On police states

(Note: see update below.)

There's rightly been plenty of discussion about the draconian regulations put in place by the McGuinty government surrounding the G20. But it's worth highlighting what strikes me as the most appalling provision of the lot if it's being reported accurately:

The regulation also says that if someone has a dispute with an officer and it goes to court "the police officer's statement under oath is considered conclusive evidence under the Act."

Now, we're hardly lacking for obvious examples of how police abuses have taken place and been denied or covered up by the officers involved. Which would seem to highlight the need to take into account the possibility that an individual officer's word can't be taken as the law of the land.

But the regulation seems to be designed to provide absolute power to any given police officer testifying about an alleged incident. Never mind if there's videotape of an accused sitting quietly in a coffee shop miles away from the fence, then being apprehended by an officer screaming "I'm going to make an example out of you!". And never mind if the officer involved testifies that the accused was a ten-foot tall, eleventy-hundred pound half-man, half-mule who levitated above the security fence then threatened the lives of hundreds of police officers with a cheese grater. Based on the "conclusive" wording, a judge assessing the accused's guilt is bound to accept the officer's statement, without even considering its plausibility or the existence of evidence to the contrary.

Of course, in that particular case a judge would almost certainly find reason to avoid giving effect to such an absurd result - whether by finding the regulation to be unconstitutional, or by reading in some reasonable limits.

But in cases where there's some surface plausibility to an officer's testimony even if video evidence suggests that it's dead wrong, the McGuinty government has needlessly provided for a single officer's word to be gospel. And that deification of the police - and concurrent vilification of anybody caught in a dispute which in fact involves many different possible sides - looks to make for an extremely dangerous precedent even if the issues surrounding the security lockdown never surface again.

Update: Looking at the regulation itself, the report looks to be somewhat oversimplified: the "conclusive evidence" standard applies only to determinations of "the boundaries of the public work" under the statute involved. That can still raise the same issues where there's a dispute as to where the boundaries actually are, which in turn feeds into the problems with the declaration of a Charter-free zone - but at least it falls somewhat short of allowing officers' testimony to go unchallenged on all points after the fact.

(Edit: added link.)