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'Officer Bubbles' Sues YouTube Commenters Over Mockery
An anonymous reader writes "'Officer Bubbles' — the Toronto Police Constable who was videotaped threatening a G20 protester with arrest for assault over the crime of blowing bubbles at a police officer has had enough of mocking videos and comments on YouTube. He has decided to sue everyone involved (commenters included) for more than a million dollars each. The complaint is detailed in his statement of claim — most of the comments seem fairly tame by internet standards; if this goes anywhere, everyone is going to have to watch what they say pretty carefully. The lawsuit appears to have been successful in intimidating the author of the mocking cartoons into taking them down."
Well..it's good to see that it's not only cops in the US that are douches...
And I was thinking "it's good to see that it's not only people in the US that are douches..."
Cops aren't people, silly!
Mad Dogs and Policemen.
So this is why police don't like to be filmed?! It makes them accountable for their douchery after the fact.
Looks like the court of public opinion made its ruling on Officer Bubbles, I sure hope the official court sees things the same way.
Citizens need the right to record any public police action, and any police action in which the individual citizen is involved.
This needs to be a law now.
The public needs a clear law allowing for the recording of police actions and allowing for the recording to be owned by the citizen and protected from seizure by police officers.
Some police do lie, some police do overstep the bounds, some police protect fellow officers.
I know we didn't get to see the crowd very well, but the part of we we did see in that video was anything but ugly. Mostly just people milling about, taking pictures, and one lady blowing bubbles. It wasn't exactly a mob situation. It didn't even sound very angry in the background.
This is a G20 summit meeting, these people are there to protest their policies. Therefore, they are opposed to the entrenched power, therefore they are to subdued, beaten, and subjugated. That is what Toronto Police constable Adam Josephs was telling himself, as he wished the camera wasn't there so he could show that little white bitch who's the real man in that street. Sure, Adam Joseph probably can't get "it" up, but the city of Toronto conveniently provides him with a big black rod he can use for just such an occasion.
Yes, I believe Toronto Police Const. Adam Josephs is a potential rapist, and believe that he does not routinely act on his impulses only because he has difficulty maintaining an erection. I do hope that litigious bastard doesn't find out who I am, he would surely sue me, and attempt to insert his night stick in my rectum to compensate for his lack of genital endowment through acts of abuse of power such as the one depicted in the video.
You can't take the sky from me...
Some times they won't be aggressive enough and things will turn ugly... other times they'll be too aggressive and look dumb.
I couldn't agree more; it starts innocently enough with one person blowing bubbles, but what if someone else had started... two people blowing bubbles. Then three... how many bubble blowers should we as a society have to tolerate before we start supporting our police officer's efforts to stamp out this reckless waste of washing up liquid?
On second thought, maybe the cop should have stepped 3 inches further back and made this otherwise lethal weapon system wholly ineffective. Based on his over-reaction, this guy should be more than familiar with exactly how far 3 inches is...
And often, taking 'control' of the situation means backing off. Moving back a few feet, losing the shades (notice the female officer with her glasses up) and smiling would have defused the whole thing right there.
It's not like she was being particularly menacing. The officer was being an aggressive jerk for no good reason. Makes everybody look bad.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
However, according to CNews, Winkels [the lady] confirmed that she wasn’t arrested for blowing bubbles but instead detained for wearing a backpack and having a lawyer’s number written on her arm. She was charged with one count of conspiracy to commit mischief over $5,000.
So are people really upset that she was asked to stop or are they just misinformed due to suggestive editing in the video?
Wow that seems an even more ridiculous reason for arrest then for blowing bubbles.
"I don't necessarily agree with everything I say." - Marshall McLuhan
He didn't give her a warning. He gave her a threat.
I guess. He did give her a "threat" of arrest if she continued her behavior. Some might call that a "warning". It seems a pointless exercise in semantics.
No, he gave her an arbitrary order, followed by "or else". She was doing something perfectly legal, and a cop told her to stop or he would arrest her on a trumped up charge if she did not obey him immediately.
That's abuse of power. That's not something you should defend.
don't expect me to cry any tears over the injustice of it all
Oh, don't worry, I don't expect you to cry over an injustice. I expect you probably get half a hard-on when you witness an injustice, I figure your love for authority (and the limitless exercise thereof) must be conflated with your lust.
You can't take the sky from me...