Thread

Montreal adopts bylaw banning insults against police, municipal employees

80 points · 84 comments · MC995

heisgone · 1790176572 · focus · HN ↗
For context, police gained support for this bylaw following this video. The guy posted the video of himself of calling an office a whore on socia media. The fact the officer was so polite and couldn't do anything about it made people furious. Of course, there is real risk of abuse of this law but that's the context.
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9YMLpiDPWs" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9YMLpiDPWs
1. S0y · 1790176930 · focus · HN ↗
  Yeah, hopefully this bylaw is only going to be used for extreme cases like these.
  1. slackfan · 1790177404 · focus · HN ↗
    Famous last words.
  2. fidotron · 1790177944 · focus · HN ↗
    The entire m/o of Montreal cops is to act as bait to raise money from fines.
    If they haven't made enough from fines for a particular time window they all start messing with the traffic to get people to drive over reds in frustration, or get pedestrians to cross against the light. I've seen them leave people at intersections for over five minutes trying to do this.
    Never seen it taken to such an extremely obvious level anywhere else, along with their bizarrely over the top body armour for what is in reality a very safe place.
  3. nxm · 1790182168 · focus · HN ↗
    Can bet they won’t
  4. morkalork · 1790202398 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes, hopefully. Let's check in on our friends at the SPVM and see how they're doing?
    <a href="https://therover.ca/open-letter-investigate-the-montreal-police-who-beat-and-hospitalized-our-colleague/" rel="nofollow">https://therover.ca/open-letter-investigate-the-montreal-pol...
    <a href="https://ici.radio-canada.ca/rci/en/news/2261943/calls-grow-for-independent-investigation-into-alleged-racism-at-montreal-nord-police-station" rel="nofollow">https://ici.radio-canada.ca/rci/en/news/2261943/calls-grow-f...
    ...oh dear..
  5. cucumber3732842 · 1790204726 · focus · HN ↗
    It always starts that way so the useful idiots can feel right.
    Give it a decade and they'll be using it for everything.
2. redanddead · 1790177349 · focus · HN ↗
  Meh, freedom of speech
  It’s a miscarriage of logic, I don’t care how emotional that video is. Laws and rights should be based on logic and reason.
  The ones that want this passed will be dead by the time people are like wtf is this archaic law who voted this in
  1. psychoslave · 1790178716 · focus · HN ↗
    Laws and rights can’t be based on logic and reason alone, starting by the fact that reason alone can’t justify the rationality of its own basis.
    And in fact they are never based on logic and reason alone. Everyone has reasons and anything can be framed under some logical system. Admittedly, having a sound logical system is harder and having something like that might seem preferable for the average HN reader. Now, let’s face it, there is not a single juridical corpus that ever met such a high standard of soundness. Really, everyone is free to seek a legal system that can be proved sound on ZFC grounds, good lucks.
    That’s just not how it works.
3. williamdclt · 1790177869 · focus · HN ↗
  This is a hate speech problem, if there's protection to be put in place it's against misogyny, not against insulting police. Why would policewomen be protected against being called a whore but post office workers wouldn't?
  1. red-iron-pine · 1790189860 · focus · HN ↗
    or any other government worker -- rando IT worker at Dept of Transportation should be protected too, non?
  2. boogiewoogie23 · 1790204473 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
4. psychoslave · 1790178228 · focus · HN ↗
  That’s sad that there are people ready to throw their low level of self control and rhetorical ability. The officer should be formed and continuously supported (ie. dedicated professional psychological access) to face that kind of reactions.
  That’s even sadder that people can’t refrain from supporting such a juridical decision with huge possible side effects in terms of abusive application.
  In both cases, that’s some kind of impulsive reactions lacking proper rational counterparts to balance the performed actions. And the second one feels far more problematic at societal level, without dismissing in any way the due empathy for the officer.

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