St. Patrick's celebrations

[jeffster]

And for those that do go to court to fight the charge, they'll successfully do so by stating the obvious: everyone was doing it. It's not a "why me" scenario, but rather point out that they were simply going with the "flow of traffic" -- which then makes the charge unreasonable.

I'd love to know in which courthouse the "flow of traffic" makes a charge unreasonable?

Everyone else was speeding has never been an acceptable defence.  You ticket what you can, and hope the visibility of the enforcement educates the others.  If not, you get them next time.

By using your logic, there would never be a sucessful charge of riotting, organized crime or gang rape.

Coke

The "flow of traffic" I was referring to that obviously that everyone does between 110 and 120 on the 401, for example, and police simply don't enforce it, despite literally everyone breaking the law. However, if you had an officer pull you over at 115 over on the 401, your defence that *everyone* was going that fast or faster would be solid - even without a lawyer you'd win. I bring up the 'unreasonable' charge as I did have an officer pull me over for something, which the court said I was absolutely guilty of, but the court also found the officer to be 100% completely unreasonable in charging me. This was interesting too because usually the charging officer doesn't show up in court to back up his charge, be this guy did. Whatever the case, the charges were dropped by the judge.

That said, if you were going 130 on the 401 and got nailed, the excuse 'going with the flow' would be categorically incorrect, we know that, the police know that, and the judge knows that.

The same would apply to this event. Literally everyone is breaking the law, the law had never been enforced before, so it would be very difficult have any charge stick.

As for your 3 examples: Rioting -- I've seen riots before, and one thing you will see, 95% of the people are not breaking the law, while 5% are. Of that 5%, a very small amount of people are caught, but charges are sometimes successful because police would have ample proof that the amount of people involved in violence, looting, or vandalism was small in comparison to everyone there (the observers).

Organized crime -- I had family involved in that, and they didn't go to jail. Organized crime is super successful because those involved in it have the proper connection in police and judges and politicians that they can get away with a lot of stuff. This is why we still have organized crime. Cops get rich, so they lose the perps all the time. Quebec is a perfect example how high quality organized crime can actually run local, provincial and federal governments. You don't see any PM, MP, Premier or MPP from Quebec going to jail, ever.

As for gang rape, I have no idea how that applies to anything here. Before I say too much more, in what context are you using gang rape and how it relates to a 'everyone else was doing it' attitude? Closest thing I can think about is what goes on with football teams and generally, yeah, they do get away with rape because the parents and school can afford good lawyers to put enough blame on the victim or privilege to have the charges reduced to probation.

That said, as with speeding on the 401, zero enforcement for these petty crimes become nearly impossible to successfully charge. It might be OK if they start doing this year after year, and perhaps by year 3 or 4 courts would side with the city, just like the courts would eventually side with the police if they started to enforce low level speeding offences on the highway.