Imagine that you, mere citizen, managed to get your hands on 6 handguns and as part of your job you are to destroy them.  You don’t fulfill your job requirements for reasons the world will never know and take the handguns home.  Eventually (7 years later!) you are caught with these 6 stolen handguns.

Were you a mere citizen instead of a former RCMP member you would be in prison for a very long time.

Thank God for Daniel Daudet that he was once an RCMP Member, huh?

Through the grace of our retarded (in)justice system Daniel Daudet is deemed not responsible for his actions because, get this, the judge says he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Daniel Daudet is not sentenced to the pathetic 6 months in prison that Crown Prosecutors requested.  No, Daudet hit the jackpot because Judge Robert Heinrichs presided over his case and Judge Heinrichs doesn’t believe thieves, especially ex-RCMP thieves, should go to jail.

It’s all quite disgusting, really.

Were a mere citizen like me or perhaps you, dear reader, found with cocaine and 6 illegally possessed handguns the penalties, as I alluded to above, would be quite harsh and would most assuredly include prison time.  A lot of it.

Now don’t get me wrong.  Daniel Daudet clearly has serious problems.

How else do you explain the cocaine addiction, theft of firearms from his RCMP detachment and attempting to grab his arresting officer’s firearm so he could kill himself?  The man has some very big issues indeed.

My problem is with how this man is dealt with as compared to we mere citizens who don’t have the benefit of membership in the gang that wears black pants with a yellow stripe down each side.  Were any of us to be caught with stolen handguns, cocaine and attempt to grab our arresting officer’s gun we would certainly not be rewarded with an 18-month conditional discharge.

After a rather severe beating for trying to grab a cop’s gun we would be charged with probably a dozen criminal offenses and no judge in the land would be coddling us because of any problems we may or may not have.

No, for the mere citizen in that circumstance justice would be both swift and harsh.

It’s the sentencing double-standard I take issue with.

“The taking of these firearms and the ensuing deception pertaining to their destruction were the actions of a mentally unhealthy person,” Judge Heinrichs said at a recent sentencing hearing in Steinbach.

No, there were the ongoing acts of a criminal with serious addictions.  But only if the person stealing the guns and deceiving authorities for 7 years is a mere citizen instead of a former Mountie.

Just because this guy is an ex-cop he is treated with kid gloves… treatment none of us would receive in a thousand years.  And all because he once wore that blessed Red Serge.

It makes me want to vomit.

That Daniel Daudet has managed to turn his life around since his arrest is commendable.  But if we’re going to give such special treatment to one person then we must give it to all.  Equal Justice For All… isn’t that the ideal we are supposed to uphold?

The sentencing double-standard for Mounties, whether they are current or ex-employees, serves only to bring the entire justice system into disrepute and further tarnish the image of the RCMP, if that’s even possible any more.