Police Officers

police officers: No right is abstract and universal: all of them are modulated through context. In this case we need to step back and look at the question of power, and its built-in imbalances, according to Rabble. Recently, from south of the border, we ve observed case after case after case of police impunity: the law simply fails to function when those whose job it is to uphold it go rogue. Too many young, unarmed Black men and boys have been gunned down by white police officers in suspicious circumstances, without charges being laid: there seems no end to the procession of victims. But any whisper of sympathy for them has been met by massive resistance from the folks in blue led, as we have seen in New York , by their unions and The Supreme Court of Canada has spoken : officers have the right to form a union . My brothers and sisters in the labour movement are overjoyed . But I cannot join in the celebrations. Freedom can be a zero-sum game. More freedom for a corporation means less for ordinary citizens. More freedom for the state means less for individuals in the polity. Sometimes it obvious that the greater good is served by curtailing individual freedom that what criminal law is all about, after all. But at other times particularly with respect to the state monopoly on violence and its application in practice we cannot be so certain. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.