The Effects of the First Nations Policing Program

The services provided in a city are largely dependent on the city’s culture. For that reason, policing services change from one city to another. Overall, however, it can be said that in large cities, residents have very few interactions with the police. Despite the lack of interaction (or perhaps, because of it), residents generally feel they are protected and have trust in the police’s discretion. Consequently, the relationship between officers and citizens are seldom strained which greatly impacts how police officers do their job. Thus, there is a cycle in which the culture affects policing, and policing affects the culture.

This cycle does not only apply to urban centers, but also to rural areas and isolated communities. However, the positive perception of police often held in large cities is not necessarily the case in isolated First Nations communities. This is in part due to the differences in culture, but also to the difference in policing. In 1991, the federal government established the First Nations Policing Program (FNPP). This program provides funding from both the federal (52%) and provincial governments (48%) towards the community’s policing services. Under the FNPP, the federal and provincial government make an agreement with the First Nations community. These agreements can take one of two forms: the Self-Administered Agreements which allows the First Nations community to manage its own police service; or the community can be policed by an existing police body through the Community Tripartite Agreements (Aboriginal Policing, 2015). Although this program is meant to support communities, it is important to note that this policing program was created by the federal government with relatively small input from First Nations communities themselves. This could mean that while many residents may feel safer with the presence of police officers, many may see it as yet another form of colonialism and Eurocentric ideas imposed on their communities. This can have a significant effect on how the population reacts to the police which further affects how the police reacts to the community. To better understand this relationship and the benefits of the FNPP, we must investigate the impacts it has had since it was first established.

A study by Rudell, Lithopoulos, and Jones (2014) analyzes some of the important impacts of the FNPP. The study includes 236 communities which are policed by seventy-seven police detachments (Rudell, Lithopoulos, & Jones, 2014). This analysis is based on four factors associated with the costs of policing, as well as police strength. These included the Crime Severity Index (CSI), which accounts for crimes reported to the police; the community well-being (CWB) index;  and two indicators of police strength, per capita policing costs and the ratio of officers to residents (Rudell, Lithopoulos, & Jones, 2014). The study found that crime, as measured by the CSI, in the communities studied was three to four times the national average (Rudell, Lithopoulos, & Jones, 2014). The high crime rate normally indicates that more police officers are needed in these communities to lower the crime instances; but at 5.83 officers per 1000 residents, this ratio is almost three times higher than the nation’s average (Rudell, Lithopoulos, & Jones, 2014). Although the latter finding indicates that increasing the police force is not the solution, we must note that officers deployed to First Nations communities work in sparsely populated areas and are often responsible for policing very large areas. Consequently, response times are slower as the travel time between communities is longer. This problem is also shown in the CWB index, with First Nations communities scoring 17% less than the national average on well-being (Rudell, Lithopoulos, & Jones, 2014). Additionally, the study shows a correlation between isolated communities, overall well-being and police costs, with the well-being decreasing and the costs increasing the more isolated a community is (Rudell, Lithopoulos, & Jones, 2014). While the FNPP is funded directly by the federal and provincial governments, the funding is allocated to multiple sectors of policing. For instance, the funding provided must cover the costs of relocating and housing officers, and because deployments are usually short, the costs increase (Rudell, Lithopoulos, & Jones, 2014). Overall, the study indicates that the costs of policing an isolated community are too high for the lack of positive effects the program has had on these communities.

Similar results had been found in a survey conducted in 2013 by Auditor General Michael Ferguson. CBC released a story of this survey’s findings and likely gave many Canadians the impression that the FNPP is not working. According to this story, since its establishment in 1991 until 2013, the federal government alone has funded the FNPP a total of 1.7 billion dollars (The Canadian Press, 2014). While 442 First Nations communities have benefited from this funding, Auditor General Michael Ferguson believes that this amount is not enough. Doug Palson, chief of the Dakota Ojibway Police Service in Manitoba, reiterated this problem in his statement that short-term funding makes it difficult to run his department (The Canadian Press, 2014). Ferguson’s survey of 10 Chiefs with Self-Administered Agreements also showed a significant lack of documentation, from how the funding is spent to how police officers are being selected (The Canadian Press, 2014). Most notably, Ferguson found that there is very little input from the First Nations communities themselves (The Canadian Press, 2014); this shows a failure to incorporate all principles of the FNPP agreements. Overall, the survey comprehensively showed that the First Nations Policing Program is not adequately policing communities due to a lack of funding and oversight.

It is clear from both studies that while the FNPP has good intentions, it is not working for First Nations communities. Needless to say, the main issue with the FNPP is funding; simply, the program needs more of it. However, there are other issues which need to be addressed in order for the communities to benefit from the programs. First of all, the study by Rudell, Lithopoulos, & Jones (2014) showed that the program’s funding is mostly spent on police costs, such as the relocation and housing of police officers due to short-term deployments. One possible solution to lower the costs would be to establish permanent and long-term positions within the communities. The benefit of this would be two-fold; it would give officers the opportunity to be involved and increase their understanding of the community’s culture, and it would also strengthen the relationship between officers and residents. Furthermore, the FNPP would become more than a policing program imposed by the federal government, and would increase residents’ satisfaction with the police. Additionally, communities would benefit from non-sworn officials, such as band constables. These officers are knowledgeable in the community and help create stronger relationships between the police and residents. Another issue is the high crime rate which consequently increases the need for policing. By creating community based programs designated to reduce crime, police officers would become more involved with the community while also preventing crime; while this strategy may produce more costs, it would have long-term impacts on the communities and could potentially reduce the amount of officers needed. Most importantly, to improve the effects of the FNPP, the federal government needs to seek input from First Nations persons as they are the ones directly impacted by the policing program, regardless of costs. This would allow residents to be involved in their community and to have control over their community’s general well-being. Furthermore, residents’ involvement would also help to create a relationship with officers and could change the negative perception of police officers within the culture. In conclusion, as it stands now, Canada’s policing program for First Nations communities has high costs, but does not a positive impact on communities. In order to have a policing program which adequately addresses the community’s concerns, there needs to be changes in both the culture and policing programs; thus, improving the cycle of policing and culture.

References

Aboriginal Policing: First Nations Policing Program [Website]. (2015, February 11). Retrieved from https://www.publicsafety.gc.ca.

Ruddell, R., Lithopoulos, S., & Jones, N.A. (2014). Crime, costs, and well being: policing Canadian Aboriginal communities. Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management, 37 (4), 779-796. Retrieved from https://www.emeraldinsight.com

The Canadian Press (2014, May 06). First Nations policing program slammed by auditor genera. CBC News. Retrieved from https://www.cbc.ca

Our Youth Need Our Help

Every stage of life is important; from each we learn skills that will carry us through life. I think adolescence gets written off sometimes; we see the importance of childhood and adulthood, but we forget how that middle stage shapes us. Adolescence is a time of becoming, when we begin to ask the important questions. By adulthood we believe ourselves to be experienced, but it is in adolescence that we gain that experience – usually by making mistakes. As adults we may view adolescents as immature, inexperienced, and too young, all things that are often true. But we forget how difficult that time was, the unique challenges that we each faced without the knowledge that life would get better and that we would grow up to be stronger because of them.

Luckily, you and I made it out alive. Unfortunately, not all adolescents do. More than 500 youth are homeless in our own city. Every day they struggle to meet their basic needs of food, shelter and clothing. The longer that they spend on the streets, the less chance they have of ever getting out. And the longer they go without support, the less chance they have of surviving.

There is the misconception that homeless people chose that “lifestyle”, that they’re lazy or just “bad kids”. The truth? Homelessness is never a choice. Homeless people want to work and support themselves. Homeless youth are not delinquents.

Many youth on the street have left home because of family violence and abuse, or because of their sexual orientation. Many have lived their whole lives in poverty and have lived on the streets with their families.

Think back to the challenges you faced and the ones you face today. Imagine overcoming those obstacles with an empty stomach and no place to go to at night; imagine never feeling safe and never knowing when your next meal will be. These are the realities lived by youth in Edmonton. Our youth need our help. Being an adolescent is hard enough already, but without support (and hope), many youth will not make it to adulthood.

Thankfully, YESS has made it their mission to stop homelessness and in particular, to help our youth. In behalf of Edmonton’s youth, I am asking for your help. On June 12^th, I will participating in Homeless for a Night, an event organized by YESS to raise awareness and funds for homeless youth. Please consider sponsoring me by clicking on the link below. By doing so, you will be changing lives.

To donate, please go here.

To view more information on YESS and their work, click here.

Thank you for your support.

An Agnostic’s View on Death

There are moments in life that make me want to write; not because I necessarily have anything to say, but because it helps me understand my own thoughts.

I avoid the topic of death because I have not had many experiences with it. While some may consider me lucky, about a year ago I realized just how unprepared I am to deal with it. In this past year, I have questioned the concept of death in my own terms. Some may turn to religion to understand it, or at least to feel better. But I have no religion and I do not pray to any god for answers. Why? Because I am agnostic. That means that I am neither a theist nor an atheist; I do not believe that that we can prove or disprove the “divine”. I first chose this label and method (to me, it is not a belief) because I didn’t want to participate in an organized religion. I recognize that religion can be powerful, and that in itself can be both beautiful and destructive; it can bring people together and create a sense of hope, but it can also harm and destroy lives. As an agnostic, I am an observer of both the religious and the atheist, and decide (hopefully without bias) what is right and what is wrong on my own.

When I first decided that I did not want to participate in religion, I thought that my only other option was atheism. I welcomed this thought because I knew that atheists base their beliefs in science and fact, and that sounds awesome to me. But then I realized that I was not ready to make that jump, I felt that I was going from one extreme to the other, and that just did not feel right. So I discovered that with agnosticism I had the best of two worlds. This decision has been hard to deal with at time, because so often I find that I am sure there is absolutely no higher power, no god or supernatural being, just us in this universe. In that sense, I am atheist because I will never believe there is a god, and I believe we should put our trust in science over anything we cannot  see.  So why am I telling you I am agnostic? It’s how I hold on to hope. Not necessarily hope that there is a god, I don’t see how we would benefit from that. But hope for something that I do not know nor have time or words to fully explain.

Now, I am sure that many of you (both religious and atheist) will think “MAKE UP YOUR (GODDAMN) MIND!”. Well, rest assured that I think that on a daily basis. I tell myself that I am a fake, I cannot possibly believe with my whole heart and mind that there is no god if I still hold hope that there is something out there. Most days I find that I am an atheist who chooses to be undecided. All I know is that I will never go back to religion and in believing there is a god; I only know that I will never know whether there is one.

So why am I saying this?

Agnosticism doesn’t tell me what happens after death. Religions give us the comfort of believing that there is a heaven or paradise after this life on earth, and atheism tells us that there is absolutely nothing – we are worm food and nothing else. When I was younger and believed in a higher power, I was always uncomfortable with the idea of heaven and hell. I could not bring myself to actually believe that while my body stayed underground, my “soul” would go to a better place. That is very odd to me. So, as an agnostic I have always agreed with atheists, that there is nothing once we die. While this may be scary for a lot of people, I was never scared with the idea of dying; if anything, it sounded more peaceful to me.

That, however, does not mean that dealing with someone else’s death is easier. When I was five years old, my maternal grandfather (my Abo) passed away. Now I remember parts of the months leading up to his death (he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer), and the moment that I found out. I didn’t cry, I didn’t understand why mother cried and why my dad so slowly explained to us what death meant. I didn’t cry until I about about eight years old, and for whatever reason it all of a sudden hit me while I was showering. It had finally hit me that death meant forever, death meant never getting to hug him again. My mom comforted me with the idea that Abo was watching over me, that he was with me as an angel. It was around that age that my sister and I started going to church and were  baptized. I guess I was looking for comfort that I would see Abo again.

Yesterday, my paternal grandmother (my abuela) passed away somewhat unexpectedly. As some of you many already know, she had Alzheimer’s. She was a woman who had the very unfortunate experience of losing a child, and although she was strong, it was evident that she had suffered. I cannot say much else without becoming upset, but I know that she loved us in her own way, even if at times I did not understand. In the 11 years that we have been away, dementia took over her brain and changed the woman we knew. I was lucky to be  able to visit this past December. Although, I have not spoken much about it, seeing her and then leaving was one of the hardest things I have done. It broke my heart to know that I may never have another chance to hug her again.

My mom keeps saying that now Abuela is in peace, she is no longer suffering. This is not as comforting as when I was 8 years old, because although I am glad that she is no longer in pain, I do not believe she is in a better place. To me, she is gone from this earth and I will really never hug or kiss her again.

I wish I could believe that she has gone to a heaven, that along with Abo she is watching over me. I wish that I believed that I will see her when I die. I am not sure if that would make this grief any better, but it is the only time since I became agnostic that I have really wished to know there is something bigger than us.

I am not writing this to find reassurance from either side; so please do not tell me that god will give me hope or that death means life is final. There is no particular reason as to why I write this, but I do hope many of you understand how I am dealing with the pain that my abuela’s death has caused me. In reality, I do not think that believing in a god or not will make this any easier, or even that time makes the pain go away. Only that death is difficult no matter what we believe in and that there is only comfort in knowing the suffering ends.

Tell me your experiences with birth control!

I have been wanting to write on the topic of birth control for quite a while now. As I learned more about the different methods, their risks and effectiveness, I have come to realize how uninformed many of us are on the topic. I strongly believe that our education system does not prepare girls for leading healthy, sexually active lives. So, as I do my research on the topic, and I learn more about the many options out there, I want to know about others’ experiences with birth control. Some questions to keep in mind:

What did you learn in elementary/junior/high school about sex and birth control methods?
What was your first experience with birth control? Did it work for you?
Do you think that as a young person you were given all the information you needed to have a healthy sex life?
What did you not know about sex/protection/STDs that could have helped you have a better experience?
What myths have you heard about birth control?
Do you believe that men should be responsible and wear condoms as the only form of protection?
What would you like to know?

Anything you can think of! Let me know! Also, share with others in your life! Although, this may appear to only be directed toward females, it is not so please share with your male friends as well.

I Have A Problem. And A Solution.

The day I signed up for Word Press, I giggled a little. At the time I had been thinking about the amount of time that I spent on the internet and on social networks specifically. So it seemed silly to be signing up for yet one more thing that would require me to sit in front of a laptop instead of doing so many other things. But due to school and all, I haven’t put as much effort into this since I first started. Over the past two months, I have had an extreme amount of thoughts going on through my head that I wanted to put down on paper (or keyboard). And… now they’re all very distant and I don’t even know what I wanted to say about them. Probably for the better.

So why am I writing this now when I could be catching up on my sleep?

Ah, well. I miss writing. And I want to write a little about writing.

It is an understatement to say that words are a huge part of our lives. Whether you can speak, hear, or sign them they are the ways that we express what we’re thinking and how we feel. Yes, there are other forms of expressing ourselves, through many forms of art which make writing seem pretty basic. But it’s my favorite. Not only because I am not creative in any other way, but because it has always been an important part of my life. Before I was ten years old I would write stories in Spanish as that was the only language that I knew, and it took me a while to start writing in English after I learned, other than school work. Eventually, I sort of became obsessed with writing. Before I joined the world of Facebook, I used to write letters to my friends in other cities. My obsession with reading also grew as I begun to read books that were out of my age group and I realized that there was a world outside of the 132 Baby-sitters Club books (that’s not even counting the mystery books). I was the most confident in English in high school because it gave me the opportunity to do something I was good at, or at least that I enjoyed.

But…, after I graduated high school I stopped writing for quite a while. I was no longer given a topic to write about, not even a picture and when the ideas didn’t come, I stopped. When I started taking it up again I was starting university and the writing I had to do for school took away all the inspiration I had for creative writing. Not only that, but I started to spend more and more time social networking; sometimes I would have new word document open to start writing but I would continue to just go back to Facebook.

Which brings be to the point of this late-night blog. Facebook has ruined my writing. As I’m sure many of you have felt before, I have this compulsive need to check my newsfeed, ALL THE TIME. I even have a morning routine; before I get out of bed I will have checked my Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. If I received emails while I was sleeping, I will check those too (although most of the time I just delete them). Lately I have also had the compulsive need to check my school website to see if any of my marks went up, but I think that’s just normal. So before I have even brushed my teeth, I am caught up on the lives of hundreds of people. And yet, that’s not enough. Throughout the day I find myself checking all those sites again, along with Google+ and my work email. If no one is texting me at the time, I will scrawl up and down my newsfeeds multiple times, as if I missed something the last ten times I checked in the past hour.

If you are judging me right now, you have every right to. I have a problem, I know it. Through some soul searching I have convinced myself that the potential for a good story is at my fingertips (literally).

Every problem has a solution. And the solution to mine is to cut out social networks. Which makes me laugh, because there is no way that I am going cold turkey on this. So I will have to slowly reduce my time (I will be counting) until I feel that it’s no longer a problem. I had said a few weeks ago that I would be joining YouTube as well.  The plan was to start a channel once this school year was over, and to follow my topics with this blog; so since other social networks will be out and I should be writing more on here, the YouTube thing will eventually happen. Although I’m not quite sure how comfortable I feel talking in front of a camera, so we will see!

Either way, expect to see me less! But expect to see more writing. These blogs will be the first part of writing that I will focus on, and eventually I will hopefully be writing many other things!

AND! If you have topics, ideas, pictures, art, stories, ANYTHING that could possibly help get me started, please go ahead and share them. Even if you give me a topic that I know nothing about, I will do my research and I will learn!

Thanks for following tonight’s train of thought!

An Inspiration

On WordPress when you click ‘New Posts’ there’s a little link at the bottom asking if you need an inspiration. Normally my answer would be “YES! PLEASE, INSPIRE ME!!”; not because I find it hard to see the good in the world, but because the everyday hassles of life get in the way.  And I make excuses.

Well, not tonight.  I don’t need to click on any link to be inspired because I have found an inspiration.  His name is Shane Burcaw.  I cannot do this guy justice, so I recommend that you check out his Tumblr, www.laughingatmynightmare.tumblr.com.  But there is also a video at the end of this post that I think you should watch as well.

I do have a few things to say about this though.  We all struggle with crap: work, school, love life, family, annoying pets, weather… you name in. Every day has the potential of being good, but often problems get in the way of that and we don’t allow the day to reach its full potential.  We sort of let that day die; morbid, I know.  But we have the opportunity of making that day better. There are hundreds ways that you could, but there is one easy and inexpensive method that can make your day better: laughter.

I think Shane is truly remarkable for that. His personality and attitude radiate optimism.  He could easily have a negative attitude due to living with Spinal Muscular Atrophy, but instead he takes a positive perspective on life. He is also surrounded by people who have the same attitude as him which I think also helps his attitude.  They share laughter even when they laugh at themselves. I don’t think we do that enough, we are too embarrassed or ashamed by ourselves that we often just shrug it off and pretend silly things didn’t happen. But instead we should be taken the opportunity to laugh at any change we get, even if it’s at our own mistakes.

Positivity is something that I am personally lacking in my life.  In the middle of writing papers, studying and trying to keep up with everything and everyone I seem to struggle with keeping a positive attitude.  But today I was inspired by Shane, and I know that I can easily change my attitude by just laughing a bit more.

From this video I took something very important: it is crucial to our happiness that we surround ourselves with people who are optimistic, who have a positive perspective on life and who can rise above problems to get to the other side much stronger.  Those people make our lives better. Surround yourselves with them, love them and absorb their happiness and of course, thank them for being so bright.

As many of you who know me personally, I am not an optimist; I like to think of myself as realist (but I was told that’s what pessimists say). But I know that positivity can hugely affect my life, so I’m going to give it a try.

I do recommend that you watch this video and I hope that you are inspired by it, too. I hope that you at least stop and think, that’s the most important part.

And laugh.

(All credit goes to SoulPancake at http://www.youtube.com/user/soulpancake)

The Justice System and Mental Illness: The Case of Vince Li

Recently in my comparative literature class, we were discussing the advancement of technology since the beginning of the 20^th century.  At that point in time, it was difficult (in today’s standards) to communicate with anyone across the world. Fast forward a century and we could not possibly be more connected to the rest of the world. This has been made possible by no other than our wonderful friend, the Internet. Lately, I have found myself thinking about this friend quite often.  I’m basically on everything; Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Google+, Youtube, and now WorldPress. I know I am missing a few, but please do not suggest them because I will join them. It’s a compulsive sickness. How do these websites benefit my life, you ask? Well, I am connected to everyone around me, of course!

Well, I’m not really connected to everyone. This post is not about the barriers that the Internet has created in our lives, though; I will save that topic for a sunnier day. However, I will talk about a few things that I find on the Internet that disturb me. While I am often amazed by the wonderful things we can do with the Internet, I am also often scared by it.

For instance, I was scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed today, and something jumped out at me. It was one of those push sites that I don’t follow but end up seeing some of their random updates anyway. This one in particular was about Vince Li, the man who decapitated Tim McLean on a Greyhound bus. The comments on this article were kind of crazy. People were saying that Li should be eaten alive by dogs, and that only a cry baby has a mental illness. It really, really, really angered me. Let me explain why.

I remember hearing this story when it first happened back in 2008, and I can image my response was something like “OH MY GOD, HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN?!” or something along those lines. And I am sure I was not the only one. I was scared and confused as to how this could happen in Canada. Eventually I found out that Li has schizophrenia, a mental illness normally associated with delusions, such as hearing voices or even seeing people that are not really there.  Did this make me less scared? Of course not; perhaps it made me even more scared as I did not understand the mental illness or anything about our justice system. Since then, I have learned quite a bit about it, but I do still continue to learn.  The thing about our court system is that it’s quite complex, and continues to develop as our society grows and changes. In a black and white world, Canada’s court system doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense. But in the real world, the different shades of grey world, it gets the work done.

Here is something brief that you need to know.

When a crime occurs, in order for the offender to be charged, there are two things that the court looks at: Actus reus and Mens rea. 

Actus reus is the “guilty act”. This requires an action to have happened, and of course evidence that not only did the crime occur, but that the accused committed it. This is the easiest to prove.

Mens rea is the “guilty mind”. This is the criminal intent that the accused had at the time of the crime.  This is always the hardest to prove, especially in cases where mental illness plays a role.  This is where Not Criminally Responsible comes in. On TV and movies, we see this used in court quite often. For example, in Side Effects, Emily is in a haze when she stabs her husband to death.  She is found to be not criminally responsible due to the drugs that she took that make her not aware of her actions. And because we see this one TV we think that this defense is used more often than it actually is. Well, it turns out that it’s really hard to determine whether a person was lucid at the time of the crime unless there are live witnesses to prove it. So more often than not, Not Criminally Responsible is not used, and when it is, it tends to fail.

But what does it mean to be found NCR? Some people think this means that the offender is not punished for his/her crime, and they’re allowed to go on with their lives as if the crime was never committed. I find this a little silly, just because the person has a mental illness that caused them to do the crime does not mean they will be allowed to go as if nothing happened. Where do these ideas come from? Well, I think our idea of punishment heavily determines it. We think that punishment for a crime is simply jail time, and most of the time it does happen that way. But in reality, punishment is taking away things that the offender values, including liberty. This is not limited to jail time, but depending on the type and severity of the crime, it can be community service, house arrest, or any type of punishment that the court finds fit. Also, the point of the punishment is also to make sure that the offender doesn’t commit the crime again. I understand that if we are directly affected by a crime, we don’t really care about the offender, we just want justice served. But truth is, justice is not served if the offender serves 10 years of jail only to come out and commit the same crime again. While in jail, each person needs to go through rehabilitation and prove that they have learned. If they’re not able to show this at the time of their parole, they will not be allowed to go and will continue to serve their sentence.

Well, the same people that think that those found NCR are not punished tend to be the ones who agree that people with mental disorders, such as Vince Li, do not receive the right punishment by being institutionalized in a mental hospital. In my opinion, a mental hospital is the only proper care that these offenders can receive. In a jail, they would not receive the right treatment to become law abiding citizens, and their mental illness would worsen.  Not only that, but they would be interacting with the “wrong” type of people that would only impede their recovery.

I bring this all up because Vince Li was found NCR due to having schizophrenia. At the time of the crime, Li believed there were aliens out to get him and was afraid for his own life. He was not aware of what he was doing and acted out to defend himself. Now that he has received the treatment in a mental hospital, he is taking medication and seeing psychiatrists basically 24/7.  These psychiatrists that have treated him since he was first institutionalized have said that Li has made tremendous progress and is not at all violent.

What is my opinion? Even though I know that there are problems with our justice system, I believe that the punishment that Vince Li received is correct. I think it has allowed his schizophrenia to be treated in the proper way and that he can contribute to society. I think that we need to be better educated on mental illness before we voice our opinions. I am really bothered by what I saw on Facebook, not only because someone actually suggested Li be eaten alive by dogs, but because lack of education has caused that opinion. Of course, the Internet plays a huge role in that because we can post what we think in any social network without having to know what we are talking about. Instead, we should take advantage of the Internet and gain knowledge. Let’s all do that.

This, of course, has been my opinion (except for the tid bits that are actual fact).