Flashbacks: The Vancouver Police

‘Afternoon! 

First things first: I apologize for the unexplained break from writing – I took a week off, and was out of town for the weekend.  That being said, I’m back!  Let’s get to today’s entry, which I will classify as a “Flashback,” even though it was from just a few days ago.  Enjoy!

This past weekend, I was in Vancouver for the UFC event being held there.  As a huge fan of the sport of mixed martial arts, it was very exciting to see my first live event, and I’ll cover it more at length in a future post.  However, I will share with you one story.  It’s something that I think is an indicator of perhaps quite a serious problem in society, and something that I think carries a message with it (or, it’s just an entertaining story).  Either way, enjoy:

After the event, myself and my friends Craig, Joe, and Justin were wandering through downtown Vancouver, looking to hail a cab to take us home (or in this case, back to Justin’s house).  We ended up on a corner of Granville street next to a 7/11 store, and stopped to deliberate our next course of action (to call a cab, or to hail a cab, basically).  Outside the store was a homeless man sitting in the doorway’s indent – not exactly a rare sight in Vancouver, and not something that any of us took particular notice of.

This, sadly, is a common sight in downtown Vancouver. Our guy was a bit more frisky than this guy, though.

However, while we were standing on the sidewalk, a couple of men walked by (I believe from out of the 7/11, but I am not certain).  One of them, for reasons not apparent to us, seemed to irk the homeless man, who rose from his seat and began to accost the man walking.  The pair immediately switched direction in order to avoid confrontation, but were followed by the homeless man.  There was a bit of a back-and-forth banter between the homeless man and the pair as they walked past us, what exactly was said I don’t remember, however, the man being “beaked” by the homeless guy seemed quite annoyed and upset.  The three disappeared around a corner, and we all chalked it up as just another one of those things you see late at night in Vancouver.

Just when we thought it was over, though, the three came back around the corner.  The homeless man now had a beer in his hand, and was teetering quite noticeably (he was wearing a long trenchcoat, which is where I’m assuming the beer came from).  The two other men picked up their pace, starting to distance themselves from the homeless man, who stumbled into a tree and dropped his beer, and then began to run after them.  As he neared, he jumped onto a mailbox, knocking it over.

At this point, the four of us decided that it would most likely be in our best interests to distance ourselves from this confrontation, and so we walked across the street and continued to watch.  The homeless man had caught up to the man he was yelling at (the other one had since disappeared) and grabbed him by the shoulder.  What we saw next was obscured by a car driving across our line of vision, but over the roof of the car we were able to see the man rise up for an instant and then crumple, unconscious (presumably knocked out from an uppercut, at least that’s what it looked like to us).

The homeless man returned to his post in front of 7/11, now without his trenchcoat.  The four of us, shocked, noticed a “ghost” police car and pulled it over, telling the officers what had happened.  Immediately, the two officers ran out of the car and began to question the homeless man, while the other man lay unconscious about 30 feet away.

After about a minute, we realized that the police officers didn’t see the unconscious man, and we ran across the road to tell them where he was (he had been out cold for at least a couple minutes at this point).  One of the police officers and the four of us went over to him, where he was laid on his back with his leg awkwardly bent beneath him, and his eyes rolled back in his head, completely motionless.  The police officer attempted to rouse him by lightly slapping his face and calling to him, but he didn’t budge.  I honestly thought he may be dead.

After a couple minutes, though, he began to stir, and a few minutes after that, he was able to sit up with his back on the storefront where he had fallen.  The police officer attempted to question him (“how did you get on the ground?  Do you know why you’re on the ground?”) but the man was so groggy/possibly concussed that he was unable to recall what had happened, he offered up a very weak “I fell.”  It was at this point that Craig noticed the homeless man’s trenchcoat was lying on the still groggy man’s lap; I guess it must have slipped off during the scuffle.

The police officer called for an ambulance, and then talked to us for a bit; as none of us had seen exactly what had happened due to being across the street, we were unable to provide official statements.  However, just as he was about to dismiss us, the second police officer, who had been with the homeless man the whole time, came over and tapped the other cop on the shoulder, saying “I’ve got the whole story.  Apparently this guy (gesturing to the homeless man) was doing security at 7/11, and this guy (gesturing to the still-slumped over and completely unaware man who had just been knocked out) was stealing sandwiches.”  We all laughed, as we thought it was a pretty funny joke – the homeless guy was clearly wasted, as was evident by his slumping into a tree, dropping his beer and knocking over a mailbox.  He also didn’t notice that his trenchcoat was missing.  However, the whole situation became a whole lot less funny when the other police officer turned to the still-slumped over man on the ground and said to him: “you’re under arrest for theft.”  He then told us to leave.

We all walked away, thinking it was part of the joke, as the man on the ground could clearly not understand what the police were saying, he was still barely conscious.  We went into a Subway across the road and watched as an ambulance pulled up, followed by another police car.  However, the ambulance pulled away without the unconscious man, and the next time that we looked up, all the police cars had left (as had the unconscious man) and the homeless man was still sitting in front of 7/11.  As we left Subway, it dawned on all of us that the police officer wasn’t joking when he arrested the unconscious man for theft.

How do we know our police our doing their job?

I guess the point of this story is that police officers have a responsibility to ensure the public’s safety, and a duty to enforce the law.  However, a lot of times this responsibility comes into conflict with a person who is either indifferent or lazy, as in this case, and will instead take the path of least resistance (it would definitely be quite difficult to book a homeless man on an assault charge with nobody able to give a statement).  I am in no way saying that all cops are like this, or even most of them, but I don’t believe this is an isolated incident, and it’s certainly something to think about: how can we ensure that the police are performing their duties properly?  In today’s culture, everyone is searching for a shortcut; a way to make things easier, and it has both improved our quality of life and made us very conducive to taking the easiest road possible.

 In some facets of life, even in some occupations, this is acceptable.

When ensuring our safety, it is not.

Suffice it to say that this shook me a little bit, and definitely hit hard (I never would have guessed that the first thing I wrote about coming back from UFC weekend wouldn’t be UFC).  Do you have any stories about police looking the other way?  Any thoughts?  Is there a way to fix this problem?  Post below in the comments section!