90 Miles From Tyranny

Sunday, February 6, 2022

Ottawa Police’s New Measures Against Protesting Truckers Are Those Used by ‘Oppressive Regimes,’ Says Organizers’ Lawyer

The new measures announced by the chief of Ottawa police against truck convoy protesters are those used by oppressive regimes around the world, says a lawyer representing organizers of the Freedom Convoy protesting COVID-19 mandates in Ottawa.

“He effectively announced that he is going to be taking away Canadians’ charter right of peaceful assembly and freedom of expression,” Keith Wilson, a lawyer with the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF), said in a video on Feb. 4.

Peter Sloly, chief of the Ottawa Police Service (OPS), said in a Feb. 4 press conference that police will be implementing a “surge and contain strategy” to deal with the protesters camped in Ottawa.

The strategy includes sending 150 more police officers to the protest area in the downtown core of Ottawa, barricading the protest area with concrete and heavy-equipment barriers, as well as “increased efforts” by national, provincial, and local intelligence agencies to target those “who are funding/supporting/enabling unlawful and harmful activity” by protesters.

“Our residents are frustrated and they are angry. They have every right to be. Their lives continue to be severely impacted by unlawful and unsafe events,” Sloly said.

“Officers and our partners will be focused on illegal activity associated with the demonstrators. Surge will deliver a clear message to the demonstrators: Lawlessness must end.”
Sloly added that the demonstrators in the core area “remain highly organized, well funded, extremely committed to resisting all attempts to end the demonstration safely.”

Wilson called Sloly’s announcements “disturbing” and said they should “trouble Canadians and those around the world who support this trucker protest for freedom.”

“The police chief essentially announced an assault on the protesters. He announced that very specific measures that we normally only see instituted by oppressive regimes around the world, would be initiated,” he said.

The Epoch Times reached out to the Ottawa Police Service for comment but didn’t immediately hear back.

Preliminary data shows there has been a decline in police-reported street crime since the protest began in downtown Ottawa, according to Blacklock’s Reporter.

In the week prior to the protest, there were 31 police calls for crimes such as robbery, assault, drug trafficking, public drunkenness, and other crimes in the Ottawa district the protest is set up, but there were only three reports of street crime since the protests began, Blacklock’s Reporter said.

Tom Marazzo, who is helping the organizers as a police liaison, said in a press conference on Feb. 4 that “statements and actions” by Sloly have “deliberately set the conditions for potential violence against the peaceful protesters of...

Put the most incendiary left-wing phrase imaginable on your mask and wear it to school, and you’ll likely hear nary a peep out of your teachers. Wear a “thin blue line” mask, however, and it’s another story.

According to KTXL-TV, a substitute teacher at a middle school in Grass Valley, California, has gone viral in a bad way after ranting at a student wearing a pro-police mask in support of his father, who is a cop. The teacher was caught on video calling it “the new Confederacy flag.”

Of course, the very fact we’re talking about this has to do with California’s onerous school mask mandate, something we’re vigorously opposed to here at The Western Journal. We’ll continue our fight — and you can help us by subscribing.

The student, 13-year-old Lucas Lillar, says he was approached by the teacher while working at his desk on Monday, KOVR-TV reported.

The teacher started arguing with him over the mask, which features the pro-police flag. It resembles an American flag, albeit with a blue line through the middle to represent that police are the “thin blue line” separating society from its criminal element.

KOVR, however, had an alternate interpretation: “Recently, it has come to represent opposition to the racial justice movement,” the CBS affiliate’s Madisen Keavy reported. With hot takes like that, and with any luck, she’ll have a show on MSNBC by next week.

In any event, Lillar’s substitute teacher had the same take on the “thin blue line” mask as KOVR did.

“That’s not the American flag,” he said. “That’s the new Confederacy flag.”

When Lillar said it was in fact American, the teacher responded, “No, it’s black, white with some blue line in it.”

“Yeah, ‘thin blue line,'” Lillar said.

“Yeah, but it’s not American,” the teacher said.

Lillar’s father and stepmother are both in law enforcement and he wears the mask to support them. A teacher who’s determined to pick a fight about politics with his students is one thing, but one who calls out a student for wearing a “thin blue line” mask on the basis that it’s in support of “the new Confederacy” is another level of awful.

“I was angry because these types of things should never be in the classroom,” Amanda McCallum, Lucas’ mother, told KTXL.

“These topics need to be left at the door. The school is meant to educate our children in a safe environment and I don’t feel like this was a safe environment, but it needs to be. We are entrusting these people of authority, these teachers with our...