The citizen in this video makes me proud to be a Canadian. He stands his ground not only for himself but also for the Charter and for you and for me.
Early in the video you will hear one officer say -- of Allan Gardens! -- "It's a government building in here." He says that quickly and quietly, and it's the only time in that long encounter that any of the police comes close to admitting to citizens the regulatory "boost" that Dalton McGuinty slyly gave the police almost a month ago, as pogge outlines here and here.
Even before the female sergeant appears, it becomes clear that police have been instructed to treat citizens' defence of their rights as matters of opinion, and that's the sergeant's whole outrageously ignorant argument (although she eventually pretty much admits that the secret rules are just a delaying tactic, and for her the conversation is just a "tennis match").
Harper. Clement. McGuinty. Blair. The cops in this video. They shame us, sometimes to the verge of despair. But then a real citizen turns up in a beautiful city park on a lovely summer's day and shows us how it's done. May I shake your hand, sir, and thank you.
She says "You appear to be a smart man, and I'm not going to repeat myself, The End" Indeed skdadl, she admits that it is a delaying tactic. Great Catch!
Oh. I should have given a hat tip. I got that from Refuge at babble very early this morning. Must creep back in and do that update.
Yeah -- just what you want from your police, eh? That they should be doing assessments of your intelligence? Feh. That lady needs to learn some manners. Well: she needs to learn some law.
Police instigating violence?
From the middle third (at posting time) of this article: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/06/27/g20-toronto-protest.html
"Previously at the same location, police fired at least half a dozen rubber bullets and arrested several people. The confrontation began when an estimated 150 demonstrators started staging a peaceful gathering while police in riot gear looked on.
At one point, plainclothes police arrived, entered the crowd and began to arrest several people.
"They knew who they were looking for," the CBC's Bill Gillespie reported. "These are trained police snatch squads using intelligence on finding suspected troublemakers."
At the same time, police formed a line in front of the crowd, telling the protesters to "move back." They then opened fire with rubber bullets, Gillespie said."
It is terrifying and depressing. The state is going to far and, I dare say, asking for trouble through it's arbitrary and seemingly illegal behaviour.
For example, in the video, the man was more or less robbed by the officers. That they were ignorant of the law they were operating under comes of little surprise--their behaviour is brazen and they must know they are violating the spirit, if not the letter, of the Charter.
I wrote after being away from any source of news all weekend--I am dumbfounded sorting through the news, especially the standoff on Queen and Spadina.
How have we fallen so far? And for what?
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=19928
Undercover cops are agents provocateur at G20???
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Heb9BXjYcII
This video is flagged "inappropriate." Basically, it has people singing O Canada, going to sit on the ground, and then being charged by riot police.
(Sorry for all the comments tonight, I am just having trouble believing what happened.)
Please don't apologize, Morning -- we appreciate your comments.
It seems very odd to me that the police didn't begin to react much until after the major vandalism yesterday afternoon. As soon as dusk fell yesterday, they began their kettling operations with entirely peaceable groups, like the ones on the Esplanade. Steve Paikin's testimony to the police assault there on a Guardian journalist has already made the New York Times.
I started to think then that the police regard the dark as payback time, although they seem to have been arresting freely all day today, again entirely peaceable groups.
Somebody's got a lot of 'splainin' to do.
Just feeling sheeping and shocked last night. Still am, too.
CBC Radio's hourly news just reported that the Mayor of Toronto felt the police acted professionally and respected people's rights. I don't think he's taken a look at any of the videos circulating the web, or perhaps he has a faulty definition of "rights" that includes random searches, detaining private property (the goggles in this video, for example), charging peaceful protesters, inhumane jail conditions, mass and arbitrary detention, both in the established detention centre and last night at Spadina and Queen.
It is this kind of shocking disregard that sickens me. And it seems to have infected a good portion of the political class.
Another thing that has irked me in MSM accounts is how journalists think they should be treated differently than people just stuck in the protest, and that, some imply, protesters deserve what they're getting (see some of the coverage of the Queen and Spadina outrage--people caught up in the crowd are innocent and, implicitly, the protesters are not. They do not say it, but they make it clear in what they say of other people).
The fact of the hours long open air detention of peaceful protesters should be the story, and those officers involved should all be made to answer for their actions (from those who ordered the corral, down to those who carried it out), especially the betrayal of trust that is placed on them when they don their uniforms. They acted shamefully and disgracefully.
Then again, in a couple accounts of protests I read some journalists were complaining about being whisked away, as they were taken too far from the scene of the police actions to accurately report on what happened. Thank goodness for the new media, eh?
"A faulty definition of rights" -- there's a lot of that going around, eh? In comments sections of msm reports, and in one quotation from a police officer, I read people over and over again saying that rights come with responsibilities, and they're obviously thinking that marchers are somehow not responsible.
Wrong on two counts. In a real democracy, rights aren't balanced against anything. No one "gives" citizens (or human beans generally) rights, and no one has to "earn" rights (which the mention of responsibilities suggests). We HAVE rights by virtue of being alive. Those rights are inherent and should be inviolable, although I grant that our Charter makes an unfortunate qualification in section 1. We'll have to do something about that.
Of course it is always a good thing if and when citizens are responsible, although their rights shouldn't depend on that. To me, though, citizens who go out into the public arena, into the agora, are being most responsible. It is depressing and maybe frightening that so many of our fellow citizens don't get that, have been convinced that there is something improper about speaking out.
Man, there better be a fuckin' public inquiry about this debacle. This all looks WAY worse than anything I saw at APEC '97.
Hi again,
Here's a pretty disturbing video. Makes a liar out of the City of Toronto Police Chief, Mayor, and our Premier.
http://mynews.ctv.ca/mediadetails/2886697?collection=742&offset=0&siteT
"Go home or be arrested" says the cop.
"How? Do you want us to dig our way out?" a protester yells back at the line of cops hemming them at Queen and Spadina.