Skip to main content

Winnipeg Police -- too many and too useless, said Finance Chair Marty Morantz


Not only did new councillor and professed lawyer Marty Morantz demonstrate last week his total ignorance of the law governing council, but he doubled down to say he didn't care what the law was, he was going to bully city employees around and they had better like it.
 
If this is an indication of the calibre of appointees to 'Know Nothing' Brian Bowman's civic government, then Winnipeggers will soon be wishing for a return of Mayor Sam Katz and what was then known as the most dysfunctional council in memory.

Bowman, whose knowledge of how city council functions is zero, decided to start his term in office by attacking the city auditor. Two days later, Morantz decided he would attack the police department and thereby demonstrate he's even more clued out over how the city runs than Bowman. What an accomplishment.

Upon presentation of the Winnipeg Police Service Third Quarter Financial Report, Morantz lobbed questions at Deputy Police Chief Art Stannard about why the police couldn't find savings in their budget (they call it "efficiencies") and why the force was bloated by officers who should be retired.

Stannard patiently explained that the rules now required the police to report to the new Police Board and for city council to ask the Board for answers. Morantz would have none of that.

HE was MARTY MORANTZ,  and HE, MARTY MORANTZ, was chairman of the finance committee, and no underling would tell him, MARTY MORANTZ, how to do things;  HE, MARTY MORANTZ, was in charge and HE, MARTY MORANTZ, was DEMANDING--YES, DEMANDING---answers from the deputy chief, the law be damned.

The other members of the finance committee--veteran councillor and  Deputy Mayor Mike Pagtakhan and, would you believe, new councillor and chairman of the Police Board Scott Gillingham --- sat like dummies, refusing to challenge the presumptuous chairman.
 
There are too many police and too many are useless, railed the imperious Morantz, doing his best to intimidate and humiliate the deputy chief. See. Look at me. I'M MARTY MORANTZ, and I'm a tough guy when it comes to city finances. 
 
Morantz was in such a rush to throw his weight around he failed to do even the most rudimentary research.

He could have read the 347-page Operational Review of the Police Service that was commissioned by city council and received in August, 2013,  17 whole months before Morantz's grandstanding performance.
 
 
This report is mandatory reading for anybody in civic government dealing with the police service who doesn't want to sound like a fool.  For 'fool' read 'Marty Morantz'.
 
That report contained many examples of  "efficiencies" open to the Winnipeg police, as well as suggestions as to where police positions could be eliminated and/or filled by civilians

. The report by the Matrix Consulting Group identified more than 75 positions ranging from 18 in the Central Reading Unit, 12 in Human Resources (civilians should be doing that job), and 25 at the airport (we lost the contract) to 3 constables in the Stolen Auto Unit, one constable in the Pawn Shop Detail, and the two constables with the Mounted Patrol.

Moranz could have asked which suggestions were adopted, which weren't, which could be, which shouldn't.  But that is obviously beyond the capability of a lawyer who writes wills for a living.  In which case Morantz could have had a private discussion with the head of the Police Board,  WHO SITS RIGHT BESIDE HIM ON THE FINANCE COMMITTEE. 
 
Instead, Morantz chose to be an arrogant pissant.
 
Winnipeg has had enough of this conceit.  We had our fill from Phil Sheegl, who came highly recommended by Mayor Sam Katz as the smartest guy in the room. We're still cleaning up the rubble left behind by that duo.  Was there a hint in the fact that Marty Morantz was a financial donor to Katz's election campaign?
 
What we've seen so far from 'Know Nothing' Brian Bowman and his henchman I'M MARTY MORANTZ is two lawyers from Charleswood/River Heights who want to jack up taxes to fund their pet projects while hacking services to the little people (who do we need so many police anyway? what do they do all day?).
 
Bowman claims he wants more transparency and accountability in this council. He's certainly demonstrated the need to be extremely vigilant with him and his council appointees.

Last Friday, Bowman backed Marty Morantz's public grilling of Deputy Police Chief Art Stannard.  But by Monday he was squeaking a different tune.

Police Chief Devon Clunis was out of town on vacation last week when Morantz implied the police force should be forcing a whack of officers to retire and that "it looks to me that there are a lot of officers hanging around now.” 

Clunis got back on the weekend and made a beeline for Bowman.  By the time their, ahem, meeting ended, it was clear who the alpha male in the room was and who was his bitch.

The pair held a joint news conference Monday.

"I want to re-affirm my support and council’s support for the invaluable work the members of the Winnipeg Police Service do each and every day," mumbled Bowman with a mouthful of crow.

"I support fully what our deputy chief said and from the comments I’ve read, I would have taken the same actions." said a stone-faced Clunis.

The police department had his full support,  said Bowman, adding that it was clear "to everyone now" that police report to the police board.

'Everyone' meaning Marty Morantz who was summoned to a meeting with Clunis and the mayor before the newser.

There he was fitted with a muzzle and told to "stay".  He did, neither showing his face at the news conference nor appearing to answer questions from reporters afterward.
Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

The unreported bombshell conspiracy evidence in the Trudeau/SNC-Lavelin scandal

Wow. No, double-wow. A game-changing bombshell lies buried in the supplementary evidence provided to the House of Commons Judiciary Committee by former Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould. It has gone virtually unreported since she submitted the material almost a week ago. As far as we can find, only one journalist-- Andrew Coyne, columnist for the National Post--- has even mentioned it and even then he badly missed what it meant, burying it in paragraph 10 of a 14 paragraph story. The gist of the greatest political scandal in modern Canadian history is well-known by now. It's bigger than Adscam, the revelation 15 years ago that prominent members of the Liberal Party of Canada and the party itself funneled tens of millions of dollars in kickbacks into their own pockets from federal spending in Quebec sponsoring ads promoting Canadian unity. That was just venal politicians and a crooked political party helping themselves to public money. The Trudeau-Snc-Lavalin scandal is...
Read more

Crips and Bloodz true cultural anchors of Winnipeg's aboriginal gangs

(Bebo tribute page to Aaron Nabess on the right, his handgun-toting friend on the left) At least six murder victims in Winnipeg in the past year are linked to a network of thuglife, gangster rap-styled, mainly aboriginal street gangs calling themselves Crips and Bloods after the major black gangs of L.A. The Black Rod has been monitoring these gangs for several months ever since discovering memorial tributes to victim Josh Prince on numerous pages on Bebo.com, a social networking website like Myspace and Facebook. Josh Prince , a student of Kildonan East Collegiate, was stabbed to death the night of May 26 allegedly while breaking up a fight. His family said at the time he had once been associated with an unidentified gang, but had since broken away. But the devotion to Prince on sites like Watt Street Bloodz and Kingk Notorious Bloodz (King-K-BLOODZ4Life) shows that at the time of his death he was still accepted as one of their own. Our searches of Bebo have turned up another five ga...
Read more

Manitoba Hydro is on its deathbed. There, we said it.

Manitoba Hydro is on its deathbed. Oh, you won't find anyone official to say it. Yet . Like relatives trying to appear cheery and optimistic around a loved one that's been diagnosed with terminal cancer, the people in power are in the first stage of grief -- denial. The prognosis for Hydro was delivered three weeks ago at hearings before the Public Utilities Board where the utility was seeking punishingly higher rates for customers in Manitoba. It took us this long to read through the hundred-plus pages of transcript, to decipher the coded language of the witnesses, to interpret what they were getting at, and, finally, to understand the terrible conclusion.  We couldn't believe it, just as, we're sure, you can't--- so we did it all again, to get a second opinion, so to speak.  Hydro conceded to the PUB that it undertook a massive expansion program--- involving three (it was once four) new dams and two new major powerlines (one in the United States)---whi...
Read more

Nahanni Fontaine, the NDP's Christian-bashing, cop-smearing, other star candidate

As the vultures of the press circle over the wounded Liberal Party of Manitoba, one NDP star candidate must be laughing up her sleeve at how her extremist past has escaped the scrutiny of reporters and pundits. Parachuted into a safe NDP seat in Winnipeg's North End, she nonetheless feared a bruising campaign against a well-heeled Liberal opponent.  Ha ha.  Instead, the sleepy newspeeps have turned a blind eye to her years of vitriolic attacks on Christianity, white people, and police. * She's spent years  bashing Christianity  as the root cause of all the problems of native people in Canada. * She's called for  a boycott of white businesses . * And with her  Marxist research partner, she's  smeared city police as intransigent racists . Step up Nahanni Fontaine, running for election in St. John's riding as successor to the retiring Gord Macintosh. While her male counterpart in the NDP's galaxy of stars, Wab Kinew, has responded to the contro...
Read more

Exposing the CBC/WFP double-team smear of a hero cop

Published since 2006 on territory ceded, released, surrendered and yielded up in 1871 to Her Majesty the Queen and successors forever. Exposing the CBC/FP double-team smear of a hero cop Some of the shoddiest journalism in recent times appeared this long August weekend when the CBC and Winnipeg Free Press doubled teamed on a blatant smear of a veteran city police officer. In the latest example of narrative journalism these media outlets spun stories with total disregard for facts that contradicted the central message of the reports which, simplified, is: police are bad and the system is covering up. Let's start with the story on the taxpayer funded CBC by Sarah Petz that can be summed up in the lead. "A February incident where an off-duty Winnipeg officer allegedly knocked a suspect unconscious wasn't reported to the province's police watchdog, and one criminologist says it shows how flawed oversight of law enforcement can be." There you have it. A policeman, not ...
Read more

Winnipeg needs a new police chief - ASAP

When did the magic die? A week ago the Winnipeg police department delivered the bad news---crime in the city is out of control. The picture painted by the numbers (for 2018) was appalling. Robberies up ten percent in  a single year.  (And that was the good news.) Property crimes were up almost 20 percent.  Total crime was 33 percent higher than the five year average. The measure of violent crime in Winnipeg had soared to a rating of 161.  Only four years earlier it stood at 116. That's a 38 percent deterioration in safety. How did it happen? How, when in 2015 the police and Winnipeg's police board announced they had discovered the magic solution to crime? "Smart Policing" they called it.    A team of crime analysts would pore through data to spot crime hot-spots and as soon as they identified a trend (car thefts, muggings, liquor store robberies) they could call in police resources to descend on the problem a...
Read more