OTTAWA – Police departments across Canada are concerned that their mild efforts to arrest the anti-vaccine and anti-government protesters who’ve disrupted Canadian society for the last three weeks will come back to haunt them when they attempt to recruit those same people.
“We’ve been trying to keep things as cordial as possible so as to not antagonize these belligerent right-wing conspiracy theorists, because that is our prime recruitment pool,” said Ottawa’s Interim Police Chief Steve Bell. “But now that the government has forced us to escalate from our preferred tactic of polite deference to the more aggressive tactic of law enforcement, this department might have some trouble finding new officers.”
Ottawa police aren’t the only ones worried by what the current clashes will do to their ability to procure new officers. The RCMP has bent over backwards trying to show extremists blockading Canada/U.S. border crossings that they are on their side, from giving upset blockaders hugs to letting them cause a days-long international incident without filing any charges, but that may not be enough to salve the hurt feelings.
“We’re dealing with a group who is used to having law enforcement on their side, and it’s very jarring for them to now be shown that they are subject to the same laws as everyone else… eventually, as long as they keep breaking those laws on camera,” said RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki.
“We just hope we can win back the demographic we’ve alienated by hammering home in our future recruitment drives that recent events are an aberration, and if you join the RCMP you are far more likely to be violently arresting Indigenous land defenders than members of your own family.”
“And I want to assure anyone considering joining the RCMP or another police department in Canada that being anti-vaccine is not an impediment to a career in law enforcement, and on some forces it’s actually a prerequisite.”
But convoy participants aren’t so willing to forgive and forget.
“I finally know what it was like to be a Jew during the Holocaust, or I would, if the Holocaust had happened,” lamented one young man as he watched the police drain the convoy’s hot-tub and deflate their bouncy house. “I can’t believe the police are doing this to us. Before all this I was seriously thinking of becoming a cop, but now I guess I’ll go with my second career choice, creating a podcast about how cancel culture makes it hard to be a white man these days.”
In related news, the RCMP has announced that anyone who participated in a recent vandalism of pipeline equipment in northern B.C. will be hunted down and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law unless they were doing it to protest vaccine mandates, in which case they will be allowed to continue the vandalism for several weeks before they will be gently asked to stop.
