Duncan Kinney vs. the Edmonton Police
I am paying very, very close attention to the news that Edmonton Police have charged Duncan Kinney with vandalism. The alleged crime? Writing “actual Nazi” on an actual Nazi’s statue back in 2021. You can read about the story here.
(And hey, if you’re a Ukrainian national organization, it’s a really bad look to call an actual, bona fide, guy-who-murdered 100,000 Poles Nazi, a hero. This is not Russian disinfo, as they claim in the article).
When I first read this story, I thought — wow, Duncan wrote “actual Nazi on a Nazi statue, that’s cool.” But I hadn’t read the story closely. When I read it again, I realized I had missed a critical detail: Duncan had written about this himself for The Progress Report. Here, he gives a detailed explanation of who Roman Shukhevych was: https://www.theprogressreport.ca/monuments_to_nazi_collaborators_in_edmonton_vandalized_again
This is where the record scratch happens: are we really to believe that Duncan Kinney did vandalism and then broke the story?
I don’t know Duncan. We’ve spoken in the past about his research into Edmonton police but we aren’t friends. I do know that he’s an ethical guy. Maybe I’m wrong but I’d place $500 on him not having done this — the key piece of evidence being that he *wrote about it after.*
But that’s just my opinion. Let’s talk about some facts.
The police have not said what evidence they have that links Duncan to this crime. That isn’t great under any circumstance (usually we get a hint about why someone was charged with a crime) but in this circumstance, it really matters. Why?
An investigation into graffiti that took more than a year seems like a weird use of police resources.
Duncan is a dogged critic of the Edmonton police. On Oct. 5, he wrote about how the police union accused Edmonton Mayor Amarjeet Sohi of not supporting them because he didn’t attend an event. Sohi’s response? He wasn’t invited and didn’t know about it. On Oct. 3, he wrote about an officer who lied in court, but didn’t get jail time for her purjory charge. On Sept. 29, he wrote about policing and the downtown. On Sept 28, he wrote about police brutality … you get the idea.
Any time a police critic is charged with a crime, the public needs to demand that police are transparent about their charges. That’s basic. While I appreciate that not everyone would look at these facts and conclude that Duncan didn’t do this, we still need to be skeptical that a police critic is somehow a neutral individual when it comes to policing.
On Twitter, I have been critical that journalists have not jumped into this to demand more information from Edmonton police. Because Duncan is a leftwing guy, I’ve seen more mainstream journalists dismiss him as a journalist than defend him.
Even worse, journalists can’t bother to get the basic facts correct — Canadian Press misidentified Duncan’s outlet.
As someone who is closer to Duncan in this industry than I am to someone like Andrew Coyne, this is all extremely obvious to me. If it turns out that Duncan vandalized the statue and then wrote about it, that would be indefensible.
But the silence from organizations like the Canadian Association of Journalism speaks volumes. Not only is he being harassed by police, the charges have given far-right trolls license to harass him even more. Duncan Kinney isn’t part of Canada’s insider club of journalists. He doesn’t deserve support. He barely deserves being called a journalist.
It’s really gross and sad. Even outside from all of these details, considering the rise of the far right, my god, journalists could at least use this as a moment to talk about how mainstream Canada tolerates Naziism and memorialization.
But remember — as Duncan Kinney does the critical police reporting that he does from the sidelines of a small, progressive outlet, you got guys like Bryan Passifiume disparaging him. Bryan is a parliamentary reporter for the National Post and is someone who, in his Twitter bio right after “dad”, says that he’s a “proud gora from Brampton” i.e. a proud white guy i.e. not a racist dog whistle, a racist fog horn.
Solidarity with Duncan. He’s not just getting it from the cops and the far right, but the combination of smarmy replies from the likes of Passifiume and silence from others is a sad comment on the state of mainstream journalism in this country and it’s deference (and even support!) to police and power.
Has he denied doing it?