Editorial – One Picture Doesn’t Always Tell The Entire Story
It’s never best to judge before all the facts are in.
Sadly, we’ve become a society that does that. Throughout the world.
A photo, or snippet of a video may look bad, and it’s best not to rush to judgement before finding out all the facts.
Way to many times that’s happened – countless times.
We are all guilty of it.
And many of those times police are sadly the ones defending their actions.
So, let’s nip this one in the bud before anything gets started.
Cobourg Police had a busy day to say the least on Tuesday, October 9, 2023.
Minor to major calls and everything in between.
But it’s a snippet of video that “could” cause people to wonder about the force used.
The start of the video shows three Cobourg Police officers struggling with a female by the side of a cruiser on King Street.
They are literally carrying the woman who is struggling with them.
“I’m not doing anything wrong,” shouts the woman.
Another officer comes into the video and tries to help the other officers restrain the woman.
A woman taking the video shouts, “don’t hurt her.”
The woman being restrained yells, “stop touching me – leave me alone.”
The woman being restrained yells, “you’re a crooked cop.”
One officer said to the woman being restrained, “stop – relax.”
The woman screams and the video ends.
Clearly the video shows four officers trying to restrain a woman and placing her in handcuffs.
Some may say, why does it take four officers to take control of a woman you can barely see in the video?
As anyone can see in the video, the woman is not complying. That can make it extremely hard to control her as the video shows.
Four officers may not look like the perfect picture or video, but would it be better to have one officer struggling violently with the woman?
What the video doesn’t show, is the woman is charged with assaulting a downtown store owner minutes prior to the video being taken.
There was a scuffle with the store owner where he is punched, kneed and his hair is pulled by the woman.
As a result, there was minor damage to property in the store.
The video also doesn’t show when officers arrived to speak with the woman, she allegedly kicked one officer multiple times and spit at two other officers. It’s alleged the woman also tried to bite the officers.
Cobourg Police once again didn’t give the name of the woman, but said she is a 37-year-old Cobourg woman who is charged with assault, assault peace officer and mischief.
She was held for a bail hearing and remained into custody.
It’s normal for people to judge without knowing all the facts. That’s the hardest part with social media. To not comment before knowing the facts. With social media now, everyone knows that facts, at least that’s what they think.
The world has become a society of judgement.
No one can be, or ever should be blamed for not helping police. But people have become a society of either they are too afraid to step in to help someone, or they simply stand back and video or take photos.
Rest assured, police had their video cameras on and it will show everything that took place.
But this isn’t the United States, the Chief of Police won’t be in front of a pulpit the next day showing snippets of what happened.
Canadian courts don’t work that way. Video is saved for investigation or court proceedings, not to ramp up or scale down public opinion.
Not that it matters to the public, but before 10:30 a.m. on Tuesday, police had three people in custody for bail hearings.
Author: Pete Fisher
Has been a photojournalist for over 30-years and have been honoured to win numerous awards for photography and writing over the years. Best selling author for the book Highway of Heroes - True Patriot Love