The Proletariat Congress

It all began with a party outdoors in the bush. Some teens got together and got drunk. One of those teens was a 15 year old by the name of Willow Kinloch, who drank more than she could tolerate. Then as is the typical chain of events with these types of parties, it was broken up by police, and unable to tell the interlopers where she lived due to her inebriated state, she was taken to the precinct and put in a cell so she could sober up. Around 4am when she was fine, she was escorted home.

If only the tale stopped there then there would have been no news story to speak of and Kinloch would be living her life, free of any knowledge of the events that followed; the injustices that she witnessed and felt first hand as an innocent caught up in a corrupt system where it has become part of the mantra to shoot first and ask questions later.

Now at 18 years old, Kinloch has come out and has told her tale to the Canadian media in the hopes of drawing attention to her plight and that of others who were unjustly treated at the hands of the law; by those who are alleged to serve and protect the public and not abuse that sacred trust. She was influenced by the tragic events that took the life of Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski who was tasered not once but twice at a Vancouver airport after being detained for 10 hours with no translator or any way to contact someone who could help him, despite there being a telephone link to a translator nearby. One person who recorded the incident alleged that he had been tasered as many as three or four times. He suffered a tragic end at the hands of four RCMP officers who came in and used a taser gun to subdue him when all he needed was someone who could tell him what was going on in his own language.

Kinloch said she decided to tell her story because, at 18, she now feels mature enough to speak publicly. She was also influenced by what happened to Robert Dziekanski, the Polish immigrant who died after RCMP used a Taser gun to subdue him at the Vancouver airport. In that case, as in hers, Kinloch said, the videotape made all the difference.

Kinloch wasn’t tasered at any point in the duration of her stay, which is fortunate for her. However, she was still subject to abuse at the hands of her guards who didn’t take the time to understand her emotional distress. Being locked in a cell while she sobered up may not have been so bad if not compounded by the fact that she was returned to that cell later on after being released.

The officers who had escorted her home, wouldn’t let her out of the vehicle claiming that they were ensuring that she was watched as she was a child in need of protection. They refused to let her get out of the car when they had arrived at her home. They wouldn’t let her out. Yet if she had been permitted to exit the vehicle, she could have yelled up to the second floor of her home. Failing that, she could have used her cellphone to call her sister, who also had a cellphone. This option was also denied by the police. This resulted in her being returned to the station because they couldn’t get her inside because the intercom system to buzz the apartment wasn’t working that night.

“At this point, I’m not drunk anymore,” said Kinloch. “I’ve done nothing wrong. I’m not a threat, and my parents are at home and are going to be worrying about me. I just wanted to go home.”

Go home. Nothing more, nothing less. All she had wanted to do was go home, yet this wish of hers was flat out denied by police who wouldn’t even let her make a phone call to ask to be let in, as she had forgotten her keys. A simple phone call would have spared Kinloch the events that followed the return to the Victoria police station.

She was returned to the station but had refused to get out of the vehicle and was subsequently removed by force and returned to the same cell where she had been held earlier, when she had been intoxicated and anything but calm. She had been accompanied by a prison guard, Special Const. Merle Edmonds, who instructed her to remove certain articles of clothing, including the shoes that were being worn at the time. In removing the shoe, Kinloch kicked it across the cell, never targeting the delusional officer who claimed that she had been assaulted by a flying shoe.

The female officer who had asked for the removal of certain articles of clothing then pinned the girl to the wall as two other officers came in and pinned her, pushing her face and body to the floor, and holding her arms and legs in place for several minutes while they placed her under arrest. While this happened, another officer came in and brought a rope or leash like object that was used to bound the girl. The end result is the girl is left tethered, her hands and feet bound, to the door for four hours before she was released.

There was no reason for her to even be put into the cell the second time, as she had been sobered up. If the officers had even an iota of human decency they could have asked her to wait in an area that was not a cell of any kind. They could have easily asked her to wait in the lobby, until they would be able to return her home, yet instead they robbed her of her dignity.

There are plenty of ways to “protect” someone that doesn’t involve using a prison cell. If the officers really had her welfare at heart, the last thing they would have done is locked her in the cell, adding to the emotional distress that she was feeling. Kinloch admitted to being in tears for the duration of this.

Human emotion; emotional distress, seems to be the grounds for police to exercise excessive force these days, rather than simply listening. If diplomacy was used more and people employed empathy, there would be fewer cases where an innocent person is caught up in a corrupt system that would rather pretend its working because it has people behind bars rather than actually working and seeing people back on the street and rehabilitated or if the crime warranted it, sentenced accordingly after a trial before a jury of their peers.

If this kind of mistreatment of a human being had happened at the hands of a civilian, that person would have been charged with unlawful confinement and assault among other things, as the confinement and bounding left Kinloch covered in bruises, which were reported to the Victoria police and handled by an officer who hadn’t been involved in the case.

“I wondered how they would feel if somebody took their child off the street and beat them up and detained them, and they didn’t know where their daughter was all night,” said Tammy-Marie Kinloch. “If I did that to my child — which I can’t imagine any parent would ever do — then throw the key away. Put me in jail.”

Her mother had been no doubt worried but in the end, at least her baby could come home to her. She was able to be with her daughter at the end of the tragedy. And with her daughter, able to confront the officers who had inflicted the bruises on her daughter.

Instead of assault charges being pressed against the four officers in question, Kinloch was initially charged with assaulting Edmonds, the female officer who had been in the cell when the shoe had been kicked to the other side of the cell. This charge was fortunately dropped quickly after the Crown Prosecution viewed the tape and exercised unprecedented common sense. Though it still intransigently maintains that the actions of the officers were justifiable given the circumstances, despite that the girl was petite and not even five feet tall.

Kinloch was fortunate enough to acquire a lawyer who believes that this is an open and shut case. Her lawyer, agrees with her about the tape, in that is secures her case against the officers named in the case. Even Kinloch admits that if it weren’t for the tape, she’d have no case. The tape is all that stands between justice and chaos.

B.C. teen alleges she was assaulted and unlawfully detained by police

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008 at 2:17 pm and is filed under canada, civil matters, justice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.