Police ticket homeless jaywalkers after evacuation
‘Calgary police handed jaywalking tickets to homeless people evacuated from a shelter Thursday morning, upsetting residents and the centre’s executive director.
People inside the Drop-In Centre were told to leave after the discovery of an electrical problem. Executive director Dermot Baldwin estimates about 50 residents were given tickets after they exited the building.
“You’ve got hundreds of people who’ve been evacuated from the building and the police are giving out jaywalking tickets,” he said. “It’s not a helpful thing. It’s not a service to the people, that’s for sure.”
He said many of those ticketed, especially the mentally ill, won’t be able to afford to pay the $57 fine and will likely have to go to jail.’
June 12th, 2007 at 9:42 pm
Instead of stopping rapist, killers and other criminals the cops are bullying the weak and infirm.
Numerous cases of police assaulting and tasering elderly men and women. What happened to serve
and protect? This trickle down authoritarianism has turned our neighborly police officers into low-rent thugs for Homeland Security.
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Michael Vail
Editor-in-chief of Thought-Criminal
Libertas inaestimabilis res est – Liberty is a thing beyond all price.