(Thomas Froese Photo)
A Hamilton police officer at the recent Dundas Cactus Parade poses for a photo.
(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, Aug. 30, 2025)
As far as the police go, I want it known this Labour Day that I’m all for them. And not just because I’m afraid that they’ll put me in cuffs someday for taking the wrong photo at the wrong time.
Me: “I’m just doing my job.”
Officer: “Me too.”
I’ll then say that their police budget should be increased twelvefold, every officer with four months paid holiday to Hawaii. Regardless, the officer will put me in the back of their cruiser.
But I’m learning.
This is because my summer highlight was witnessing a police takedown. It wasn’t on Take Your Kids to Work Day. Think special forces, guns drawn, suspect forced from car to ground, all just a couple of parking spots away, me just minding my business in a parking lot that I’ll never reveal. (Okay, maybe it was Tim Hortons at Peters Corners in Flamborough.)
It was like the movies. Or visiting Buffalo. The imaginary little guy on my shoulder kept screaming, “Take a photo!” The little guy on my other shoulder countered, “Don’t do it! Remember Uganda!”
What happened in Uganda is as follows: 1: I got robbed. 2: I got a column from it.
My family can confirm this largely sums up my existence. Anything is a column. A dog. That’s a column. The dog pees on a bush. That’s a column photo.
Column photos are important. I can’t reveal exact details, but it involves money. Very big money, people. It was in small-town Ontario where I started making this big money at a paper where I was told to get so-called “GPs” or general photos. Every day. So I was trained on barren landscape.
By the time I landed in the Middle East and East Africa – I realize I’ve skipped a few steps here – I was in a lush heaven of general photos. Plus the rich opportunities while travelling to and fro. The bride and groom in Paris, strangers of course, come to mind. In either case, after a bzillion photos get into your phone – your phone! – the kids stop asking, “What’s Dad doing?”
Uganda covered 12 years. The first time I got ripped off was during my first week. The thief smashed my car window to steal my swim trunks – always a hot item internationally – and, of course, my pricey work camera. I quickly realized, despite assurances otherwise, nobody in Uganda, certainly not the police, would find it. But it was a column. I just needed a photo.
Fortunately, I still had my wife’s small, discreet, digital point-and-shoot. So one day when visiting Det. Joseph for an update on my case, when the light in his office was just so, I sat and perched that small camera on my knee, and without him or anyone noticing, photographed, at will, the officer working diligently at his desk. The photos were beautiful.
Unfortunately, I got greedy. Leaving the precinct, walking past its brig, I snapped a shot of suspects crammed into this rowdy holding cell. This questionable manoeuvre put me in the office of the precinct’s captain, a beefy Ugandan who, I noticed, had a neck thicker than my legs. He roared, “Who are you? Why are you taking pictures in my precinct?”
Naturally, he demanded I hand over the little camera, which, naturally, I couldn’t, not with Det. Joseph’s shots. So with angelic intervention I talked and talked – fear is a wonderful motivator – before approaching the captain’s desk to suggest that I delete, while he watched, the brig photos. I didn’t show those precious Joseph shots.
The best one of those made it safely to this side of the world, to this space with my column, as planned. All ended well except for my still-missing stolen camera.
And many years later on a summer day at a police takedown at Tim Hortons? I kept my phone camera safe in my pocket. Because, you know, you can’t be working all the time.