We come bearing notes -- and plotlines -- for Law and Order Toronto
What law? Which order? With the iconic series venturing north of the border, the writer imagines a story more true-to-life than anything viewers can expect.
From time to time, we enjoy mixing up the format here at Acceptable Views; particularly for our paid subscribers who make this all possible. Not writing about Trudeau every week affords the writer the opportunity to stave off MAID, and to limit the concussive blows he takes from beating his head against the wall.
With Dick Wolf’s celebrated, decades-long Law & Order series inexplicably coming to the hastily-decaying Toronto — while looking terrible, might we add — this felt like an opportunity for the writer to present a storyboard, RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES, for consideration.
*Dun-dun*
It’s winter. Grey and bland. Not as comically grey and bland as the trailer for Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent, mind you, but appropriately lifeless all the same.
In the grand French Canadian tradition, Detective Phillipe Marleau takes a drag from his now twenty-dollar pack of Du Maurier cigarettes with the windows rolled up in his car. On the radio, he hears a politician with vocal fry lying about spending the weekend speaking with concerned children in Alberta. He can tell that they’re lying, because it’s his business to be able to tell when they’re lying.
Deep down, he also finds it particularly strange that the Canadian left keeps attempting to have side-bar conversations with children.
“Stranger danger,” he mutters to himself, with nary a hint of the accent that left him long ago, before sighing deeply at the prospects of another silver day in the GTA.
He steps out onto the street — and into human feces.
That’s the third time this week. Tabarnak.
Temporarily distracted by the curse words in his head, and the efforts to shake the refuse from another ‘safe supply’ superstar from his black Timberlands, he narrowly misses getting ear-holed by not one but two Indian Uber Eats ‘cyclists’ clocking in at 30 KM/H on their E-bikes, with eyes that never left their GPS screens.
For the love of-
He then slips on a veritable skating rink of vomit and urine, steadying himself on the hood of his unmarked Crown Vic for long enough to reach the sidewalk unharmed.
*Crunch*
His calamitous start to the day not yet over, Marleau found himself standing upon a City of Toronto-brand crack pipe.
His partner, waiting on the sidewalk, could only chuckle.
“That’s why I voted for Anthony Furey,” Marleau seethed.
“No kidding,” replied his partner, every bit as disenfranchised as Marleau, even at ten years his junior.
“Ready to waste your time with another vehicle theft, boss?” He continued.
“Sure am. To serve and protect.” Marleau replied, with more than a hint of sarcasm in his voice.
Marleau lit another cigarette while cleaning off the souls of his boots in a snow bank.
“You know that’s bad for you, right?” His partner offered, while vaping ethylene glycol and other industrial compounds oft-used for hydraulic freeze and brake oil deep into his lungs.
Marleau grunted disapprovingly as the two ascended the steps to a semi-detached Annex home off Palmerston Street. Across from the home, he had noticed another homeless encampment had sprung up in the aftermath of Olivia Chow’s mayoral by-election victory.
Another case closed. At least I know who’s responsible for the biohazard on my feet.
The ‘case,’ if one could even call it that, would be like all the others: A team of military-aged males, who should already be in jail — or, honestly, deported — pull up in the dead of night, spend a few minutes deploying a ‘relay attack’ to hijack the fob signal inside, and off they go, bound for a shipping container in Brampton.
Even if the homeowner or tenant had them dead to rights on video, they were instructed to kick the problem to their insurance company. What little resources the police even had, after their budget was cannibalized by a corrupt and bloated admin class, and performative, anti-actual-policing ‘DEI’ initiatives, meant they didn’t have the time, the men, nor the bandwidth to do their jobs.
“But I have their faces on video — look!” The homeowner had shouted, shoving the Ring footage on his iPhone into Marleau’s face, nearly breaking his nose.
“I’m sorry, sir,” the detective replied. “Look, the brass told us that’s a violation of the thieves’ privacy. Best you only show that to your insurance company. You’ve had a terrible start to your day, let’s not have you sued for defamation by another Trudeau success story.”
His borderline non-sequitur had caused the face of the aggrieved to sour.
The homeowner, who had a giant “I support my neighbours in tents!” sign on his front lawn, while offering those across the street neither food nor shelter, still had a ways to go in understanding that the last few years of policy and “defund the policy” had turned the denizens of even the most well-meaning of progressive enclaves into frogs in a pot; and now the water was boiling.