be called in. That's ok, so long as rights are not violated, and police behavior is not biased.