Tue Mar 8/05
Police mentality

On the subject (raised yesterday) of people using tragedies for their own benefit, today's news-grazing yielded a juicy one. Joe Friesen's story in the Globe, about Alnoor Amarsi's unsuccessful attempt to murder his five-year-old daughter, quoted one Vivien Green, who "said the case points out the failings of a system that does not go far enough to protect women."

I have a sneaking suspicion that pretty much everything points out such failings to Ms Green. There were three people involved in this tragic case: one is dead, one is in hospital, and one had a really bad day. It's not so odd that Ms Green should focus on the latter — that's her job. What's odd, as it was with the Andrea Labbé case in December, is that newspapers give largely irrelevant comments from women's groups such prominence.

Meanwhile, on a day where RCMP Commissioner Zaccardelli did the right thing and backed off his "premature" (i.e., "wrong") grow-op rant, I found it interesting to compare and contrast police reactions to the Amarsi and Labbé cases. In the Labbé case, it was calm professionalism:

Police say it's unclear yet who was stabbed first, but they have ruled out any outside suspects. Investigators are waiting for autopsies to help determine the sequence of events.

"We have to reach out to neighbours and family and scene-investigation and pathology results to speak to us," homicide Detective Sergeant Chris Buck said outside the house.

In the Amarsi case, Inspector Brian O'Connor played the part of McBain:

This guy was a loaded missile [launcher? –ed.]. He was going to kill himself and he was going to take his daughter to punish his wife for whatever he thought she had done wrong in the relationship… This guy went to do what he was going to do. And no one in my opinion was going to stop him.

They're very different cases, obviously, but O'Connor's psychological insights are rather lacking in credibility. I like the calm professionalism much better.