Scattered snapshots on Law & Order from my mind’s scrapbook - Alcyonenews

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Miscellany

Posted October 25, 2021

Scattered snapshots on Law & Order from my mind’s scrapbook

“Shocked and saddened by the killing of a long-serving British MP on Friday, Canadian politicians say the threat of a similar incident in Canada appears to be growing.”

That is a headline I read. What will the Canadian politicians do to lead society to prempt causes of this? That is what I would like to read ...

I have no reason to believe that British MP David Amess, was less than a fine man. But this is a secondary consideration in a society civilized to the level of deeming capital punishment a cruel, inhuman and unjust action. Hurting anyone is bad and as sensitive as we are, we lament anyone going in so sad a way. In other words, of primary concern is that someone lost his life because somebody else else became “judge jury and executioner” and took that life. We also lament the manifestation that so much badness lurks in our midst.

This reflects on all of us, world wide. While we cannot eliminate crime, every society, tries and to a certain level, succeeds to reduce it, but the success is not enough, for the process is unending. The gain we make neither suffices for peace nor does it make such acts easy to endure. Hence, what matters is whether we are trying hard enough to learn about the causes and whether we do the best we can to learn “how” to minimize such crimes. I am of the belief that we can do better on all fronts. But since undoing the past is impossible in the world in which we live, where “Tempus Regit” ( = Time Rules, as Virgil put it), the question is: Are we going to learn and are we willing to persevere through all it may take to make things better? Lamenting the past is comforting but hope lies in dreaming of a better future. Leave the past, live in the now and shape the future. Virgil thinks we can do it if we “Possunt quia posse vintetur”, ( = “we can do I it if we believe we can do it”). Virgil urges us to boost our self-confidence for without that nothing of what must be done will be done. I guess that is what David Amess would like us to do ...

That is my column for this issue, but I will append to that three snapshots from my mind’s scrapbook:

My mother’s cousin, a psychiatrist confined a man in the asylum for his healing and for the security of the community. Eventually he decided that the patient had been cured enough and allowed the asylum to release him. A week or so later, he knocked on the doctor’s door. When the doctor opened the door the psychopath shot the psychiatrist dead.

A few years back the Mayor of Vancouver was Tom Campbell. He was kind of outspoken but his utterances were, well ... let’s say funny. His moniker was “Tom Terrific”.

Once, Tom-T incited controversy with his decision to replace the police billy sticks with bigger ones. When the Mayor of Calgary paid a visit to Vancouver and as the protocol decrees met with his Vancouver counterpart, Tom-T councelled the C-Mayor, to buy long sticks for the Calgary cops, too. Tom-T “reasoned” that longer billy sticks would help the police subdue communists (Tom was routinely referring to hippies and protesters as “Commies”). Calmly the C- Mayor assured Tom-T that in Calgary there were no communists. Quick as a wink, Tom-T flabbergasted the C-Mayor once again: “You buy long sticks for the police and send them out to search for Commies – you will be surprised how many they will find”, Tom-T said with the seriousness mayors command. The C-Mayor fell speechless ...

I duly appreciate a job well-done but do so silently -- I make noises when I deem improvement possible and necessary. Yet, rarely as it happens, I give in to temptation to praise those who who do it right or better. Such a person, was Constable Ace Mainwaring a Softspring icon of yesteryear. No, I do not want to detract from the appreciation of the dedication and the integrity of “society’s finest”, but not unlike the proverbial rotten apple in the bushel, there are outstanding good apples too. Such was Ace (I presume Ace is no longer with the RCMP). He ran the Island smoothly using words and smiles never a billy stick.

He was a rebel, kind of “insubordinate” to the Force’s regulations, as he loathed wearing a gun and would sneak out of the detachment without one. The scenario of Ace donning a flackjacket evokes a chuckle. He went around “his” Island gun-naked and we looked to him as “our” Cop. He was exceptional and those whom he served fondly remember him.