first principles II: 'as if'

Up, Down.

well, the Globe has more balls than I thought, the article below includes a link and a clue to the video of Howard Hyde being tasered:

See the video shown to the inquiry (scan to the 43:45 mark in Session #19)

it would be 'less than intuitive' to be able to find this without the Globe's help, there are two videos for each day and they just go on and on and on ... death by boredom, all in the 'Honourable' Anne Derrick's plan no doubt and her verisimilitude of Justice

and just in case anybody gets any wise ideas, the maggots who run this enterprise have stated clearly at the outset that this 'Inquiry' will lay no blame, you can call them what you like, I call them maggots, but you can't say that they missed the point of Thomas Braidwood's Inquiry into the death of Robert Dziekanski eh? no more damned inconvenient videos floating around freely and no more damned inconvenient findings of misconduct, no!

I called this 'as if' because I have been re-reading
Charles Taylor's A secular Age and there is something here around his notion of 'Social Imaginary' - but to tell the truth I am getting tired of all of this, really tired, I can hardly be bothered ...

three big fat cops cannot hold onto one guy in his underpants, in the hallway after they have Tasered him two (or three by my count) times, in any event 'into submission' and enough to render him unconscious, it takes ten of them to get him onto the stretcher

he was fine until they wanted to cut the string holding up his underpants ... doh!

our young 'officer' Jonathan Edwards, illustrious name, looks like a good fellow, doing his job, filling in the paperwork forms, but he gets vague when it is about conversations going on behind his back, let's say he is not venturing any opinions, 'just the facts' alright, but very unlike Dick Tracy and Sgt. Friday

elsewhere in the Globe today someone is going on about caring and compassion, so far I don't have the energy to archive it here ... Arthur Kleinman, Health care's missing care,

of course it would be entirely off-the-wall to say that the reason these cops treat people so badly is that they are fat & lazy & never learned Latin & Geometry? they are just 'regular people' and regular people in Canada these days treat each other badly ...

I have a window that looks out over a parking lot, there is a garbage strike, I heard glass breaking so I went to see, two boys of 8 or 9 had a bag of pop bottles which they were breaking on the concrete roadway for some reason, the parking lot was about full, there were at least half-a-dozen adults walking to and from their cars, these are upscale Toronto yuppies y'unnerstan, and no one said a word to the boys, ok, I didn't grab my clothes and put on my shoes and go out there either did I?

and if I did, where would I put the broken glass? since if I tried to insist that the boys pick it up and deal with it I would probably get Tasered for my trouble

I like to make women laugh, not by being a fool but by liking them (as I do) and the beautiful young brown girls from Somalia at the Tim's down the street now smile when they see me coming because they know I will say something to make them laugh, all good, now here's a question: are they beautiful because they laugh? is there some quality in their laughter which is distinct and possibly unusual in this country these days?

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Appendices:
1. Screams of tasered man fill Halifax court room, Oliver Moore, Friday July 10 2009.
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Screams of tasered man fill Halifax court room, Oliver Moore, Friday July 10 2009.

Inquiry gets first public viewing of the police surveillance videos from the night Howard Hyde died

OLIVER MOORE

Halifax — Terrified shrieks and the harsh crackle of electrical current filled a courtroom on Friday as surveillance video of the tasering of a paranoid schizophrenic was shown at an inquiry into his death.

The video shows Howard Hyde regaining his feet, clad only in the shorts in which he was arrested. Momentarily at bay, facing three officers in the booking room of Halifax police headquarters, he throws himself over a waist-high counter and vanishes into a hallway. The audio recording continues and captures what sounds like another application of the taser.

The Dartmouth man stopped breathing in that hallway and had to be revived. He died 30 hours later after a struggle with guards at a local jail.
See the video shown to the inquiry (scan to the 43:45 mark in Session #19))

The treatment of Mr. Hyde and his mental-health problems is the subject of an inquiry that began hearing witnesses this week. Friday was the first public viewing of the surveillance videos from inside the police headquarters.

Mr. Hyde's sister, Joanna Blair, kept her eyes fixed on the large screen in court as the images were played.

“It's very disturbing,” she said later. “Audio and visually, it's very disturbing.”

Mr. Hyde had been off his medication for weeks before his arrest in November, 2007. He had been acting increasingly erratic and was alleged to have assaulted his wife, who told police coming to her aid about his loosening grip on reality.

But Halifax Regional Police Constable Jonathan Edwards, who arrested Mr. Hyde, testified on Friday that his prisoner appeared calm and answered the questions he was asked.

Earlier testimony indicated that the altercation did not begin until an officer went to cut the drawstring of Mr. Hyde's shorts for safety reasons. For this he wanted to use a small device with a serrated blade, an item the police called a “utility tool” but which a lawyer for Mr. Hyde's relatives described as a “knife.”

The video does not show this part of the incident, but what it does show suggests that the booking up to that point had been routine.

It was after 2 a.m. on a Friday, clearly a slow moment in the booking room. One officer sits at his desk while another strolls through the frame carrying what appears to be a cup of coffee. The Randy Travis single Three Wooden Crosses , a song about death and redemption, plays in the background.

Voices off-camera are suddenly raised. The officer at the desk looks over and then rushes to assist as Mr. Hyde comes hurtling into the camera's field of vision, two officers trying to restrain him. About 14 seconds after the struggle moves into sight, an officer reaches for his taser.

It is not clear if Mr. Hyde, who told his wife he had been tasered before and feared it happening again, can see what is happening. But he is heard asking, “What are you doing?” Seconds later he is shrieking with pain.

Constable Edwards testified most of Friday, but the video was shown late enough in the day that he was asked little about what the inquiry had seen.

He had earlier said, though, that he was not aware his prisoner was mentally ill. He had been radioed information to that effect and he acknowledged in testimony that he had responded “10-4” to indicate that he had understood, but explained that he had not heard the whole message.

Constable Edwards insisted he would have done nothing differently had he known Mr. Hyde was mentally ill, off his medication and had been acting erratically. In any event, he testified, his prisoner had been lucid and reasonably co-operative.

The videos showing the lead-up to the altercation start with Mr. Hyde appearing controlled and contrite. He is heard saying that he is sorry and denying he assaulted his wife.

Moved to a holding cell, he begins to pace. For 15 minutes, he walks in tight circles. His wife testified on Tuesday that he would pace when off his medication and upset.



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