Myles Johnston
On Wednesday February 4th Rockridge secondary spent several hours on lock down because someone called police saying that they saw two men walking down Timberfield road towards the school with a rifle. It was a serious enough threat that the school was searched and that the Air One police helicopter was called in for air support. When the school was searched nothing was found and then the students were allowed to go home. There are unconfirmed reports that it was some hunters with a permit to carry the rifle, but let’s get into that.
It was great that as a whole the West Vancouver Police were able to quickly respond and protect the city’s youth. My problem is that when police officers aren’t surrounded by other cops that some of them stop behaving. A WVPD officer was arrested by the VPD after they supposedly assaulted and robbed a 47 year old Surrey man. What makes someone that has sworn an oath and we all trust to protect us from danger become that danger they said they would stop? The cops that were caught drinking and drive last year are just as bad as the West Vancouver police officer. There is no excuse because there are a ton of services to help them if they are stressed from work or are having other issues related to work. It makes me think that maybe our screening process is not thorough enough because lie detectors are not 100% accurate. There is the possibility that in one of those cop’s test there were some false positives and negatives and that’s why he got on the police force. It’s a thought to ponder as gang violence is on the rise that some of the people that are protecting us are not who we want protecting us. That’s unfortunate because a small percentage of bad cops are making all of them look bad.
