The Law Is Your Business

MR. KENT: It gives me great pleasure to introduce to you today a distinguished representative of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. All of us know what a unique part this force has played in the drama of Canadian History. Organized about 89 years ago as the North-West Mounted Police to establish law and order in the West, it was granted the right to use the prefix "Royal" by King Edward VII in 1904. In 1918, its sphere was expanded to Canada, west of Port Arthur; and, in 1920 it absorbed the Dominion Police and became the Royal Canadian Mounted. Generally its present task is to enforce Federal Statutes throughout Canada and to enforce Provincial Statutes and the Criminal Code in all Canada except in Ontario and Quebec. It provides the police forces for 119 municipalities. As of March 31st, 1960, its strength was 5,540 men. In addition, it had 1,598 motor vehicles, 16 aircraft, 72 ships and boats, 269 sleighdogs, 31 police service dogs and 222 horses.

Deputy Commissioner McClellan was born at Moose Jaw, educated at the Royal Military College, Kingston, and at the Canadian Police College and the Canadian National Defence College. He joined the force in 1932 at Vancouver. Now he has completed 30 years service in various responsible posts in Canada. He was married in 1941 and has three daughters. The family are now living in Ottawa. After the last War, the Norwegian Government presented him with the King Haakon VII Cross of Liberation in recognition of special services rendered to the Norwegian Armed Services.

I am quite sure the Deputy Commissioner is very proud of the police force he represents, but I assure him that every Canadian-every law abiding Canadian-is proud of and thankful that we have in Canada to maintain the Rule of Law here, The Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

I present Deputy Commissioner George B. McClellan, who will address us on the subject, "The Law Is Your Business."

MR. McCLELLAN: In entitling my talk today, "The Law Is Your Business", I would like to refer, for a few moments, to law enforcement on a cost basis because, if you look at the administration of a nation, or a province, or a community in a businesslike manner you find that law enforcement is part of the overhead. It perhaps may be compared to fire insurance. It has two phases, preventive and remedial. Efficient law enforcement endeavours, first, to prevent crime and, second, to detect it and suppress it when it occurs.

One of the first aims of any good business is to cut the cost of overhead and, as a citizen of Canada, you should be interested to know that your overhead costs for crime prevention and crime detection are increasing every year. Crime and violence in this country are costing each and every one of you cold hard dollars and cents in the maintenance of police forces, the detection of crime, loss of life, loss by theft and fraud, maintenance of prisons and penitentiaries, and rehabilitation and parole of prisoners. This cost is entirely aside from the inestimable cost in human misery-mental and physical agony on the part of those who have suffered at the hands of criminals, and those who are left behind when criminals pay the penalty for their crimes.

I do not want to bore you with statistics, but there are some significant figures which give an indication of the direction in which we seem to be headed. For instance, in the field of counterfeit money, or "bad paper" as it is referred to by the criminal element, the police forces of this country, in 1960, recovered from both public circulation and from the hands of criminals $192,464.00 of counterfeit money. In 1961 the figure was $264,078.00 and, in 1962, to date, the total is $886,545.00. These figures do not cover the total amount of bad currency in circulation, for not all of it is recovered or reported. This tremendous increase is accounted for, in part, by the fact that modern methods of reproduction have made counterfeiting a much more simple operation than it was a few years ago. These methods have almost eliminated the old-time requirement for dishonest skilled engravers who were always in short supply, and the crooks who are dealing in counterfeit money have evolved more efficient means of distribution.

If you receive a counterfeit bill you are stuck with it and have lost whatever money you gave out in exchange for that bill. Someone has to pay for every counterfeit bill in circulation and, if counterfeiting rings are not smashed before their operations become widespread, the risk to trust in our currency becomes obvious. The amount of money obtained by fraudulent cheque artists in Canada, in the calendar year 1961, amounted to $1,514,944.05, and this figure does not include the cheques which we never hear about. From January 1 st to October 31 st, 1962, ten months of the present year, the amount is $1,210,085,58. Our Force believes that there are thousands of cheques that are passed by persons and which are never reported. As to the amount of property stolen, as all cities in Canada do not make reports I cannot give you a figure for the whole country, but the total for seven Canadian cities alone was $6,930,935.00. Of this amount only $3,750,527.00 was recovered.

In 1961 we managed to kill 3,426 people on the streets and highways of our country and we injured 99,263. Of the deaths 1,268 occurred in Ontario, approximately one-third, and of the injuries 37,146, something over one-third.

It has been estimated that employees in the United States and Canada are stealing four million dollars a day from their employers. Some time ago it was estimated, by the head of a large private security organization which is employed in a number of stores to prevent shoplifting, that shoplifting alone, in the City of Ottawa, accounts for approximately one million dollars a year. It has been reckoned that during the pre-Christmas season this last year, Canadians stole some 3 % of all goods that moved out of retail stores in the month of December.

The penitentiary population in this country averages about 7,000, at a minimum cost of $2,500.00 per annum per inmate. There is a common gaol population of approximately 12,000 and the costs would be somewhat similar. In addition, there is an average juvenile gaol population of 3,500.

There are approximately 26,000 policemen in this nation, at an estimated average cost of maintenance of between $8,000.00 and $9,000.00 per year each, and I doubt if there is a Chief of Police in this country who, today, feels that he has sufficient men and equipment to do the job that is demanded of him.

All of these costs are being paid, in one form or another, by you, the average citizen and taxpayer. I have often wondered what the real cost would be if we were able to make a survey of the people left behind by the three thousand odd who were killed on our highways. I wonder what the cost would be in families who are left destitute and dependent on the community for support, the children who will never receive a full education and the useful lives which have been cut off before reaching fulfillment. Every prisoner in a federal penitentiary or a provincial gaol has his hand in your pocket right now. You are feeding him, clothing him, and, in many cases, feeding and clothing his family. You are supporting those of us who brought him there, and those who look after him while he is there. You are paying to rehabilitate him while he is in prison and to look after him while he is on parole-and none of these operations are profitable investments.

There are other costs to the country which are more difficult to estimate and which cannot be reduced to dollars and cents. So far, in 1962, seven policemen have been murdered in the line of duty and five others wounded. Three of the dead are from my own Force. The eldest twenty-three years. All left young wives and two of them infant children. No financial compensation can ever substitute for a husband and father. These three young men were all killed at one time, endeavouring to effect an arrest, and not one of them faltered at any time during the episode, and while carrying out their duty in your service.

Crime has been with us since Cain and Abel, in one form or another, but today we are seeing its expression in forms of violence and seemingly wanton cruelty that are shocking even to policemen like myself who have spent over thirty years in the profession. In the first place, the viciousness of the youthful criminal today is appalling. He is not satisfied only to rob, he is only satisfied if he has inflicted pain or injury on his victim. He moves in a pack-a gang. He lurks in the dark streets and his victims are women, old men, the weak, the helpless, and the sexual deviate who is in no position to complain. Not long ago, one young member of a gang, charged with attacking and robbing an eighty-year-old man, said to the arresting officers, "Old men who walk the streets at night deserve to be robbed."

In 1960, 35,443 young people between the ages of sixteen and twenty-four appeared before the courts, of which 52.8% stood charged with criminal offences, i.e., offences against the Criminal Code of Canada. Thirteen thousand, nine hundred and sixty-five youths, between the ages of seven and fifteen, appeared in court, of which 79.3 % were charged with criminal offences. It is a disturbing indictment of our time that more and more serious crime is being committed by younger people. There seems to be a sickness abroad on this continent today, and one of its symptoms is a complete lack of any feeling of responsibility or mercy towards one's fellow man or to the community.

Democracy implies the right of men to live their lives as they desire, provided they do not trespass on the rights of others. In far too many instances today, freedom has become licence-licence with no accompanying feeling of responsibility towards anyone, other than self. Not only is there a lack of responsibility, there is an air of naked vandalism, destruction and cruelty among a certain element of young hoodlums and, quite frankly, it frightens me.

Any policeman will tell you that planning for Halloween today is like planning for a major military campaign. On Halloween this year you read accounts in your press of gangs of young toughs running through the streets and, in one case, making a mass assault on a police station to a point where tear gas had to be used to drive them back. On their way to the police station, some of these punks deliberately tore radio aerials and rear-vision mirrors off automobiles parked along the streets. Senseless, wanton destruction. I confess, as a youngster, to having pushed over more than one plumbing facility on Halloween night but, surely, the type of vandalism I am talking about is a recent innovation.

I would like to make it very clear that I am not raising the overworked expression, "juvenile delinquency", and I am not for one moment suggesting that the younger generation is going to Hell. I am a father and I know something of the problems which young people are facing today in a world under constant threat, and with no assurance that there will be a future. I think, for the most part, young people today are more serious minded than were we. I know that in an age of exploding scientific progress they have so much more to learn in school than did we and I feel that in spite of the sorry mess that we oldsters have got the world into, the great majority of young people are meeting the challenge better than we could have hoped.

It is not juvenile delinquency I want to speak about now, it is parental delinquency because, in my humble opinion, the group which is creating the troubles I have referred to is, for the most part, a product of irresponsible homes and irresponsible parents. I think the trouble begins in the home and, ultimately, it will have to be corrected in the home. The police, the courts, the overworked rehabilitation organizations, the boys' clubs and the girls' clubs, useful though they are, can never substitute for the home, the school and the church, particularly the home.

The seventeen to twenty-four-year age group of hoodlums, who gang up at night on our streets, or in cheap cafes -and who gang attack unescorted girls, or weak old men, are not misguided juvenile delinquents. They are vicious criminals and they started down that road when they were children. When I see twelve- and thirteen-year-olds wandering the streets at ten and eleven o'clock at night during the school week, I do not have to look very far to know who let them do it, and I can give a reasonably accurate guess as to where many of them will wind up.

I realize there are exceptions to any general rule and that the community must afford services to children who have no home and no family background, but, in the main, the fault lies with the parents who accept no responsibility for raising the children they have brought into the world, and I think we have a long way yet to go in teaching parents of this type that they have either got to accept their responsibilities or be penalized themselves for not doing so.

By no means do all of these young hoodlums come from lives of poverty. Many of them are from average Canadian families. So often, in court or in my own office, I have heard the cry of an anguished or bewildered parent, "How did my child get to be this way?" Well, the seed for good or evil is in all of us and the fruit of it depends on its cultivation. After thirty years of sampling the fruit, both sweet and sour, I have a few ideas on the best methods to use to ensure that your child will become an antisocial misfit.

I would like to emphasize that these are purely personal ideas and many people who have had much more experience in the field of youth guidance than I have may disagree, but here they are for what they are worth.

(1) Do not have any rules for child behaviour or obedience in the home. This will ensure that the child has no clear concept of right or wrong.
(2) If you have any rules, enforce them intermittently, ignore them when you are in a good humour and knock the kid silly if he breaks the rules when you are tired and out of sorts. This will confuse him thoroughly. He won't know what is expected of him and will eventually resent all discipline.
(3) Air your domestic disputes right out in front of the children, preferably with a little name calling. This will ensure that he has no respect for either of his parents.
(4) Never give a child any chores or regular duties around the home. This will convince him that you and the world owe him a living, without effort on his part.
(5) If he is disciplined at school, always go to the school and tear a strip off the teacher, or the Principal, in front of the child. This will create an excellent contempt for authority at any level.
(6) Later, when he has trouble with the police, which is most likely, bawl out the officer, or better still, the Chief, being always sure to refer to the "dumb cop". This procedure will earn the child a diploma in contempt for authority.
(7) When you are out driving with the family, exceed the local speed limit, but slow down when you see a police car. Be sure to speed up as soon as the police car is out of sight. This will show the child that the law is to be observed only if there is any danger of being caught.
(8) If you are stopped by the police for speeding, and you are speeding, always deny flatly that you were exceeding the speed limit. Make a big fuss over it. Your child will then know that cheating and lying are acceptable procedures.
(9) If you have managed to chisel a few dollars on your income tax be sure and tell the family at the dinner table that night how smart you are. This should convince the youngsters that stealing is all right if you can get away with it.
(10) Never check up on where your youngsters are in the evening. Never mind what time they get home. Never, Never try to learn anything about their friends. This one is almost sure fire.

Practise all these procedures for a reasonable time during the impressionable years and you can be reasonably certain that you will have raised a little stinker who is going to be a problem to his school, to his friends if any, most likely to the police and, believe me sincerely, an eventual source of unadulterated Hell to his parents.

Corruption, unchecked, reaches into every phase of our daily life. We read in the press about kickbacks, payola, public officials who are on the make and, unfortunately, sometimes bad policemen. The thing that worries me is that far too few people seem to get mad about it any more. In some way we seem to have lost our capacity for good oldfashioned righteous indignation and, somehow, we have to find it again. You cannot create morality, ethics and respect for the law merely by passing more laws, or by leaving enforcement entirely up to the police.

You are fortunate, in Metropolitan Toronto, in having what is, in my opinion, an efficient, well-organized and well-directed police force, but you cannot expect the Metropolitan Toronto Police to carry the burden alone. The police are not some organization set entirely apart from the people of the community. Policemen are your employees, doing your work on your behalf, and enforcing the laws which have been enacted by the legislators you elected. They are entitled to your support, your co-operation, your understanding, and your respect, as long as they earn it. The threat offered by the forces of crime today is to your pocket, your home, your family and, perhaps, your life.

Nearly 200 years ago Edmund Burke warned, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

THANKS OF THE MEETING were expressed by Mr. Norman Borins, Q.C.