Escalating the Situation

I hope Fabio forks out some serious coin. 

Paying a Supreme Court-ordered monetary award to Bela Kosoian will give him something useful to do, which will probably be a nice change from his usual agenda.

He was apparently having one of his usual days on the job back in 2009 when he had nothing better to do than hassle Bela Kosoian for failing to hold the handrail on an escalator in a Laval metro station.

No one friggin’ holds the handrail and they shouldn’t have to.

Photo: Bobby Button

She was arrested, detained, ticketed and, no doubt, subjected to the idiotic ramblings of two clearly underworked, power-tripping cops. It’s hard to believe those kind of police officers are out there with all the serious trouble either happening, or brewing, in our streets. And I don’t mean jaywalking.

I’m almost tempted to agree with Bela when she refused to identify herself to these morons. Identifying yourself at that point prolongs the stupidity and opens you up to more of their abuse. 

That the Supreme Court has agreed to hear Bela Kosoian’s case is awesome news!

Fabio and his fellow cop gave Bela a $320 ticket for obstructing the work of an inspector and a $100 ticket for disobeying a pictogram. She was acquitted of both infractions and proceeded to file a $45,000 lawsuit against the city of Laval, the Montreal Transit Corporation and officer Fabio Camacho. You go girl!

Two lower courts rejected her lawsuit because, evidently, they were presided over by judges who either always use handrails when they ride metro escalators, or never ride the metro. One of the judges ruled the officer had reasonable grounds to believe that an infraction had been committed. Well, if that’s the case, Fabio better hurry back to the metro station right away because I have reasonable grounds to believe the same infraction is being committed on a daily basis by tens of thousands of metro users, up and down Montreal metro lines.

If you’re going to assign police officers to patrol metro stations, they should have some basic discretion. Assigning dunces to the job does nothing for the image of police officers or for the advancement of effective police work. Hopefully, the highest court in the land will agree that, even on the prized escalator beat, pointless policing is a step in the wrong direction.