POLICE STATE: Canadian journalist arrested on the street for breaking story on crooked mayor https://youtu.be/-seF45od5C0
I was arrested on Wednesday.
Five police cars plus three private security vehicles were sent to apprehend me. It was a massive, coordinated police raid.
Only two days earlier, there had been a terrible gangland shooting in the same city of Brampton, Ontario — in broad daylight. Seven shooters were still at large.
But police felt that I was a bigger threat, and they sent a huge squad to take me down.
Had I shot anyone?
Was I a drug dealer?
No. I had done something much worse.
I had done journalism.
They literally arrested me and stuffed me in the back of a car. Take a look. Watch the whole thing.
I had caught the local mayor, a disgraced politician named Patrick Brown,
sneaking into a hockey arena that he had closed to the public. He had
slipped in for a private game with his buddies, while telling Brampton
kids they were banned.
It was an international embarrassment for Brown. Sneaking into a hockey rink he had closed to everyone else. Lying about it. But he’s still doing it. Because he thinks he’s untouchable.
And ever since, I’ve been harassed by local police,
who have literally told me my journalism is now illegal — and says our
entire media is banned from Brampton property for a year!
That’s wrong. That’s unconstitutional. And that’s the problem.
It’s not just Patrick Brown breaking his own rules. It’s now
the Peel Regional Police who are acting as Brown’s personal enforcers.
What an outrage. And complete silence from left-wing civil
liberties groups, opposition politicians and — worst of all — the entire
Media Party. Not a peep from the CBC, the Toronto Star, the Globe and
Mail and certainly not the Canadian Association of Journalists. Only my
friend Joe Warmington of the Toronto Sun mentioned my arrest, and Marc Patrone of a radio station in Mississauga.
Everyone else thinks this is just fine.
But it’s not. Imagine: a politician ordering his personal
enemies list banned from public property. I’m not even his enemy — I’m
just a reporter who happened to catch him breaking his own pandemic
rules.
In Canada, we believe in the rule of law, not the rule of man
— especially corrupt, small-town mayors like Brown. He may treat the
city as his private fiefdom, but the Charter of Rights says differently.
In the end, the police had nothing to charge me with. I was
literally standing by myself, on a public sidewalk, not even talking to
anyone. It must have been embarrassing to try to come up with a criminal
charge for that. The best they could come up with was a $65 ticket for
not leaving the property when asked.
A ticket. Like a parking ticket. But for all that, they sent
five police cars, three security cars, and arrested me and jammed me in
the back of a car like a gangland murderer.
As Ezra says, we’ll spend $65,000 if we have to, appealing this
ticket all the way to the Supreme Court — and making every one of those
police officers testify why I was treated like a greater menace than a
gangland shootout that day.
