He's sorry.
This city's police chief isn't entering the confessional for anything he's done.
He's sorry because when you're at the controls and your underlings decide to go on an unscripted spacewalk it's up to you to abort the mission and take responsibility on behalf of the organization you command.
It's knowing where the buck stops and cleaning up a mess before it gets way too silly.
"I took my eye off the ball for a minute. The messaging fell through the cracks. I've apologized to the minister," says Chief Rick Hanson. "We didn't mean to cause grief. We had no intention of escalating photo enforcement."
The minister the city's top cop is talking about is the province's shoot-from-the-lip king of the roads, Transportation Minister Luke Ouellette.
Luke was mighty hot under the collar when he heard last weekend what was coming out of the mouth of a higher-up Calgary traffic cop.
Everyone knows, starting this Wednesday, the city police will use red-light cameras to begin snapping speeders through intersections. If you speed, the police say you could score a fine of up to $351.
But, and here's where the grief kicks in, the message from Calgary was cops would lay a careless driving charge in some circumstances.
Obviously, they didn't realize just because Wednesday is April Fool's Day it didn't mean they had to play the part.
Of course, the provincial poobahs up in Edmonton went ballistic.
In 14 months of huddling with the police and legal officials about the ground rules for the cameras, and endless meetings to painfully create an idiot-proof songsheet so everyone is in tune, no mention is made of careless driving charges.
And for good reason.
Think about it. It's reasonable to believe you could get a conviction for running a red light if you have a picture of someone's vehicle going through the red.
It is also within normal brain power to figure if there's speeding through an intersection and the camera clocks the speed and takes the picture, the charge of a vehicle going over the speed limit stands a good chance of holding up in court.
Now, take careless driving. How do the cops make a case against someone behind the wheel driving carelessly when all they can do is take a picture and lay a charge against the registered owner of the vehicle?
Now, thinking caps on and you don't need a law degree.
How easy do you think it would be for the registered owner to go to court and say he or she wasn't the careless driver because they weren't driving and the ticket doesn't say they were driving and the camera can't prove they were driving?
Luke (Hot Under The Collar) Ouellette connects the dots and tells us all the police can't charge someone with careless driving unless they have the person's licence in their hand.
A real, live cop has to pull the person over. Duh.
The people who fight tickets couldn't wait to see this comedy show roll out.
Guys like Charlie Pester, who is the Alexander Ovechkin of this town's traffic court, would be shooting at an empty net.
But did the traffic cop brass back down? No. When they saw the big brick wall staring them straight in the face they put on the gas.
No surprise. A few weeks ago, the cops fumble an announcement of a study supposedly showing the benefits of red-light cameras, making more of the numbers than what was there.
For once, it's not solely about dough.
A careless driving ticket is $402 and the speeding beef is up to $351 and failing to stop at a red is $287.
Maybe the careless threat is supposed to scare us, to send a message. It's too loopy to try and figure out.
What can be figured out is the province really wanted citizens to buy into the safety reasons for speed-on-green cameras.
The Calgary police detour was a distraction and political people do not like distractions.
Anyway, Hanson stepped in, discussions have been held, the oops is acknowledged, the apology accepted.
The police chief does say the film from the cameras will be used to forward any evidence connected with the investigation of a collision.
For your information, another ticket is coming our way. Last fall, an all-party committee of MLAs hung up on a plan to ban the use of hand-held cellphones while driving.
Instead they opted for the province's deep thinkers to come up with a distracted driving charge.
The charge will be for people driving out of order because they're doing anything causing them not to pay attention. Distracted driving will be lower on the scale than careless driving. Expect something by summer.
As for Hanson, he's back to fighting the baddest of the bad. As for the spacewalk?
"It's fixed," he says.
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