Canada: When “Public Safety” Becomes a License to Hunt Someone
Canada has taken a much more rational approach to managing persons required to register as sex offenders in the community. A recent CBC report out of Ottawa highlighted one such case where notification led to vigilantism. In August, Ottawa police issued a public safety notification about a man they described as a high-risk violent sexual offender who had moved to Ottawa after completing his sentence. Police specifically told the public not to approach him and not to take matters into their own hands.
The result, of course was that neighborhood social-media groups began tracking his movements. People posted alleged sightings. Videos appeared of people confronting and following a man they believed to be the man. According to CBC, the online frenzy continued far longer than what a local reintegration organization typically sees after these kinds of notifications.
And that is the problem with turning public safety into a permanent neighborhood surveillance project. Once the government puts someone’s identity and location into the public domain, it cannot control what happens next.
As University of Ottawa criminologist Michael Kempa told CBC, there is a difference between making people aware of a potential risk and creating a “never-ending network of surveillance” around an individual who is simply trying to live in the community. He pointed out the obvious consequences: being hounded makes it harder to obtain housing, find employment and reintegrate — the very things associated with successful reentry.
Michaela De Curtis of Circles of Support and Accountability Ottawa put it even more plainly: “We can either provide supports to someone and hold them accountable, or we can isolate them and push them away.”
Ottawa police themselves acknowledged that being a registered sex offender does not, by itself, make someone’s presence in a public place or ordinary lawful activities a crime.
If the result of notification is vigilantism, ostracism and making housing, employment, treatment and ordinary community life impossible, we shouldn’t be surprised when reintegration becomes harder. Returning citizens have to exist. The question is whether we want that return to the community to be structured around accountability and successful reintegration — or around an angry mob.
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Vigilantism is their goal. It doesn’t matter what or when the crime was, they want us dead. The cops don’t care and refuse us our 14th amendment rights all the time.
Yes they deny us the right to keep and bear arms, and the counter is always “call the police”. A good number of the police make sure to let us know that we aren’t liked and we’re not wanted here.
I’ve had a few situations where a neighbor stalked and harassed me due to the registry. The latest one tried to unite my neighbors and force me to move. He failed to get a single neighbor on his side. Infact he became the most hated person in the neighborhood real quickly.
It seems that me cutting trees out of the road after hurricanes and allowing anyone to get water from my well while the power was out due to a storm really paid off.
My advice to everyone is be handy. A chainsaw, generator, or tractor after a storm will gain you a ton of respect in the neighborhood.
Basically the same thing that happens to us. Someone could be on the lowest tier (If they have tiers) and neighbors, and even others just scanning for us, can confront us, attack us (Or try to) or spread misinformation for others to do harm to us or our property.
And even though some of us who are able to fight back, we are not allowed most weapons and even if we defend ourselves hand to hand, if we hurt the other person even if we are defending ourselves, guess who is arrest? Yes, us. It would be a “He hit me first” even if we were the ones who hit us first, it wouldn’t matter, we are the suspect either way in these situations.
And finally, we have no protections in place by the police as many of them despise us and will say something to us like “You should learn to get along with your neighbors”. I am not typing this out of my head, but out of personal experience, more than once. One place I lived I couldn’t even be in my own yard without being harassed, threatened or vandalism incidents when I was not around.