Taking the High Road

It is oftentimes difficult to appreciate how special our criminal justice system truly is – especially in light of a number of recent incidents in Calgary. From reading daily news reports about shootings, home invasions, sexual assaults and murder it is admittedly difficult to look beyond immediate emotions of fear and disgust. Each and every day, police, crown, defence lawyers, judges and yes, even many victims of crime look to ensure justice is done. In so doing, it takes incredibly special people to apply the rule of law rather than the rule of emotion.

Some are more special than others.

With this, I want to take a moment to acknowledge Calgary Staff Sgt. Joel Mathews, who was one of a number of police participating in the investigation of an alleged sexual assault in Calgary’s downtown core.

http://www.calgarysun.com/news/alberta/2009/09/04/10745971-sun.html

Rather than being goaded into making some kind of overly dramatic remark in response to a troubling incident – such as commenting about how Calgary’s downtown is unsafe, thus requiring more public funding for police officers – Sgt. Mathews does as admirable job of accurately characterizing our City:

"I've been in the downtown for 2 1/2 years and something of this nature happens very rarely”, he said.

His comment was not lengthy, but his words were true.

In a City with approximately one-million people living in close proximity to each other, by sheer force of numbers alone intolerable things will happen. That is reality. As troubled as we may be about this incident, we can take solace in the fact that the police properly responded, made an arrest and then their representative – an entrusted public officer – fairly commented in the media about the quality of our downtown core. Responding to a terrible event, Sgt. Mathews took the rational approach. With his comments, he alleviated irrational fears that Calgary’s inner City is a cauldron of danger by conveying the truth: incidents such as this happen “very rarely”.

Thank you for reminding us that despite the multitude of crime stories that sell the minds of Canadians, the reality is, Calgarians live in a safe place.

David G. Chow
Calgary Criminal Defence Lawyer

www.calgarydefence.com