“I always knew that there was risk of arrest because of the type of stories that I cover, but until it happens to you, you don’t understand the emotional and psychological impact that it has,” Ms. Morin said afterward, speaking to a group of reporters outside the police station. “And I think that it is a tactic that they use to send that message. To impede, to insult, discredit and to intimidate the media.”

This statement hits, because it’s describing a traumatic event. Have you ever had a faceless gov’t agency decide you’re the enemy? Have you ever been treated like a criminal, despite no wrong doing? Have you ever known what was happening is wrong, but you’re helpless to stop it?

It’s traumatic, and we all know that. Yet for decades it’s a long standing practice within law enforcement to arrest someone for merely “resisting arrest.” How can one resist an arrest, if the arrest should never have occurred? without an inciting event, it’s paradoxical in nature, and flatly absurd on its face. And yet, it continues.

The phrase oft repeated is that these cops are just “bad apples,” or the exception, not the rule. But what’s left out is that the entirety of the phrase is “one bad apple spoils the bunch.” And boy, is our bunch spoiled.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

“It’s an abuse of power, absolutely,” said Brandi Morin, a freelance reporter who has worked for outlets including the Guardian, the BBC and the New York Times.

They should be well aware that high courts in two provinces have found police use of these ‘exclusion zones’ to thwart media coverage of their actions unlawful,” she wrote.

“I always knew that there was risk of arrest because of the type of stories that I cover, but until it happens to you, you don’t understand the emotional and psychological impact that it has,” Ms. Morin said afterward, speaking to a group of reporters outside the police station.

Ms. Morin – who has won a number of awards for her reporting, particularly stories related to Indigenous issues – said she believes police, including the RCMP, have been “pushing to overstep their power against the press for many years now.”

In December, Richard Vivian, a reporter and editor with GuelphToday, had his camera and a memory card seized and was detained by police at the scene of a traffic fatality.

Edmonton photojournalist Amber Bracken is involved in a continuing lawsuit against the RCMP related to her arrest while covering pipeline protests on Wet’suwet’en territory for The Narwhal in 2021.

The original article contains 679 words, the summary contains 205 words. Saved 70%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!