woooow.. talk about abuse.. o_O
the scary part is how he mentions he was asked to sign off his rights off....

Jeez.. And I thought it was harder getting out of the US.

Granted, this seems like the worst case scenario..

Not quite. The worst case scenario would be being "accidentally" tazered to death or some other deadly reaction to "non-lethal" force.

So you've read about that incident that still burns in the memories of Vancouverites, even though it happened two years ago?

You sir, got a good memory.

When you look at Switzerland for example, authorities are also assigned tazers, but in regards of available measures the tazer is listed right under the firearm, with the firearm as ultima ratio.

The deliberate use of tazers has irked me even before the "don't taze me, bro'" and Vancouver because we are pretty much witnessing the creation of the police-soldier while at the same time surveillance technology gets heavily improved and "non-lethal" weapons of all kinds are popping up, ranging from chemical agents which compel you to shit your pants and/or vomit all over yourself (and then be thrown into a van with six other people who have just shat themselves) and fast-hardening sludge which is just supposed to immobilize you(unless it covers your face entirely and the police officers with the solvent take their sweet time to get to you) to noise cannons and microwave cannons. This is the next stage of the ongoing World War 4, the war on the people; and authorities are receiving lots of new toys and more legal loopholes to be free from the consequences of their actions.

Because of the Taser Incident two years ago at YVR (Vancouver Int'l Airport), more people around the Lower Mainland, myself included, feel even more threatened by both the local police and the RCMP, rather than feel protected. Airport security guards and border guards are no exception, either.

I totally agree with you on so many different levels. There was only one time where I needed the help of the local police, and that incident happened over a month ago, actually, when one of my friends got attacked by some idiots on the local SkyTrain on the way to Vancouver to crash for the night. We broke some black guy's jaw when he got involved.

Passing the word around DOES help.

Deplorable. Simply deplorable.

Nothing like the border police equivalent of trigger happy soldiers. Having dug around enough to have found a small piece of what the police said he did, I had a bit of a facepalm moment. They say he quote "Angrily" exited his car. Okay, sure. He may have been annoyed or frustrated. Then, they start manhandling him, at which point, he became "aggressive." Again, sure. Whatever. So they start beating on him and using pepper spray? Finally, an attempted choke on one of the officers.

Ever been surrounded by three or four violent people, beating you up, and using pepper spray on you? You're gonna try and push them away. Maybe you catch a guy's throat in the process. What's the hopped up guy gonna think? You just tried to choke him.


Don't they screen these bastards when they apply for the job?

They do, but the people doing the screening are probably corrupt, too.

I'm not saying that ALL officers of law are corrupt- I've met some really awesome ones- but there is a painfully clear vein of power abuse that REALLY needs to be dealt with.

I'm not even sure it's just simple power abuse. I just imagine that the guys involved weren't... anywhere near calm enough. Powder kegs, you know?

Something like this could have been avoided, I think if one of the officers said "Sir, I'd be glad to answer your questions, but you need to stay in the car while we search." Words, people. Words!

But, not knowing what actually happened, we can only speculate. :/

Jeeeez. o o

I wandered over to Digg and made sure to digg all the submissions on this one. That's just nuts. > <

Thank you! The more people know about this, the better... and the more help he's likely to get.

It's made its way onto slashdot.org and at least one Canadian news site, so hopefully someone in our gov't might raise a stink about it.

As a traveler who crosses the border on occasion to go to fur conventions in the United States, this really is quite frightening, even to me. If you ask me, I think these guys need to be reprimanded for what they did to an innocent man who had done nothing wrong, follows the laws exactly as written in the book, and now they marred his squeaky clean record with a criminal charge? That's fucking crazy! What's more, they beat the shit out of him. That's assault right there, and it doesn't matter if you're a civilian, police officer, fire fighter, paramedic or even a border guard. An assault is still an assault, no matter how much you write it down on paper, and that alone can and will be a criminal charge right there.

I'm amazed he survived that.

Even worse is that those who did this to him probably won't ever pay for it.

>.<