Victoria, B.C. (Canadian Press) – A former RCMP officer has been found not guilty of sex crimes.
Gary Rudy Groenke, 48, was acquitted of all three charges in Supreme court in Victoria Friday.
He had been on trial in Port Alberni last month for an alleged sexual assault of a minor, sexual assault and invitation to sexual touching. All charges related to events the Crown said happened in 1991 in Port Alberni and involved a young Sechelt boy.
The trial lasted six days.
Gendai, you have allowed yourself to be excessively influenced by the media. Police bashing is the current trend in the media, and they sensationalize every negative police story in order to sell more newspapers or improve their ratings.
There are tens of thousands of police officers in Canada who are involved with millions of calls for service each year. Yet only a few dozen negative stories per year appear in the headlines.
Actually, good news stories outnumber the bad news at least 100:1. Think of all the headlines about arrests, charges, drug busts, etc by your local police force. But I guess it’s human nature to consider such incidents as expected and they are easily forgotten.
The negative stories, however, are much more sensational and the media hypes them to the maximum. We are more likely to remember those stories for a longer time and consider them as cumulative evidence of a dysfunctional police force, even though the individual incidents are likely completely unrelated.
This negative public perception is caused by the unbalanced media portrayal of the police that has become popular. It does not represent an overall problem with this nation’s police officers.
But the media, like the general public, has a limited attention span. The negative police stories are starting to get old and tired and don’t sell as many papers as they did last summer. Just like all the global warming stories a few years ago (remember those? every day there was a new climate change report…those reports are still coming, they just don’t make headlines anymore) , these negative police stories are going out of fashion and we won’t see as many of them over the coming months.
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Why are there so many stories coming out on police these days. How can we even trust anyone today. Police are suppose to be someone we all can turn to and trust to do waht is right but with what I have read here it`s just not so anymore.
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That, and:
- the defendant produced receipts to the effect that the visit took place later than what the accused stated and the crown had indicated. He actually had a copy of the receipts for the plane ticket. This wouldn’t go well in endorsing the credibility of the plaintiff.
- Receipts were also produced indicating that the accuser had visited the defendant and his family at least three more times after the alleged hotel incident. (Eg. if you were abused, why would you leave your family and get on a plane to go back and visit your abuser?)
- The judge wasn’t convinced that any sexual contact took place at all.
This guy hadn’t been a cop for almost 20 years, in fact, if he wasn’t a cop ever this story probably would not have been reported and definitely not on here. I think the paperwork is what ended up clearing him.
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Ya need witnesses
When it comes to a police officer and you – you are not believed in a court of law
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