Not long after I first joined Matador, I posted a blog about a video that appeared to show Quebec Provincial Police officers posing as "anarchist" protesters at an otherwise peaceful rally. The purpose, it seemed, was to stir up trouble, giving the police an excuse to clear the area. But the fake protesters were called out and crossed the riot squad lines to safety. The police denied the story for several days but eventually, after the video surfaced, admitted to placing officers in the crowd. They claimed the rocks the officers were holding were not for throwing at the riot squad, but had been handed to them by other protesters. The officers, the official police line maintained, had only been exposed when they refused to throw the rocks. Of course, since the rest of the protesters were middle-aged unionists in suits, the story didn't really fly. (Want to see for yourself? The video is here.)

I took that blog down because I felt a little silly about it, as the story blew over. I thought maybe I over-reacted or that this was no place for politics. Plus, I was embarassed that it happened here in Canada. (These things, in case you didn't get the memo, are only supposed to happen in other places.)

Maybe as much as a month ago another nasty little story surfaced, about a man who died at Vancouver Airport after being Tasered. It was the seventeenth Taser-related death in Canada in the past couple years - incidentally, a far higher death rate than the incidence of suspects being killed by police gunshots. As the details came out, it was revealed that the man had been waiting at Vancouver Airport for ten hours. He was a Polish immigrant, coming to join his mother, and didn't speak a word of English. She had told him to meet her at the baggage carousel, not knowing that the baggage carousel for international arrivals was still inside the secure area. She couldn't get in, and he didn't know to go out. So he waited. By the time the police came on the scene he was pretty close to breaking point - agitated, sweating, and behaving erratically. (In the course of the ten hours, no one seems to have tried to figure out why he was waiting, or answered the mother's requests, from outside security, to go find him and bring him to her.) The police claimed he was a threat, and that they'd been forced to Taser him because it was the most effective way to neutralize him with people all around. They also claimed only three officers were involved. Until now, I believed them; although the incident confirmed my long-held belief that Tasers are dangerous and should be banned, I didn't think the police officers themselves had done anything egregious.

Now another video has surfaced. And almost everything the police have said about the incident is a lie. When the officers approached him (in a completely empty area) he appeared calm and at one point put his (empty) hands above his head. He was standing still several feet from the *four* officers when they began firing their Tasers. He died moments later.

Obviously there are several extremely troubling aspects to the story. One is the casual way in which officers make use of their Tasers, which would be a problem even if they were only painful instead of lethal; they use them far more readily than they would pepper spray, a baton, or a gun. I've believed that ever since I saw a freshmen get Tasered at a keg party in college, for talking back to an officer who told him to go home. (The officer was, months later, suspended for excessive use of force, thanks so some quick thinking by an older student at the party who very calmly demanded badge numbers.) Another is the rather obvious fact that Tasers kill people semi-regularly - and how much longer the police will insist otherwise, I don't know. But the most upsetting thing for me, right now - and no disrespect meant to the man who died - is the fact that police in this country apparently lie to the public almost without pausing to think first. Shamelessly, and repeatedly.

This may not be big news to a lot of you, but I guess I've been suckered by all the Canadian nationalist bullshit I've been raised on. The RCMP aren't supposed to kill people - they're the Mounties, for Christ's sake. They're practically our national symbol. They're supposed to be polite and wear red serge and pose for photos with tourists on Parliament Hill. And the government isn't supposed to lie to the public, either. Not in Canada.

I'm not sure why this has shaken me so much. I'm not an idiot and I know that no government is perfect. And I've always known that an awful lot of Canadians' smug self-righteousness about our big, happy, inclusive, socialism-lite never-never-land was just that. But I guess I bought into it anyway.

The CBC has a good run-down of the whole incident here. A link to the video is on the right-hand side at the top. It's a little upsetting, so consider yourselves warned.