TORONTO – In a divisive decision yesterday, Toronto city council voted against decreasing the massive police budget in favour of providing its officers with body cameras in 2021, so that all future acts of racially-charged police violence could be viewed in super-sweet High-def.
Mayor John Tory was quick to defend the council’s decision, arguing that watching “nature documentary-level” footage would be a huge boon to the force’s ego.
“Today I am proud to announce that effective January 1, every racist cop in the city will be able to have their terrible actions documented in the most beautiful 4K Ultra HD quality they could ever dream of,” he enthused, signing a bill that would transfer the project’s required $50 million dollars out of the city’s community housing program and into the revised police budget.
“I’d like to see all those ‘activists’ who go around recording police brutality be able to provide that kind of sick footage. I bet they’re only filming the harassment of Black and Indigenous people in, like, 480p, MAX.”
Toronto’s Chief of Police Mark Saunders, who will be stepping away from his position at the end of July, stated that the council’s decision to ignore life-saving police reforms in favour of empty placations and ill-proven technology made him confident that he would be leaving the force in exactly the same troubled state as it had been throughout his tenure.
“Look, everybody knows that taking money from an institution so deeply entrenched in aggressive intolerance that racialized people fear for their lives on a daily basis, and giving it to mental health and community services, just won’t be as effective as these sexy, sexy pieces of tech,” he explained. “Plus, it’s not like officers are ever charged with crimes caught on camera anyway.”
“We’ll really only be using all the footage to reboot COPS from the police’s POV.”
Toronto protestor Stephen Walker said that he thought the council’s decision was more than fair.
“When my best friend Marcus got beaten up by a cop last year for ‘existing’, I remember him saying that he didn’t want justice; he didn’t want a fair trial; all he wanted was awesome footage of his beating, and that was denied to him. I’m so grateful that that cop’s future victims won’t suffer the same fate.”
At press time, Tory had just announced that the body cams would be coming pre-obstructed so that officers wouldn’t have to worry about being accused of particularly heinous and/or fatal crimes.
