Is the term "racism" being stretched too far, applied to too many things?

[Ryujin]

The difficulty with these situations and the Black Lives Matter campaign is that the police really are rarely held accountable for questionable or even criminal incidents they perpetrate. There are endless ways to rationalize why the police acted as they did. Would other cops find these actions reasonable? If so, they skate by. This happens so often, even when it shouldn't, that the immediate reaction is to distrust the police and any internal investigations into their conduct. And the number of well-publicized incidents of questionable behavior recently, one virtually coming on top of another, has gotten everyone extra-sensitized to them.

Where I live, we now have investigations into police shootings handled outside of the department. I don't know yet if it will make a difference in holding the police accountable or in building community trust for the impartiality of the process. But it's a step.

I can't speak to certain aspects of the issue in Canada. But the over-reaching demands can be seen as a direct result of under-performance in the justice system. You say that they make over-reaching demands, but they have people *dying* as a result of police over-reach.

It has been demonstrated to many people's satisfaction that internal investigations have a tendency of working out as the mouse being in charge of the cheese - very much, "Who watches the watchmen?" The Prosecutors that would normally charge the police with wrongdoing often collaborate with and are dependent on the same police for cooperation on day-to-day cases, so they have a pretty clear conflict of interest.

However, by making a big stink about it, those concerned can draw media attention to the case, which drives everyone involved to play more, "by the book," and open to public scrutiny. If internal investigations worked properly, they'd not need to make outrageous demands to get something approaching justice. It will take some time of the system working well before folks will have trust in it.

The SIU is not internal to the police but is rather a stand-alone organization under the auspices of the Provincial Government, empowered to independently investigate incidents involving police under specific circumstances. The police don't like them. The public thinks that they sweep everything under the rug. My gut tells me that if both sides don't like them, then they're quite likely doing a reasonable job. I would say, though, that the SIU needs more power.