EDITORIAL: A hidden cost of 2010 Games
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B.C. court system bears brunt of 2010 police grab
News this week that all criminal court proceedings needing police officers as witnesses – which is most of them – will be cancelled for the month of February has us shaking our heads.
Our already clogged court system will be essentially shut down for a month because so many of the officers needed to testify in those cases will be reassigned to the Vancouver 2010 Integrated Security Unit (ISU).
There will be more criminal trials put on the books this fall in an attempt to ease the backlog next February. But family and civil law cases are being pushed back to make room.
The logistics of the situation might sound good on paper. But family and civil cases are booked months in advance, a point that already serves to frustrate the participants. Clearly the risk to the public of people involved in such cases is not as great as those in criminal cases, but does that mean they are any less deserving of a speedy trial?
A spokesperson for the Alberta Justice Department said the province plans no blanket shutdown of criminal cases during the Olympic period, but cases involving police as witnesses will be rescheduled as needed.
Sounds similar in a way to B.C., but it appears they are building flexibility into their plan.
According to an RCMP spokesperson in Vancouver, a breakdown of how many security personnel – the total is 16,500 including police, private security personnel and armed forces – will be coming from each province isn’t available yet, since agreements with other police agencies in B.C. and elsewhere are not yet completed.
Fair enough. But we think the dispersal of police officers pulled out of their home detachments or urban departments should be spread equally across the country and not weighted more heavily toward B.C.
This is after all, Canada’s Olympics, not just B.C.’s Games.
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