In a different article, you started by citing Professor Dworkin, which really made me feel like I was back at the faculty of law. You talked about equality and notions of equality in terms of how it impacts the legitimacy of policing. As someone who lived through parts of the blockade here in Ottawa, I think this is really critical in terms of how people started to treat the police, no longer respecting them in the same way, which I think is problematic from a societal perspective.
You wrote the following:
Many criticized the police for accepting the “freedom” occupation and blockade for over three weeks, when they take more aggressive stances against Indigenous land blockades and protests by racialized people.... This compounded the equality problem if a lack of adequate intelligence about the danger of far-right violent extremists using the occupation contributed to the policing failure that allowed the Ottawa occupation to last three weeks.
Ignoring equality creates a risk that both the police and the law will be viewed as illegitimate.
I also found interesting what you talked about a bit later in the same passage with regard to the fact that some criticized the police for talking to the protesters. You said that talking isn't necessarily the problem; it's the fact that if there's going to be talking to the protesters, it needs to be done equally, whether the protesters are the Ottawa occupiers or whether the protesters are an indigenous group or a Black Lives Matter group.
Can you unpack that a little bit for us? Going forward, where do you see policing going in terms of correcting this sort of double standard, if I can use that term?