Remember last week when I saw the under-cover York Region Police minivans? Here's an article from the Economist & Sun on the very subject.....
Markham Economist & Sun Do we really need cops in soccer mom vans?
Do you ever wonder what the state of modern policing is or, in fact, what the state of Canadian society is, when you see a driver pulled over by a car that is not your typical police car?
And I don’t mean an “unmarked car”, in the sense it is a police cruiser with more subdued markings.
I mean a car that is just like your car or my car.
I’ve noticed a silver Dodge Caravan that has pulled over any number of drivers in Markham.
If you didn’t know better, you’d think some soccer mom had pulled over to help a hockey dad or ballet mom whose GPS had broken.
You get the idea parents have this sort of mental telepathy for each other.
“That guy looks like he’s looking for the arena,” you say to your passenger.
“How can you tell?”
“You mean other than the hockey sticks in the back of the van, the Leafs vanity licence plate, the dealership sticker from Georgina, the Tim Hortons mug on the dash and the incredible wear and tear on that thing, which looks like it has been driven all over York Region the past three months? Plus, he’s slowing down near every large building he passes. I can tell he’s lost. I can feel his anguish as if it were my own.”
At the stop sign, you roll down your window and offer, “Are you looking for the hockey rink?”
However, inside this soccer mom/hockey dad van is a York Regional Police officer. He’s not looking for the hockey rink. He’s looking for other people looking for the hockey rink who are trying to get there an hour before game time as per team policy and who may have broken the speed limit (or called home on the cellphone in a panic for further directions).
From what I have seen, this more-or-less undercover police officer (his cover being he is just a regular van driver) is doing quite a brisk business.
Because the truth is people don’t follow the speed limits or other laws, for any number of reasons.
I’ve already stated in a previous column I think in a lot of places the speed limits are too low.
At the same time, I’m not a fan of people who drive as if they are on their video game console playing Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit.
When people driving like that get pulled over, it brings me joy. Same for armed robbers, violent thugs, fraud artists, terrorists and the like.
I just suspect it is a lot of people who are law-abiding citizens being nabbed in minor violations of the law by these acts of stealth by our own police force, who we’re paying to protect us from real law breakers.
It’s as if they decided they have probable cause to spy on every one of us. Is this what we want our police force doing?
I’ve always thought the police should be visible, in clearly marked vehicles — that is a deterrent to crime as much as anything else, and an inspiration of confidence in the community.
We’ve paid a lot for these police officers, so where are they? They should be out in the open, in uniform, in clearly marked vehicles for all to see — not hiding behind the trees or billboards in unmarked cars or vans.
I also believed in the notion that, if you were ever to need a police officer, you could find one if one was in the area. You could see the clearly marked car or officer in uniform.
Now I suppose if you’re being mugged or assaulted or see a crime has been committed, you look for the silver soccer mom van on the assumption there’s a police officer inside (or that a highly capable soccer mom could save you, which is probably true).
Not to be too melodramatic, but you see people all over the world risking their lives for their freedoms. Yet our freedoms seem to be chiselled away bit by bit here without much justification.