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Sgt. Russell's funeral - 12000 Cops (pg. 5)
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| Yohan |
| quote: | Originally posted by GGM
Those bring in tons and tons of money for the city and businesses instead of spend it. They also take place on the weekend when there's little business to disrupt so cost to the average tax payer and business is small. Their planning takes place months in advance and route closures are posted on the affected streets, notices sent out etc. which make them even less disruptive. The funeral planning was rushed, disrupted Toronto's major highways not just a few streets, and in some cases the published closure wasn't even matching what took place. Not too mention that they picked the absolute worst time of the day to do it (morning Rush hour). Things like the G20 and this in my eyes send a giant F you message to Torontonians saying "hey we'll do what we want with your land, just sit back and watch".
I totally see the point in mourning and moral boosting but the extent they took it too was just over the top. All I know is if I ever go I don't want to be thought of as disrupting millions of people after I'm already dead... |
ah, i see. money takes precedence over respect |
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| Jayx1 |
| shutting down highways in a major city is not a good idea esp at rush hour. Otherwise i have no problem at all with the ceremonies |
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| GGM |
| quote: | Originally posted by Yohan
ah, i see. money takes precedence over respect |
IMO money is a material object and respect is an intangible emotion. Neither is greater than the other and neither generates the other if you ask me.
Just saying you don't need to mess with people's/business' daily operations and spend tons of money to pay respect. If anything it was counter productive in terms of garnishing respect for the sergeant and police forces. I heard a lot of people feel really bad about his death before the funeral, and tons of people complain about how ridiculous the disturbance was after the ceremonies. |
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| Rocco |
a life was lost because someone was doing his job. Instead of criticizing how the arrangements were handled, why not look at the underlying cause of his death?
Lessons learned: don't leave your pickup unlocked while getting some donuts. |
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| chinamon |
| lol @ the cop in the second video wearing a turban instead of the police-issued hat. |
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| Yohan |
| quote: | Originally posted by GGM
IMO money is a material object and respect is an intangible emotion. Neither is greater than the other and neither generates the other if you ask me.
Just saying you don't need to mess with people's/business' daily operations and spend tons of money to pay respect. If anything it was counter productive in terms of garnishing respect for the sergeant and police forces. I heard a lot of people feel really bad about his death before the funeral, and tons of people complain about how ridiculous the disturbance was after the ceremonies. |
I'm afraid you're one of those people who doesn't 'get it'. *shrug* |
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| FunkyCrew |
| quote: | Originally posted by chinamon
lol @ the cop in the second video wearing a turban instead of the police-issued hat. |
their turbans are also police-issued as far as I understand - I saw a guy like that in a subway once and it was of the same color as his uniform |
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| love_child |
| Who gives a ... its just one day. I wouldnt mind being late for work anyway :p |
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| Euphorica |
you know you are more likely to get struck by lightning and die than be killed as a Police Officer in Canada...
or just look at the construction deaths each year...
as I said before I think its absolutely horrible this guy was killed and his family will have to deal with this forever.
but the media hype and sensationalized bs just rubs me the wrong way. going on and on about heros and worrying about them coming home safe each day. gimme a break.
They dont even do 1/8th this much for the troops....granted Harper wants to keep it hush hush since we arguably shouldnt have even been there in the first place, though we should still show support. |
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| smuncky |
Questioning the ritual
Why are police funerals so off-putting?
Before I try to answer the question, let me say that, like thousands of other Torontonians, I felt deeply saddened by the senseless death of Sgt. Ryan Russell, who was, by all accounts, a fine officer, a devoted father and husband, and an exemplary member of his community. His wife and child now find themselves in a terrible situation, and the city, as a whole, has been diminished by this tragedy.
It’s also true that for all cops, such incidents are surely traumatic. I have an old and dear friend who has served with the Toronto force for 20 years, and I always think about how this sort of violence affects him, professionally and emotionally. Of course, Sgt. Russell’s colleagues, as well as ordinary citizens, want to pay their respects and acknowledge the extraordinarily steep price he and his family paid.
At the same time, I do not understand why the police as an organization (and certainly not just in Toronto) insist on transforming a deeply human tragedy into a show of force and a media circus.
There’s a certain irony here. I feel the Sgt. Russell we came to know as an individual in the past few days has been subsumed by a brand of militaristic ritual that serves to reinforce the otherness of the police as a social institution.
And maybe that’s appropriate: when I sit down at my computer in the morning to begin working, I am reasonably certain I will be in tact when I get up in the afternoon. Cops, on the other hand, do risk their lives on our collective behalf, and so when one of those lives is lost to violence, we should honour them in a different way, or so the logic goes.
Yet the traditions of police funerals, for me, evoke images that have nothing to do with mourning and the genuine connections between people that such tragedies engender. These events, rather, are filled with profoundly complicated visual symbols — of invasion, of force, and of a conspicuously defensive sort of esprit de corps. Indeed, in the wake of last summer’s G20 riots, how should those Torontonians who were appalled by the actions of the police react to the sight of thousands of uniformed officers again clustered in the downtown core?
What’s more, the sheer elaborateness of police funerals serves (perhaps unwittingly) to minimize the sacrifices made by hundreds of other individuals who lose their lives while doing sometimes-risky jobs, among them the garbage collector crushed by his truck last summer in Vaughan. Do those lives count for less?
The point is precisely that we shouldn’t be called upon to make such comparisons, but rather to mark all these losses in the appropriate way. An obvious example: the way we’ve come to mourn Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan. The ceremonies manage to be both heartfelt and organic (ordinary people watching the hearses drive solemnly along the 401 from CFB Trenton) and traditional yet restrained (military funerals). The Canadian Forces don’t take over downtown Ottawa every time a man or woman in uniform dies in combat. Yet we, as a society, still manage to signal our respect for their sacrifice and express our condolences.
From where I sit (risking nothing but negative comments on the string below), perhaps the less-is-more principle should prevail the next time we must come together as a city, filled with regret, to bury a cop.
http://spacingtoronto.ca/2011/01/20...ing-the-ritual/ |
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| kotsy |
| quote: | Originally posted by PivotTechno
Spot on. |
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