The tough questions must be asked. Are Montreal police trigger happy? Are they well enough trained to deal with any and all situations? Why have Montreal police officers shot and killed three homeless men in three years? Why do we have 50 Tasers for a force of 4,000 officers?
Alain Magloire obviously was deeply troubled. And he fell through the cracks in a system where too many are ignored or never followed up.
On Monday morning, Magloire was in terrible distress and he smashed the windows of a local hostel over a bill dispute. Police were called and they found him outside the Berri street bus terminal. Magloire still was wielding the hammer. Six supposedly well officers could not deal with Alain Magloire in his rage and agony. The solution was to pull a service revolver and reportedly shoot Magloire not once but 4 times.
Police are there to serve and protect. And that means protecting the most vulnerable from themselves.
It doesn't mean threatening to tie a homeless man to a pole on a cold winter day which happened not long ago.
Many if not most of the homeless are mentally ill.
They need to be treated and handled with special care and compassion. We must demand to know why Alain Magloire died. The way to treat mentally ill is not through violence and intimidation. It is through understanding skill and expertise.
Six police officers, six guns, one man, one hammer.
Some of the coverage and comments on the death of Naima Rharouity frankly made me sick
She died of a head injury on an escalator in the Fabre metro station and her scarf somehow became entangled in the device.
It has not been determined exactly what happened. Now some media were breathlessly reporting that Madame Rharouity was wearing a hijab. Given the sad and unhealthy tone of the identity debate underway it Quebec, somehow this was important information. Then the bottom feeders on social media chimed in with their own venom and hatred. The point is, it doesn't matter what she was wearing. Her husband has lost a wife and two boys, a mother. End of story.
The PQ was is and will always be a political party whose first and foremost goal is to break up Canada and establish a new country based on identity.
So it really comes as no surprise that the Peqs are once again ready to crank up the heat.
Pauline Marois is promising a PQ majority government would bring back that seemingly never-ending root canal with a so-called national consultation on the joys of sovereignty.
Your taxpayer money once again being wasted on a misguided venture based on misguided dreams and tribal nationalism. I don't know about you, but this is making my brain hurt.
But here we go again. An election is coming. The PQ government is making promises and spending an obscene amount of money it doesn't have. We can only hope that the spring election will bring some sanity in Quebec, a breath of new fresh air – because we cannot afford the alternative.
