What’s the use? What is the goddamn use?

When it appears the cops and the courts and the judges — and the retired judges — are all on the same side, arm-in-arm, buddies in bad times, there can be no justice for an ordinary person, a Nobody.

Const. Babak Andalib-Goortani — the only G20 officer from amongst scores of rules-defying, fury-frothing, unnecessarily aggressive cops — convicted of using excessive force (such a bland, soft-boiled-egg term, that) was originally sentenced to an outrageously lenient 45 days behind bars. Ontario Court Justice Louise Botham based her decision largely on video footage which captured the incident, of protester Adam Nobody allegedly resisting arrest.

She observed: “Citizens will respect the rule of law when they can be confident that those with the power to enforce our laws do so fairly. When that trust is abused, citizens need to know that police will be accountable.”

That puny punishment for assaulting Nobody on the lawn of Queen’s Park — striking him with a baton — was overturned last January. Superior Court Justice Brian O’Marra reviewed the case on appeal, pursed his lips and said: Nah. Instead, Andalib-Goortani was sentenced to a year of probation and 75 hours of community service.

Didn’t that just do wonders for the public’s confidence in one law for all.

And next we came to the police disciplinary tribunal, which unfolded before retired judge Lee Ferrier. On Monday, the un-robed Ferrier declared that poor mook Andalib-Goortani, with his down-in-the-dumps blues and his busted marriage and his “commendable record on the force” — well, putting aside the assault conviction and a second Police Act misconduct charge for using unnecessary force against another demonstrator, still pending — has suffered quite enough, tut-tut, “paid too large a price for his misdeed.”

Docked five days pay, he was, and off you go dear.

To be clear, this was assault with a weapon — the baton. The prosecutor had asked for a one-year demotion in rank from first-class to fourth-class constable, and an attendant salary slash of about $30,000.

But woe is Andalib-Goortani, too woe, Ferrier concluded, for assaulting Nobody — broken nose, broken cheekbone, injuries characterized by Ferrier as “fleeting and physically minor in nature.” Nobody’s lawyer had sought the officer’s dismissal from the force. (see clarification below)

Do you want a cop like Andalib-Goortani on your force? Even if, and I grant this, he might not have been the most pugnacious assailant on that sorry day in the city’s history; merely the most identifiable, no thanks to the Special Investigations Unit, which got its act together only after a major evidentiary assist from the Star.

Remember: This wasn’t the scary Black Bloc blitz on Toronto from earlier that weekend. It was a peaceable demo in front of the Legislature.

A read-through of Ferrier’s decision would make any ordinary person, with no particular axe to grind against cops, shudder at the tilted landscape, the fixed game, which yet again has worked in a police officer’s favour.

It is to gag, how Ferrier massaged the event, with scarcely a thought for Nobody’s suffering or the disrepute that Andalib-Goortani has brought to the force. Apparently, repute and public confidence shaken are mere trivialities, set against the stress under which this officer has been living, ’lo these five years.

Boo hoo. And fool you, if labouring under the silly notion that cops — OF ALL PEOPLE — might hold the law in particularly high regard. And this wasn’t a cop who had to make a split-second decision because his life was at risk. This was a pile-on officer, “last-man-in” joining the takedown of an individual guilty of no more — at most — than being a protesting pain in the arse.

Andalib-Goortani, like 90 of his fellow law enforcers on that day, was wearing neither his badge number nor name tag. Penalty: docked one day’s pay.

Four other officers involved in the Nobody bushwhack were charged with disciplinary offices — all charges dismissed. Quelle surprise.

Ferrier wastes not a single line, in his nine-page ruling, on the impact of this event to Nobody. It’s all Andalib-Goortani, fine chap, look here at 50 letters attesting to his good character, and already stigmatized by criminal conviction (resulting in zilch deterrence, if that’s the point of a sentence). Why, as the officer’s lawyer argued, his misconduct “barely stepped over the line,” an assessment with which Ferrier must have been in agreement, given the wrist-tap outcome.

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I mean, come on, Andalib-Goortani once RESCUED AN ELDERLY MAN TRAPPED DURING A FLOOD, “no doubt saving the man from serious injury or death.” And he was among a group of volunteers COMMITTED TO BRINGING RELIEF WORK “where there is pain and suffering’’ — a poor village in El Salvador.

Hell, forget about meaty discipline for assaulting a civilian; let’s give the guy a medal.

“The officer’s three years of a commendable record on the force have been followed by five years of turmoil — living with these proceedings hanging over his head for five years; the strain of a criminal proceeding followed by a criminal conviction, appeal and penalty; his marriage break-up; his limited employment activity in a desk job for a large part of that period; the effect on his health.”

Often, in a real court, those who’ve suffered as the result of a crime — whether to themselves or a loved one — are allowed to make victim impact statements.

Ferrier seems confused about who the victim was on June 26, 2010.

Oh what’s the bloody use.

Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.

Clarification - November 25, 2015: