A heated confrontation between two men and Toronto police was captured on camera, but instead of putting police in a negative light – as the author intended — the video put a spotlight on the professionalism of this department’s officers.
Police in Toronto told CityNews this was a “clear-cut case of police baiting.” The video posted to YouTube a few weeks ago was titled: “Police State attempts to intimidate, harass and impede travel in Toronto.”
The camera was rolling as two young men approached the officers last July during the Beaches Jazz Festival. Officers from surrounding divisions were called out to the scene to control the massive crowds.
They are now being praised on social media for how they handled the situation.
Toronto police posted a portion of the viral video to their Facebook page, after the men were clearly attempting to show police misbehaving. But a Canadian constable with the department says, turns out “it did just the opposite.” The video demonstrated how all the officers behaved professionally, throughout the entire ‘provoked’ confrontation.
The video’s author said, “I believe that this is just another example of the police state flexing their authority and basically conditioning our generation to obediently follow any orders from police regardless of the validity and necessity of that order.”
But it seems pretty clear in the video that the man and his friend were trying to taunt the police. They admit, they went out of their way to “test police lines” because the road was closed for “no reason” and they were given an order to leave.
One officer is heard in the video asking the men to go one street over and tells them: “Yes, it’s legal to do this.”
The arguments got heated throughout the five-minute long confrontation, and eventually officers turned the tables and hit record on their body cams.
Meanwhile, in other parts of Canada, college campus police took to social media to plead with the public to be more respectful of school property, the community and the officers who serve them. Since the beginning of school, University of Guelph Campus Police say they’ve had major problems with the student population.
Posted by University of Guelph Campus Police on Sunday, September 20, 2015
An officer who works at the Ontario campus posted a video on the University police Facebook page saying students have been showing a complete “lack of respect.”
While dealing with an increased level of calls for service he said: “Debris has been thrown at them, people are not getting out of the way of emergency vehicles… and “FTP is chanted to us” when we go out for calls.” Most concerning, campus police say, is that one officer was assaulted and had to be hospitalized.
