Posted by zoom! on December 22, 2008, at 3:58 pm |
Okay, I did it. I met with the investigating officers from the Professional Standards section of the Ottawa Police regarding their investigation into the events that led to my Bank Street Bully post. They interviewed me quite thoroughly this afternoon in my living room. (I requested that we meet here because of the bus strike). I gave them uncropped full-rez copies of the photographs I took that afternoon. The investigation could take up to six months, and they’ll let me know how it turns out. I would encourage other witnesses to come forward, especially if they witnessed what transpired while the woman was still conscious.
Speaking of a mess, my photographs of this piece were horrendous. Shooting through scuffed plexiglass in bright sunshine must require some special technique. Anyway, this one’s the best of a bad lot, but it gives you all the more reason to go see it for yourself. It’s on the south side of Slater, just east of Bank Street.
In other news: I’m on holidays!
In other news: I bought the Mac! (This post, however, is coming to you from the PC.)
Posted by zoom! on December 21, 2008, at 8:20 am |
I think this concept for an art show is brilliant. Everybody gets to be an artist. Even you and me!
Where: Irene’s Pub, 885 Bank Street in the Glebe
When: January 6th, 2009 – January 28th, 2009 (culminating in a Silent Auction on Wednesday January 28th)
Who: Everybody
Why: Fundraiser. Proceeds will go to a 2009 graduate from the Ottawa School of Art
Donate a piece of art from your collection (done by yourself or another), or create one for the event. Irene’s will accept an array of media inlcuding: glass, textile, metal, wood, photography, oil, acrylic, watercolor, ink, pen, prints, sketches or graphic art. All the art will be auctioned on January 28th.
Art Submission Requirements:
Hanging Info: pieces need 1-2 hooks & taut braided picture wire
Size: no larger than 11×14 inches (with some exceptions)
Value: within the $50-$200 range.
Delivery date: all pieces need to be at Irene’s Pub by December 30th.
Donor Form: You can pick yours up at the pub, or fill it out when you bring your piece in.
Questions can be sent to Patricia Golding at giddy-up@rogers.com. Please use “auction” in the subject field.
I’m going to create a piece of art for this event, and I hope some of you will consider it too. It’s all in fun, it’s for a good cause, and you don’t have to be a “real” artist or anything like that. (I know some of you are thinking it’s a lovely concept but it’s going to be a pretty awful art show. However, there are some excellent artists who hang out at Irene’s.)
Posted by zoom! on December 20, 2008, at 4:46 pm |
You know what? It’s hard to write the next post after the Bank Street Bully posts.
Until this week, the most attention this blog ever got was when the Yarn Harlot mentioned it last January and two thousand knitters came to visit on a single day. The most comments a single post had ever generated was 53, in response to a profoundly uncontroversial post entitled What’s Your Pet’s Name?.
Judging by the traffic to this blog this week, it’s obvious that the problem of police abusing their power strikes a chord with people, and I’m very happy it does. We need to hold our police officers – and our police forces – to a high standard of professional conduct, and we need to scream bloody murder when they abuse the power we give to them.
However, from a blogging perspective, it just seems weird to go from a serious and high-profile post about police abusing their powers to a trivial post about my cat, or knitting, or decorating my mannequins for Christmas.
So I don’t know what to write about today.
Maybe I’ll just wrap up a few loose ends on the Bank Street Bully story.
1. In case you missed it in the comments, I was relieved to hear from a couple of different sources that the young woman who was unconscious on the sidewalk is ‘okay’ now, and is not in hospital or in police custody at this time. I hope this is true.
2. The review that was requested by Chief White is what is known as a Chief’s Complaint. This means that in cases where there is no member of the public complaining, the matter can still be addressed internally by order of the Chief.
3. In terms of my role as a witness, I’ve got a bit of a dilemma. I don’t want my real name attached to this, for obvious reasons. However, I don’t want to potentially weaken the investigation by refusing to make a formal statement. Yesterday afternoon I asked the investigator, by email, if they need anything from me, and if so, would it be possible for me to provide it anonymously or through a third party (eg a lawyer). I haven’t heard back yet.
That’s about it for now. If there are any interesting new developments, I’ll let you know. In the meantime, I’m getting back to blogging about normal everyday stuff like swap boxes, knitting, gingerbread men, giant cats, mannequins, homelessness, poverty, Mayor Larry, pigeons, crows, cannibalism, politics, death, mayhem, and the collapse of civilization.
Posted by zoom! on December 18, 2008, at 8:00 am |
Over the past couple of days, thousands of people have visited this blog to read about the Bank Street Bully, and many of you subsequently blogged about it on your own blogs. It has generated a lot of discussion, both on this blog and others.
Apparently a number of you also contacted the Ottawa Police to demand an investigation.
In case you missed Comment #91 in response to the original post, here it is again:
I work as the officer in charge of the Professional Standards Section at the Ottawa Police Service and am currently reviewing this matter at the request of Chief Vern White.
The Service recognizes that there are specific concerns raised here about the conduct of Ottawa Police officers. For everyone’s information, the police service takes any allegation of this type very seriously and encourages anyone with such a concern to visit our site at:
http://www.ottawapolice.ca/en/serving_ottawa/compliment_complaint/complaint.cfm
or to contact our Professional Standards Section at (613) 236-1222 ext 5830 to speak with an investigator, or to obtain more information on the process.
In order to comply with due process in matters such as this one, we do not comment on specific cases until any investigation is concluded and a decision is reached about the possible laying of any charges under the Ontario Police Services Act.
If you have any further questions or comments, please direct them to info@ottawapolice.ca . Your concern will then be forwarded to me or to the appropriate person responsible within the police service.
Should you have been a witness to this incident, please contact the Professional Standards Section as your assistance would be greatly appreciated.
Professional Standards Section
Staff Sergeant
Central Division centrale
Ottawa Police
And here’s a link to this morning’s Ottawa Citizen article, “Police Wanted Photos Erased, Blogger Claims.” (Hat tip to my friend Gilles who was up reading newspapers at the crack of dawn.)
Many thanks to all of you who helped keep this on the front burner over the last few days. I very much hope that the ‘review’ ordered by Police Chief Vern White will be genuine and fair, and not just a token attempt to appease public outrage. Time will tell.
Posted by zoom! on December 16, 2008, at 6:19 pm |
I’m happy – and surprised! – to have won three smiling beavers in the 2008 Canadian Blog Awards last night.
Check it out: Best Personal Blog! Third Best Activities Blog! Best Local Blog!
Many, many thanks to the people who nominated me* and to every single one of you who took the time to vote. Big hugs to those of you who have been reading for awhile, and a warm welcome to those who just stumbled in. Special thanks to the Yarn Harlot. Hats off to the CBA organizers.
The results came in quite late last evening, so GC suggested we go out for donuts to celebrate.
A little known fact about me is that I have an official position on donuts. As far as I’m concerned, the only donut worth its calories is the Tim Horton’s Boston Creme donut.
As it turns out, finding a Tim Horton’s Boston Creme donut in Ottawa at 10:00 at night is not as easy as it sounds. We went to one drive-thru window after another, and were repeatedly informed that they were sold out of Boston Cremes.
But did we give up? No. GC insisted that winning a first prize beaver was so worthy of a Boston Creme donut that we would travel to the four corners of the world if necessary to procure one.
One Tim Horton’s didn’t have a drive-thru, so I waited in the car while GC went in. He returned with a bag. In it were two donuts that the clerk told him were identical to Boston Cremes but with maple instead of chocolate.
“No good,” I said.
“Okay,” he said.
We kept going. At the fifth Tim Horton’s I said I’d settle for a chocolate dip donut instead, so we got one of those.
But GC wasn’t ready to give up yet.
And it’s a good thing, because we hit the jackpot at the sixth Timmy’s!
We took all our bags of donuts, went back to my place, made some coffee, and curled up on the couch to drink coffee and eat donuts before bed.
Just so you know, we only ate three of them. Honest.
*(I’m pretty sure Roro at Creampuff Revolution was one of the nominators, but I don’t know who the others were – if you nominated me, please let me know!)
Posted by zoom! on December 15, 2008, at 6:31 pm |
I arrived at the corner of Bank and MacLaren this afternoon as three police officers were trying to put an unconscious, handcuffed woman into the back of a van. She looked like a rag doll.
Then they changed their minds and laid her out on the sidewalk and sent for an ambulance. The female officer slid a piece of cardboard under her, so at least she wasn’t lying in the puddle.
I asked some other bystanders if they knew what had happened. Two men, who said they had witnessed the whole thing, told me that she had been walking down the street smoking a cigarette. A cruiser drove past, stopped, and an officer got out and approached her. She ran. The police caught her. She resisted. She was a tiny little thing, they said, but she put up a helluva fight. It took three officers to bring her down.
“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.
A woman said when she walked by, the young woman was unconscious, her face was grey, she was bleeding from her head, and her abdomen was rising and falling very rapidly, as if she were gasping for air. She thought maybe the police had tasered her.
I snapped another picture. The cops noticed this time. One of them strode directly over to me.
“You can’t take pictures of this,” he said. His tone was aggressive.
I slid my camera back into its case.
“Okay,” I replied.
“Erase it,” he ordered me.
“What?”
“I said ‘Erase it’!” he said, “I work undercover and I don’t want my picture anywhere.”
I really didn’t want to erase my picture. Not unless I had to. Besides, if he’s so concerned about keeping his undercover identity secret, he shouldn’t walk around in a police uniform.
“Do I have to?” I asked.
“I told you, I don’t want my picture anywhere.”
“Is it the law?” I asked.
“I asked you nicely,” he said, but he didn’t say it very nicely. It sounded threatening to me.
“Is it the law?” I repeated.
“I asked you nicely,” he said menacingly as he stared down at me, “Are you refusing?”
I looked at him. Maybe if we were in a dark alley with no witnesses, I would have deleted it. But here? In broad daylight, surrounded by witnesses, with a tiny, bleeding, unconscious, handcuffed woman lying on the street? He was probably in enough trouble already.
“Yes,” I said, “I’m refusing.”
“Real nice,” he said in disgust, “Thanks a lot.”
And he turned around and started to walk back to the knot of officers and the unconscious handcuffed woman.
“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.”
“Oh yeah?” demanded the cop, “I told her I work undercover and I don’t want my picture anywhere, but she doesn’t care what happens to me.”
“Maybe she cares about what happens to that person lying unconscious on the sidewalk,” suggested the young man.
“You a lawyer?” demanded the cop, “Cause if you’re not a lawyer then mind your own business.”
Then, inexplicably, the cop said, “You own property? Eh? You own property? Cause I own property. That means I pay police tax. If you don’t own property, you don’t pay police tax!”
Then he wheeled around and stomped back to his cluster of officers and the unconscious woman who was being tended to by the paramedics.
The little crowd that had gathered, we all looked at each other and shook our heads. What does property tax have to do with anything? Quite apart from being wrong about only property owners paying property taxes, was he suggesting that only property-owners have the right to an opinion? That the police are only accountable to a certain class of citizen?
“What an ignorant bully,” said one woman.
“He gets his attitude from that holster,” said a man.
I hope the young woman is okay. She didn’t look good at all. I wonder if there’s any way to find out without identifying myself.
Posted by zoom! on December 14, 2008, at 11:17 am |
Remember back in the 1990s when Ontario Education Minister John Snobelen was caught boasting of the evil Conservative scheme to ‘manufacture a crisis’ in education? Basically, the scheme involved deliberately deceiving the public into believing that education spending was out of control, that educational standards were going down the toilet, that teachers were to blame, and that the province needed to impose drastic measures to fix the crisis before it was too late.
Does anybody else wonder how much of the current economic crisis was manufactured? (Or, if it wasn’t manufactured, how much it is being exploited and used as an excuse for advancing hidden agendas?)
I’m not convinced of this. I have no way of knowing, really. But I deeply mistrust the people who first put this economic crisis out there, starting with Bush. And I don’t trust other politicians and corporations not to exploit it for their own advantage. There’s a huge amount of money changing hands because of it.
Just out of curiosity, have any of you started to actually feel the impact of this crisis yet? Is it affecting your life?
Posted by zoom! on December 12, 2008, at 9:52 pm |
Last night we were on Nepean Street near Bank Street, and we saw a dead pigeon in the snow. And then another. And another. And another. And another.
We were mystified. We know pigeons aren’t the brightest birds around, but they must have some instinct for survival. What do you suppose happened to them?
Meanwhile, back on the artistic streets of Ottawa, look what popped up at Bank and Slater. It’s a 3D street art installation. It’s got Harper as Santa, Layton as the Conspirator, Mayor Larry as Cap’n Zero, Insite (Vancouver’s safe injection site) as the Scapegoat, Parliament Hill with a big closed sign on it, André Cornellier (the bus drivers’ union prez), and more. (When you think of all those things together, you realize Ottawa’s quite a mess these days, eh?)
(If you can’t see this video it might be because you’re using Firefox 3 with Flash 10. In that case, you can view it by going 
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