WANGERSKY COME BACK: WHEN MUMBLING IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH

Guest Post written by Cabot Martin

There was a time, as they say, that I tended to agree with most of The Telegram’s Russell Wangersky’s editorial pieces.

But he had one in the Monday Telegram that, how do I put it, was pretty far out.

Says we are not in a “police state” unless they are dropping pregnant women out of planes and disappearing thousands of people without a trace – heavy darts.

Davis, it seems, cannot be put in the same category as Pinochet, Franco and Marcos - so don’t cheapen the debate by using the term.

Well excuse me.

REFLECTIONS ON A SOCIETY SADDENED

Death by police, whether some place in the U.S.A. or in Mitchells Brook, NL evokes a range of emotions that transcends all the normal reactions of people especially when transparency is tattered.

Though the victim’s family will suffer all the pain and loss of a loved one, society also has a lot at stake, if the state has erred or engaged in aberrant behavior. 

A collective loss of confidence in authority figures is the first casualty. If the actions of the police and those of politicians have overlapped, as in the Dunphy case, unwittingly or otherwise, the fear is that not just an injustice the rule of law has been undermined. 

For democratic society, such a jolt to certainty is compounded by a sense of shared responsibility of the need to make sure the process that led to the wrong is repaired. 

Bonds of trust between the governors the governed are always tenuous. An Inquiry under the Public Inquiries Act (and not the more restricted Fatalities Investigation Act) ought to have been immediate.  That did not happen.