Why I was disturbed by the Police images from Ottawa – and I think you should too

 

Why I was disturbed by the Police images from Ottawa – and I think you should too

Dedicated to my friend Duke. One day, brother, we'll meet and hug.

Let me share with you some family lore. My father was the son of his father.

Yes, I know, shocking. That should never have happened, but there you go. It so happened tough, that my grandfather, whom I am named after, was the fourth of five brothers in an hillside village in Piedmont, and eking a living out of what meager land and pastures were there. Of the five brothers, three emigrated to Argentina, one (“Zio Vittorio”) stayed to till the land, and my grandfather.. managed to enter the Carabinieri as a recruit, which brought him and our family out of poverty. He managed to study while he did that, finished the equivalent of GRAMMAR school, and passed the exam to join the NCO school. He went through the Second World war, partly in what is now Croatia and then being redeployed to Italy as security of a military airfield until the war ended. When he died prematurely, the charity that helped families of the Carabinieri gave my father a grant to finish his studies. He went on to study medicine and became the great physician and man I was son to.

So, for me, volunteering for the Carabinieri to do my conscription time was not only an aspiration, it was an ideal and a way to pay back what we as a family felt was an honour debt. I was also exceedingly lucky to serve initially under an extraordinary set of officers, one a hero of the terrorist era that plagued Italy and that had ended when I joined in 1987. And my unit, the III Batallion “Lombardia” based in Milan, was in the thick of all crowd control / public safety operation in the region. He didn't let us recruits do it without training, inspiration and supervision. We were supposed to be able to think on our feet and to be able to adopt behaviors that were both legal AND above all would maintain the high standard of trust the general population held for the Carabinieri. Since I had joined in the period between my last exam at the university and discussing my thesis, I was also one of the oldest there, which put me in a strange limbo since the newly minted LT that commanded me was my age, a great young man I got to be friend with (outside the duty time) and with whom I occasionally went to theater to, the Carcano theater being right down the street from our barracks.

So, as you can surmise, I am NOT an “Expert” as in “credentialed three degree lawyer/policeman who wrote three books on riot control”. But I am one since a couple of the scars on my body are due to that experience, which is common parlance for “things you wouldn't have done had you known beforehand but you had no control at the time”.I also had to carry on my back, with five others, two of my friends who due to accidents had to go on the last journey each and everyone of us will go, safely sealed in a casket. So, when I saw the live footage of Rebel News, my reaction was that this was a complete and utter <REDACTED>. Hence, if I may, let me report what a hapless grunt like a young me was taught using what footage is available online.

First off, assessment: you are facing a crowd of people who are NOT hiding their identities from you, are NOT wearing biker helmets and/or wielding anything likely to mean harm. If anything, the phones they are using to record the scene are valuable and no one meaning trouble wants to pay for the postcard. “Hard core” threats have pro journalists, preferably with good political contacts, donning shiny “PRESS” vests and more armoured than I was at the time.

That may be a ruse, tough. Let's just for the sake of argument say that in that sea of Bhangra dancing people there are some bad apples. Of course those would be stupid bad apples, since anyone who was in a bike helmet and wielding a bike chain at a prom would probably stick out a bit. And if he came without the helmet on, he would be immediately identifiable, and then prosecuted and exhibited as proof that “It had been a violent protest all along”. Sure such a guy wouldn't run more personal risk of harm from the protesters than from the police?

Second: I have DONE that kind “keep them away” job. I have been called things that as a budding collector of insults made me wish I had paper and pencil instead of an inactivated M1 Carbine, which was used in lieu of a baton since they were cheap, we were poor, and we were conscripts anyway. Here? Heck, if my Grandmother had called me a choice selection of the epithets, MY mother would have scolded her for not even trying.

Soo... when I saw the Government line up there I had hair rise off my back. Ordinarily we didn't even loosen the latch on the pouch containing helmets until some rock had started falling our way. Here, there was an hodgepodge of police in a plain winter clothing, Horse police clad in protection gear, SWAT in woodland camo wielding M4 carbines. With optics. At ten feet odd from the line of protesters. What's the passing grade for “marksman”, shooting a barn side from ten paces and make a hole from the outside instead of from the inside? Also, looking at that fancy plastic semitransparent ammo magazines on automatic rifles, it was unclear to me if it was Full Metal Jacket ammo or something else. Now, the Carabinieri were and are MILITARY force, hence our equipment had to comply with the Geneva convention, FMJ bullets (no shotguns), Para Bellum. Those don't fragment inside a body, but old hands in the service told me their bad vice: in a glancing shot they are like magic balls, they bounce hard and fast in unpredictable ways. You WANT to check what's BEYOND what you are shooting at. In that case.... more people. Some of those policemen, at five paces from the protesters, had 40 mm revolver grenade launchers. Those are as useful as a second belly button to shoot tear gas or rubber bullets at closer than fifty yards, since they would severely harm or kill people and the rounds cannot be used stripped from the weapon. On top of that, ONE weapon would saturate that whole area, why bring half a dozen?

Also, and that had my blood boil: you are facing a peaceful occupation. It is, as John Boyd would say, a MORAL battle. You want to extend as much assistance to anyone, ABOVE ALL to any protester being harmed, because ultimately a week from now you wat to be the outfit people are comfortable calling if they risk any harm. BUT, whenever one fell, Police priority was pushing forward around and arrest the fallen, as happened in the case of the old lady allegedly trampled by horses. The video is unclear on the trampling. But for the love of God, it IS clear on the fact that no officer present yelled “hold your horses!” <pun alert> and told “everybody step back, we aren't pushing you guys further along until we can provide assistance to this lady”.

Another bad recent thing, this one: that looks indeed like a gas canister shot. BUT, over thirty years back, we were under STRICT (as in “there is a jail room in Peschiera waiting for you”) NOT to shoot those AT people, there should be a great enough distance that the case had lost most of its kinetic energy, and anyway.... you could pull out the tear gas part, pull a wire, and make it roll with your hand before it ignited five seconds later.

But what really , REALLY had me riled up was this: three were over half a dozen different kind of servicement there. Why? The Trudeau government may provide whatever explanation it sees fit, but one other is possible: that ALL police force had to be present in order to be equally compromised with whatever happened, no one of the heads wanted one day to find himself in a town council and hear “I dont trust you, but I trust police force X”. And let me clue you in my dirty little secret... It's exactly when I served in the outfit whose motto is “Nei Secoli Fedele” [faithful through centuries] that I learned that not all orders must be complied with without question.