Montreal City Weblog

Kate 20:44 on 2021-03-16 Permalink Reply  

• Chris 20:48 on 2021-03-16 Permalink

  And to be clear: killed by the speeding motorist fleeing, not killed by the police car.

• MarcG 21:19 on 2021-03-16 Permalink

  That changes everything?

• Chris 21:39 on 2021-03-16 Permalink

  Oh yes, it flips the entire universe on its head! /s (I don’t get your comment. Kate’s use of “during” doesn’t assign a real cause, but the cause is known, it was car A, not car B.)

• MarcG 22:01 on 2021-03-16 Permalink

  Let’s pretend we’re in the schoolyard and I think you stole my shoe. I tell my friends about it and suddenly a gang of kids are chasing you through an alley and you bump into someone who falls and hurts themselves. Who is responsible?

• Chris 22:34 on 2021-03-16 Permalink

  False analogy. Your gang of kids are not analogous to police, the former a self-appointed mob, the latter duly appointed by law. Also, your analogy lacks any analogue of breaking a speed limit, or of operating a dangerous machine.

  We live in a society of law. When the duly appointed law enforcement officers give you chase, you are obliged to stop, not accelerate. And, like any driver, you are obliged at all times to operate your vehicle safely, as in: not drive into other people.

  Also, I didn’t even speak of responsibility, only cause.

  But how about I tweak your analogy:

  Let’s pretend we’re in the schoolyard and the teacher thinks you stole my shoe. She tells the other teachers about it and suddenly a bunch of teachers are chasing you, but you decide to put a blindfold on and run through an alley with a knife, then bump into someone who falls and dies. Who is responsible?

• John Ross 07:55 on 2021-03-17 Permalink

  WTF! An elderly lady, someone’s grandmother is killed, and you idiots argue like school kids

• Kate 09:34 on 2021-03-17 Permalink

  John Ross, we don’t know that the victim was anyone’s grandmother, but I will simply add: this kind of debate is one reason why the BEI investigates such incidents. Whenever a police action ends up with someone dead, there has to be a clarification of the circumstances (and, it should be added, a distribution of blame).

  Police here used to be crazy about car chases – they watched too many movies, forgetting that car chase scenes in movies are carefully orchestrated and edited. At some point they were told to stop doing that, and there haven’t been many reported in recent years. In this case, some guys, probably speeding, didn’t stop when signalled by police, and it seems they may have been in a stolen car. Neither of those elements remotely justifies putting lives at risk.

• Blork 21:19 on 2021-03-17 Permalink

  Obviously none of us were there so we don’t know all the circumstances, but the idea of police not giving chase when a crime has likely been committed is not so cut-and-dried. Kate is right that sometimes the cops get a bit too carried away with the car chases, but if it’s known that cops will never give chase then it completely undermines their authority and people will always drive away because they know they won’t be followed.

  I’m not as “law & order” minded as Chris, but there is an understanding that if a cop motions to you to pull over you really ought to pull over. If you don’t then it means you have something to hide. Stolen car? Trunk full of illegal guns? Kidnapped 10-year-old tied up in the back?

  Imagine if it were one of those things (guns, kidnapped kid, etc.) and it came out that the cops could have pulled the car over but once the perp got up to 60KPH the cops just went ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and turned away. What kind of outrage would that create?

  The point being that the cops DON’T know at that point what’s going on. If the car makes a fast exit they really need to at least follow it, if not directly chase it and maybe try for an intercept. There’s got to be some kind of protocol beyond “don’t ever chase” because nobody wants to see that 10-year-old disappear forever or all those Glocks end up on the street.

• Blork 21:20 on 2021-03-17 Permalink

  (To be clear: the scenarios above assume the cops don’t actually know that the car has guns or tied-up-kids, but it comes out later that it did, and that the cops were right there and turned away to avoid the chase.)