A series of videos of a man being detained by police officers from the Greater Vancouver Transportation Authority Police Services, who believe the man had marijuana on him. The incident appears to have taken place last February.
While all the facts are not clear from the videos, it should be noted that the SkyTrain police, and their predecessors, SkyTrain ticket and enforcement officers, have a terrible reputation for harassing youth and homeless people.
In the videos, the police say they can smell drugs on the guy's breath. I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know if that is probably cause, but I do know you can be busted for having open alcohol in public, but not if alcohol is just on your breath.
The smartest two things about these videos are:
1. The guy is aware of what his rights are and let's everyone know.
2. This is being filmed.
It's somewhat ironic that as the public gets worried about what the police want to do CCTV cameras on our city streets, cell phones and camera videos are turning the cameras on the police.
The Vancouver Courier's citiy columnist, Allen Garr, recently did an excellent piece going over how citizen videos are being used against the police. The video of Robert Dziekanski's death showed the world how police testimony can be suspect. The public may never seen the cell phone video that captured the death of Michael vann Hubbard, which allegedly shows vann Hubbard not advancing by the police and was allegedly erased by the police.
(My favorite part of video 2 is at 3:00 minutes when the old lady walks inbetween the officers to validate her ticket.)
Video 3 shows the man having the handcuffs removed and relaying an important message to the public: "Know Your Rights" (and turn on your camera phone).
