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The town of Granby doesn’t often make headlines, other than the occasional story about a jogger being chased by a black bear. That all changed last week, however, when news spread of the town council’s unanimous decision to make it illegal to insult police and other municipal officers online — a move applauded and panned across the country.

As it turns out, however, Granby isn’t the only town to make it an offence to insult the police. Sherbrooke, Shawinigan and Quebec City, for example, have similar bylaws on the books, raising the question of why so many feel it necessary to “protect” the police from verbal abuse, especially now.

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It’s not clear just how often the bylaws are enforced and tested in court, and whether they can apply to online insults as well. In Trois-Rivières, after 2006, officers handed out more than 200 tickets per year for swearing at or insulting them. And in at least one case, in the town of Lévis, near Quebec City, a motorist was fined $150 in 2011 for his online diatribe.