The Black Rod

Police in Manitoba have, like James Bond, a licence to kill, according to the latest report from the provincial police watchdog, the IIU (Independent Investigation Unit). That's the shocking conclusion of a mandatory, and seriously slanted, investigation into the police killing of 59-year-old Bradley Singer in his home on Magnus Avenue a year ago. Singer was an innocent man, alone, probably asleep, bothering nobody, when police arrived at his door just before dawn in February 2024. He was diagnosed as suffering from schizophrenia, magnified by extreme paranoia. Police had come with an order to take him to see a doctor who was concerned that Singer's mental health was deteriorating. But, through a series of misjudgements and missteps, about two hours later Singer was dead, peppered with at least six police bullets fired at point blank range. https://blackrod.blogspot.com/2024/02/charge-em-magnus-avenue-shooting-by-cops.html We knew the IIU had something to hide when they...

The slander of two candidates for school trustee in St. Boniface is the latest example of fake news that's fast becoming the trademark of the Winnipeg Free Press. The story by reporter Chris Kitching uses the slimiest newspaper tactics to pass off a smear campaign against the two as a legitimate news story. It might have worked in the Sixties, but today's readers are too savvy to the tricks of biased journalists to overlook the obvious. The FP's attempt to undermine the campaigns of these two candidates is such a classic example of fake news it should be studied in legitimate journalism classes as a how-not-to produce a story. The headline reads: 'School trustee candidates ‘parental rights’ campaign literature raises concerns'. Note the quotation marks around the words parental rights. That is supposed to delegitimize the term by isolating the words and indicating there's something suspicious about the users. They wouldn't use quotation marks if the ...

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...