I just watched the video of Gatineau, Quebec Police attempting to shoot a calf with their handguns. It’s a very disturbing video to watch even if you’re just a regular human being and not some holier-than-thou animal rights activist.

Citing “officer safety” and “protecting the public” as their reasons for shooting the calf, Gatineau Police find themselves indicted around the world for their heinous actions, and rightfully so.

Four police cruisers converge on a single calf that’s on the road. The video shows multiple police shooting the calf with their handguns.  I counted 11 shots in the video and the poor calf is still running for its life from these idiots.

The simple solution to a calf running down the road is to toss a rope around its neck and lead it back to its pasture. That’s hardly a traumatic exercise for anyone, human or cow alike.

That, of course, would require Common Sense, something clearly in short supply in the Gatineau Police Department.

Screaming lunatic police with lights flashing and sirens blaring at the poor animal can serve only one purpose: to terrify the animal into unpredictable behavior.

Naturally, that’s the justification or shooting the animal, though, isn’t it?

“The animal was endangering the lives of our officers,” will be the cry from some pathetic police spokescritter, doing his or her best to justify the unjustifiable.

The official spokescritter for this case just happens to be deputy police Chief Luc Beaudoin, who was quoted as saying:

"An hour during which every attempt failed, and during which one of the animals, who may not have appeared dangerous to witnesses who had not seen the preceding 60 minutes, charged vehicles, moved a trailer by its sheer physical strength, and managed to once again escape, right there in the city near a school and busy roads."

And for the record, no, I don’t give a crap that the police were given permission to shoot the cows by their owner. Just because I have “permission” and therefore have the legal right to do something doesn’t make it the right thing to do.

Was it the “right thing to do” to imprison hundreds of thousands of Canadian citizens during World War II simply because of their skin color and slant of their eye sockets?

Of course not, but it was certainly “legal” to imprison every Canadian of Japanese descent simply because they were, well, Japanese.

The real question that needs to be asked in this present case has nothing to do with cows, of course, but with people.

You know, folks just like me and you.

To properly ask this question, let’s reframe the scenario seen in the video at the bottom of this article.

First, we must change the location. Instead of a rural road in Gatineau, Quebec, let’s make it Downtown Montreal.

Instead of a terrified cow trying to get away from screeching sirens and screaming men with guns, it’s a mentally ill homeless man rummaging through trash on a downtown Montreal street.

Instead of dealing with the homeless man like actual human beings, Montreal police chose to shoot him dead instead.  In their zeal to “get their man” they managed to murder an innocent bystander, Mario Hamel, who on his way to work at the very hospital where he was pronounced dead.

For that heinous action police said only, “We’re sorry.”

I guess that’s like saying “Ooops!” after bumping into someone in the aisle at the grocery store… like it was some unintentional but harmless mistake.

The difference being, of course, that when police make mistakes it often costs the lives of decent, hardworking people like Mario Hamel, the 40-year-old hospital worker killed because police so desperately desired to kill a homeless man.

People don’t end up on the street rummaging through trash cans at 6am because they’re the epitome of mental health. They do it because they generally have some pretty serious problems, be they mental health issues, addictions, or worse.

Are these homeless people an annoyance to those of us who can still get up, drink our morning coffee and head off to work like the majority of the rest of Canadians?

Sure.

I don’t like walking to work through piles of upturned trash any more than the next person.

Does that mean they should be killed for it?

Absolutely not.

The real question that needs to be asked in the wake of the Gatineau Police’s stupid actions caught on tape for all the world to see is this:

Were the Montreal Police treating a homeless man like a runaway cow, or were the Gatineau Police treating a runaway cow like a homeless man?