The tweet:
Abbass tweeted: “How about this, premier of N.L.: I’m going to bring down Confederation and have politicians executed. Ready to have me shot, coward?”
The point of this isn’t that he got detained and questioned because of the tweet. That’s completely valid.
It’s because police harassed and punished him for weeks afterwards. Police forced him into a mental institution for 6 days and court documents show the officers involved laughed about it and called him a “loser” in text messages to each other. That seems like extrajudicial punishment and abuse of authority.
Fair enough! I agree that’s too far
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A man who was illegally detained by the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary and housed for six days at a psychiatric unit against his will in 2015 is determined to bring his case to a public hearing.
Then, on April 5, 2015 — Easter Sunday — Smyth, a member of the premier’s security detail, shot and killed Don Dunphy in his home in Mitchell’s Brook, about 45 minutes outside St. John’s.
The Newfoundland and Labrador Court of Appeal issued a ringing defence of political dissent, and found that a lower-court judge was wrong to dismiss Abbass’s application to challenge his detention.
Temitope Oriola, a criminology professor at the University of Alberta, says internal cases against police officers should be completed within a year, in order to maintain public trust.
In this case, that would include a criminal investigation of Buckle by the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team — the details of which were never made public, with charges never laid — and Abbass’s matter before the provincial Court of Appeal.
Oriola began researching police misconduct under the lens of excessive force but said he believes the text messages between Buckle and Smyth should not be downplayed in the broader spectrum of possible wrongdoing.
The original article contains 2,290 words, the summary contains 200 words. Saved 91%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
