The Fucker Truckers want the Ottawa citizens they brutalized to be liable instead of the American and other foreign-funded mega $millions in dark money and donations that financed the invasions and assaults on citizens, health care workers, other businesses, kids and seniors wearing masks to protect themselves from a deadly airborne pathogen.
Making the police pay, makes the citizenry pay (police are paid with our tax dollars, not USA GOP or Putin dark money).
Compare to the G20 Class Action settlement:
None of this settlement will come out of the pockets of the politicians (Harper et al) leading Canada when the rights violations happened, or any of their soldiers of abuse and aggression – the police. Only the people will pay.
Ruby Dee@Dee74692069Ruby:
“She made me do it” says every abuser and rapist ever. This is so typical of the minimizing and denying of responsibility & harm caused, which all MGTOW chant ad nauseum.
@AgnesWalsh14:
Freedom! The police made me do it.
DebV@islandlife71:
I just read the article, do they forget they literally live streamed everything? That Barber and co are recorded saying their plan WAS to block?
Amir Attaran@profamirattaran Feb 13, 2024:
To all the politicians hollering about protesters outside Mount Sinai Hospital:
Where were you when anti-vaxxers aggressively protested hospitals?
If you didn’t speak up problem then, you’re just pandering now.
Maggie M@MaggieM00021130:
Wth. No words. R ppl for real these days? I guess now i can blame anyone for my wrong doings. Like omg.
@JLBroomes:
Come on, man. The “Freedom” Convoy’s cohort in Toronto, Vancouver, Québec, and other cities, were able to stage their protests and leave within three days – all without scapegoating locals and businesses.And the Coutts Klan of the Fucker Truckers in Alberta were reportedly planning on executing police.
@PaulChampLaw:
Convoy organizers are trying to attach Ottawa Police in $300-million class action, arguing the police made them do it and should be liable.
Brian C@CarletonPlace:
After all the help the Ottawa police did for them they turn on them.
JPM@MeaneyJim:
Thanks for sharing that. The freedom for all crowd never accept responsibility. If they had accepted that freedom comes with responsibility, they would have never come to Ottawa
SoniaJ@sj_ca1867:
They let them get away with it but made them?
Chychrun’s Chychlets@ChrisWilson47:
What happened to personal responsibility?
Masked, Flu & 6xVaxxed@Canadianmouse2:
In their minds it’s “Laws for thee and not for me.”
Kate Pawson Studer@KatPaws:
Do you really expect personal responsibility from the group that couldn’t bother to wear masks to protect others during a global pandemic?
Andrew @AndrewW43599783:
So basically, “you should have shut us down so you’re responsible”. Like a kid saying someone else made them do it. Lordy these clowns are too much
Mike Closs@MikeC0613:
Domestic abuser logic, they have.
InTheNCR@mcqueenton:
Damn Officer McDimples out there honking horns, setting off fireworks near residential windows, ripping masks off people’s faces. As much as OPS deserves flack for supporting the convoy, blaming it entirely on them is pretty rich. Defendants are grasping at straws.
InTheNCR@mcqueenton:
… They definitely contributed to the chaos but convoy was free to leave any time. OPS didn’t sequester them downtown.
@shackwacky:
So they are now agreeing with one of the arguments for the EA? That the police were not capable of shutting down the protests? Make it make sense.
@ame_todd:
What a joke! This is the most ridiculous and childish comment I’ve heard in a while. So ….if the police would ask them to jump out of a window, would they do it? Dah!
Greg Michaels@KootenayGreg:
Lawyers are allowed to present an alternate universe – courts don’t have to buy it
@OttawaGolferSue:
“The cops were negligent and made us do it” might (at best) get some traction for the first few days. It doesn’t explain a failure to leave when asked, staying for weeks and allowing the problem to get worse.
@donskinner89:
I not remember the police herding them into downtown Ottawa, what a bunch of rocket surgeons
@ThatDudesMother:
They are blaming the police for their own actions?
Concerned Citizen1@dianneathome:
Kinda like the abusive husband who beats his wife then cries “you made me do it.”
Saskfan@Saskfan13:
the police enabled them absolutely, but forced them?
@ShelbyAnneM101:
so they’ve said they did nothing wrong, class action is without merit & being used “as an indirect tool to limit the expression of others,” while arguing the lack of action by police to limit their expression makes the police liable for them doing…nothing wrong
I need more [coffee]
@jjoyce4321:
So now the FreeDUMB group are saying the police allowed them to act illegally during their “legal peaceful protest”???
@bal4_rednirus:
So they are admitting quilt and are saying the police are responsible because they didn’t prevent them from committing these crimes.
Convoy organizers want Ottawa police board to pay any damages in class action, 3rd-party claim in ongoing lawsuit issued by Superior Court this week by Kristy Nease, CBC News, Feb 08, 2024
If downtown Ottawa residents and businesses who say they suffered through loud honking and diesel fumes during the self-styled “Freedom Convoy” are awarded any money in their ongoing class action against organizers of the 2022 protest, the convoy organizers want Ottawa’s police board to pay it.
It’s a potentially big tab for the Ottawa Police Services Board that governs the force and approves its budgets. The plaintiffs in the Zexi Li class action, which has not yet been certified, are seeking $290 million.
Lawyers for Tamara Lich, Chris Barber and 10 other defendants in the class action have filed a third-party claim against the police board. It was issued by Superior Court this week.
They allege the police response to the protest was negligent and that because of the force’s negligence, the police board should be on the hook for any losses or damages.
They claim that except for “a small number” of fewer than 40 tractor-trailers on Wellington Street in front of Parliament Hill, there was no plan to clog Ottawa’s downtown with vehicles.
According to the claim, it was Ottawa police who directed them to park on residential downtown streets.
Police ‘decided to change the plan’
The original plan was to stage the vehicles on Wellington and on “lengthy designated stretches” of the Sir John A. Macdonald Parkway (now renamed Kichi Zībī Mīkan) to the west and the Sir George-Étienne Cartier Parkway to the east, the claim states.
“But for some reason, the Ottawa police decided to change the plan,” said James Manson, one of the lawyers representing the convoy organizers, this week.
“And so our argument will be that if that had not taken place, if the trucks had parked where they all had understood they were going to park, then there wouldn’t have been any trucks downtown, and therefore there couldn’t have been a nuisance caused the way that the plaintiffs are claiming it.”
The third-party claim also alleges police were negligent when they:
- Became overwhelmed with the number of vehicles despite organizers’ efforts to warn them.
- Failed to read intelligence reports, watch the news or review other reporting that “widely recognized the size and scale of the protest (or, that police were aware but chose to disregard it).
- Failed to mount an adequate plan.
- Put “inexperienced officers in leadership positions.”
- And did not direct vehicles to leave downtown “when it became known they would not leave” on their own (or that police didn’t do so in a timely manner).
Both the Ottawa Police Services Board and Ottawa Police Service declined to comment. The board has 20 days to respond to the third-party claim once it’s served, which could take up to 30 days.
‘An interesting legal manoeuvre’
Paul Champ, the lawyer representing Zexi Li and the other plaintiffs in the class action, thinks the arguments in the claim are a bit rich.
It’s true that Ottawans were angry with police during the protest and repeatedly said they felt the force wasn’t protecting them, he said.
“But I’m not sure if it necessarily is the place of the protesters themselves to say, ‘Well, [police] made me do it,’” Champ added.
“We did see a little bit of that in the Public Order Emergency Commission, that the police had in fact escorted them downtown and given them areas to park. And no doubt the people of Ottawa were very upset about that, so it’s an interesting legal manoeuvre.
“I’m not sure if it necessarily flies to blame someone else for your own unlawful activity, but we’ll see how the Ottawa police respond.”
As for the allegation that police didn’t direct protesters to leave, Champ said it’s “patently untrue” that no one did.
“I don’t think it could have been any clearer that these these folks were behaving unlawfully and that they had passed the threshold of a peaceful assembly,” he said.
Manson, the lawyer for the convoy organizers, said he’s not aware of any evidence suggesting Ottawa police “directed the truckers to leave in the same way that they directed them to park,” and that if such evidence exists, police can raise it in discovery if they choose.
