G20 bubbles prompted arrest threat
Kenyon Wallace July 17, 2010
A soap bubble floating toward a heavily armed police line during the G20 summit was apparently dangerous enough to prompt one Toronto Police officer to threaten the playful bubble blower with arrest.
The exchange was captured on video and has become a YouTube sensation, drawing close to 100,000 views, while inspiring a charged debate on Fox News over whether one can be arrested for blowing bubbles in the direction of police.
“If a bubble touches me, you’re going to be arrested for assault. Do you understand?” says the officer in the video wearing a badge bearing the name A. Josephs.
“Bubbles?” asks Courtney Winkels, the 20-year-old bubble blower.
“Yes, that’s right, it’s a deliberate act on your behalf. I’m going to arrest you. Do you understand me?” the officer responds. “You touch me with that bubble, you’re going into custody.”
A look of shock comes over Ms. Winkels’ face as she complies with the officer’s instructions to put the bubbles away.
“I was having a conversation with a female officer and I even asked her if my bubbles bothered her. She smiled and shrugged it off so I figured it didn’t….. It’s not like I was throwing stuff at them,” Ms. Winkels told the National Post on the phone from her family’s cottage in Huntsville. “Then this big officer marches over and he’s totally in my face.”
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.Shortly after her exchange with the angry officer, which took place on the final day of the summit, Ms. Winkels and several others gathered near Queen Street West and Noble Street in Parkdale were arrested. She spent the next 47 hours in police custody moving from the Eastern Avenue detention centre to the Vanier detention centre for women in Milton, before being charged with conspiracy to commit mischief.
The charge is unrelated to the bubble incident, she said, and pertains to the eyewash she was carrying in her capacity as a member of the Toronto Street Medics, an independent organization of volunteers offering medical care to people injured during the G20 protests.
“The police said I could throw it in their faces and temporarily blind them. I was, like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ “
She said police had searched her bag the day before and told her she could carry her medical supplies.
Toronto Police spokeswoman Meaghan Gray wouldn’t comment specifically on the bubble-blowing incident.
“A video is minutes in time that doesn’t necessarily accurately reflect all of the circumstances that were involved in that particular situation,” Ms. Gray said. “If the individual in that video feels like she was mistreated by a police officer, she should file a complaint with the Office of the Independent Police Review Director.”
Ms. Winkels said it was never her intention to antagonize police by blowing bubbles.
“I realize now maybe the bubbles weren’t the greatest idea — but still, it’s bubbles,” she said. “I was just keeping the mood light.”
.Posted in: G20, Posted Toronto Tags: Toronto Police, g20, Bubbles .
Read more: http://news.nationalpost.com/2010/07/17/g20-bubbles-prompted-arrest-threat/#ixzz0u679SUya
