Editor's note: this is not satire.
WEST VANCOUVER Police appealed for public assistance last week to help identify a driver accused of ‘defacing’ a recently installed LGBTQ Pride crosswalk with a tyre mark.
The police department’s twitter feed announced they would be “investigating a mischief to property, after someone defaced the department’s new Pride crosswalk.”
Investigators would like to speak with the driver responsible for defacing a recently installed Pride crosswalk at 16th St. and Esquimalt Ave. If you have information, please call 604-925-7300. https://t.co/ywkNR4DMAv pic.twitter.com/ViW0ZxcxYN
— West Vancouver PD (@WestVanPolice) July 8, 2020
“On July 7, 2020 at 4:04pm staff inside the police station heard a loud and sustained tyre squealing outside. When officers took a closer look, they discovered that someone had just left tyre marks across a portion of the crosswalk.”
“This is very upsetting,” Cst. Kevin Goodmurphy said. “For whatever reason, this person has chosen to leave a gesture of hate on a crosswalk that stands for the exact opposite.”
So in Wokier than Woke Canada, a crosswalk now stands for something … other than just, you know, where to safely cross the road.
The problem, of course, is that when you turn a section of road into a political message you’re unsure whether a subsequent tyre mark on that same section of road is also a political message.
And so it was that when Vancouver Police discovered a tyre mark on their rainbow coloured crosswalk last Tuesday, they suspected it was a homophobic tyre mark.
In Vancouver, if you leave a tyre mark on a regular crosswalk it’s called driving. If you leave a tyre mark on an LGBTQ Pride crosswalk, it’s called a hate crime.
So congratulations to the West Vancouver police for making a mockery of police work. At a time when many of us are trying to support police amid controversy, it's tough to argue against defunding the police when police resources are being used to protect pro-gay crosswalks from anti-gay Bridgestones.
Actually, before we defund the Canadian police, perhaps they could check to see who ordered the rain and washed away my daughter’s sidewalk chalk picture!
But I digress.
If you can be arrested for driving over a crosswalk in a disrespectful manner, you wouldn’t want to walk across it with muddy shoes. Perhaps it’s just safer to only use West Vancouver’s LGBTQ Pride crosswalk if you’re gay.
Police investigating tyre marks on a crossing is funny because it’s ridiculous. But it’s worse than ridiculous; it’s wrong. When you politicise crosswalks and then prosecute someone for driving on it, you are forcing political views on a population via its environment.
In defence of the West Vancouver police, the photo they tweeted of the offending tyre mark did seem to indicate that the driver of the car was making a right turn, which everyone knows is more hateful than a left turn.
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James Macpherson is a sought after international speaker with a background in journalism at the Courier Mail and Daily Telegraph. He previously pastored a significant church in Australia and South Africa. James' weekly Good Sauce podcast comes out every Tuesday. He also writes regularly for The Spectator.
