Alberta's Finest

Jesse Walker | September 22, 2005

When a reporter looked a little too closely at the Edmonton cops' speed-camera racket, the police targeted the journalist for revenge.

[Via bOING bOING.]

Comments

theOneState|9.22.05 @ 11:52AM|#

A canadian journalist doing driving a convertible beamer...this story has "bogus" written all over it. Anyway, governments don't hurt people, people hurt people. And I'm sure the police have a good explanation. And also lawyers.

|9.22.05 @ 11:55AM|#

The only time that I ever got pulled over for speeding was in Alberta. Granted, I was 16 at the time and wasn't yet skilled in avoiding detection, but the offense amounted to nothing more than driving 80 on an open prarie highway. For a place that's awash in oil money, Alberta seem to take this revenue source pretty seriously.

|9.22.05 @ 12:06PM|#

The really pathetic thing is that the cops wasted resources on their effort to get revenge. Well, that and they turned out to be a bunch of hapless, Keystone-variety cops.

|9.22.05 @ 12:26PM|#

"An Edmonton Police disciplinary hearing has dropped charges against Hayden. "It was true that we found that vehicle in a bar lot and the potential for serious harm or death was there," Hayden testified, maintaining that he did nothing wrong."

I see justice has been served! Intra-agency hearings, surprise surprise, let him off scot-free.

And now, as we can see, the new standard for "potential for serious harm or death" is, um, driving to a bar and parking your car there. And the "potential" is amplified if you're, um, a reporter. Yeah, what?

By this idiot's logic, there should be a motherfucking full sting op for every person who drives to a bar and parks there.

|9.22.05 @ 12:38PM|#

By this idiot's logic, there should be a motherfucking full sting op for every person who drives to a bar and parks there.

With natural exceptions for those who are important people, and those who know important people.

|9.22.05 @ 2:10PM|#

This should scare the shit out of every libertarian. Being anti-state we're destined to piss off those in power and if those in power want to target us that's A-OK? I'm sure our jails could hold 100,000 activist libertarians and wouldn't it be great to silence Reason.com, LewRockwell.com, etc.?

|9.22.05 @ 3:01PM|#

As a law student in Alberta, in Edmonton, maybe I can shed some light on this.

This is a real story. It really happened. And there was a full investigation and if I recall my facts correctly there was a finding of at least some wrong doing on the part of the police. (seeing the other posts I realize that this is redundant)

I know that a lot of my professors - especially the more... libertarian of them were quite outraged. However this isn't anything new. The police in Edmonton are quite well known for corruption and abuse of power. The consensus in this case was that this was a very specific target that they had choosen since the reporter was a long time critic of the police and how they handle their affairs.

I can only hope I suppose that for my own sake, no members of the department read Reason Hit and Run.

|9.22.05 @ 3:08PM|#

By this idiot's logic, there should be a motherfucking full sting op for every person who drives to a bar and parks there.

I have always thought that setting up checkpoints at bars makes a heck of a lot more sense than how checkpoints are generally set up now.

|9.22.05 @ 11:27PM|#

I can only hope I suppose that for my own sake, no members of the department read Reason Hit and Run.

They came for the law students, but I did nothing, because I was not a law student, then they came for me and I had instant legal advice when I got to the jail.

|9.22.05 @ 11:38PM|#

"Being anti-state we're destined to piss off those in power and if those in power want to target us that's A-OK? I'm sure our jails could hold 100,000 activist libertarians and wouldn't it be great to silence Reason.com, LewRockwell.com, etc.?"

This is not meant to demeam Reason or LRC (2 sites I generally like and frequent daily) but I think if they ever really posed a significant threat to the state they'd be squashed pretty quick.