Only four days after our last post, in February, we were notified that somebody had complained, and as a result The Black Rod, all twenty years of posts, was being blocked permanently. No warning and no reason provided. You don't have to be Columbo to figure out who was behind the complaint. Any detective will tell you the first step to finding a suspect is to ask 'cui bono'---who benefits. Our last post was titled Charge 'Em - here's the link - and was a detailed examination of the killing by Winnipeg's Police Tactical Support Team of an innocent man minding his own business in his own home. Draw your own conclusions. Our first appeal for reasons for the blocking went unacknowledged and unanswered for over a month. Our second appeal was answered in five minutes: "not in violation of Community Guidelines". Plans B and C to circumvent internet censorship are back in the drawer. And we're back and feistier than ever.
Regular readers of The Black Rod know that we've been staunch defenders of the police. When critics attacked the police for being too rough when making an arrest, when politicians and "activists" jumped on wholly invented allegations of police misconduct, when the anti-cop crowd lobbied to defund the police, we stood up for the police . Not this time. On February 13 a mob of Winnipeg police shot and killed a scared, innocent man in his own home on Magnus Avenue. This wasn't a doped up criminal with a weapon charging police in a back alley in the dead of night, or a car thief trying to run down a policeman after a car chase. This was a man minding his own business, not a threat to anyone, in his own home, a place where everybody should feel safe and expect the police to protect, not kill, them. The next day the police issued a news release to say what happened, and held a news conference to not answer questions. That's right, they clammed up tight, refusin