Tuesday, December 16, 2008

"It's still Canada"

Zoom at Knitnut came upon a police situation she didn't like the look of yesterday :
"three police officers were trying to put an unconscious, handcuffed woman into the back of a van."

She didn't see the beginning of the incident, described to her by a bystander as :
“And the big cop, he slammed her face-down into the sidewalk just like she was a huge man,” said one of the men.
Then, he said, they cuffed her and went to put her in the van. She was part-way in when suddenly she just collapsed. Unconscious. She was bleeding from the head. That’s roughly when I came along."
So Zoom started taking pictures. That takes one hell of a lot of nerve. A 66 year old family lawyer in Edmonton was tasered for doing just that.
When challenged by police, she stood her ground, and as Bene Diction said to her in the comments at her blog :
"You were on public property (common ground) and something in your core integrity may have helped bystanders dig within themselves."
Indeed, another bystander did speak up :
“It’s still Canada,” said a young man in the crowd.
The cop wheeled around.
“You say something?” he demanded of the young man.
“Yeah,” he replied, “I said ‘It’s still Canada.’”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” demanded the cop.
“It means,” said the young man, “that we have rights here. She can take a picture of anything she wants and she doesn’t have to delete it just because you say so.”

Good for you, Zoom at KnitNut and the young man who stood up both for you and an unconscious handcuffed woman bleeding from a head wound being stuffed into the back of a van.

Continued at KnitNut ...

h/t JJ and Stageleft
.
Update : Also saluted by Excited Delirium, Skdadl at Pogge, Dr. Dawg, Miss Vicki, JimBobby, and Bene Diction who has good advice for anyone who finds themselves in Zoom's position.

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