Police Abuse

Sometime either late Saturday night or early Sunday morning (July 10/11), Edmonton City Police responded to a 'gun shot complaint' in our area. Admittedly, earlier on there was a loud "bang" heard, which could have been a car back firing, or maybe indeed a real 'gun shot'.  Either way, someone reported it as coming from our back yard.

EPS responded, and officers were ringing the hell out of the front door bell, and helped themselves to opening our back door on our deck (which caused the internal house alarm to activate), placing both my brother and myself into one of those "what the hell is going on" modes.  My brother was sitting on the can at the time, and I was in the basement.  He was trying to finish up his 'business' and I was rushing up the stairs to figure out what was going on.  When I opened up the main back door in the house, I saw "people" and immediately shouted out "who's there", and proceeded out into the deck area.  The response was "police", and I could see the uniforms.  I hollered out to my brother that it was the cops, and both of us are going "what the fuck now???".

You see, we have the unpleasant privilege of living next door to an old man who is clearly mentally unstable, and that old man is constantly calling the police on us to complain.  EPS has been out at least a dozen times in the last while, listening to this old man babbling on about something we have supposedly done, and constantly have been "interviewing" us about issues.

Naturally, nothing has EVER been found where we have done anything, and EPS has piles of case files pop up on their computer when ever they respond to his address or our address.  The old man, by the way, has been taken at least 2 times for what we believe is a psychiatric evaluation, because he's 'disappeared' for 30 days at a time.  The 'natural conclusion process' for us, was this mentally unstable person had complained again.

Anyway, the cops demanded to know who was in the house, and insisted on coming in to look.  There was no warrant and when asked for one, we were told they didn't need to have one because it was an emergency (cough, ya, right).  The (guessing) lead officer was a female, who has been at the house a few times before and knows both my brother and myself.  I told her several times that there was NO ONE else but she was still demanding to come in to check. WHY they needed to "look" and exactly WHAT they were looking for still remains a mystery.  (Upon checking this morning with the neighbour, we learnt that EPS didn't do the same at HIS house, so we were the only ones targeted.)

So the cops came in, all six of them... and walked through the house "looking".  During this time, one of the EPS male members saw a hunting knife, latched up in its sheath, hanging on the bathroom door knob, located right next to the back door.  He grabbed the knife from the door handle, which was a present to my brother from his best friend who passed away several years ago.  My brother grabbed the tail end of the sheath, and told the cop "you can't have that" and the cop told him to let go.  He said "no", at which point a gun was drawn on him, and he let go, with the cop then saying "wise move".  So EPS felt threatened?? By an over weight old man with grey hair and a broken back.  I guess the two cops that were standing right there felt they had to use excessive and threatening force, by drawing a gun.

They checked the living room, and tried to turn on lights from a rotary dimmer switch.  Of course, the fan and light combo this switch was wired to, was turned off at the unit itself.  You see, you can't use a dimmer switch on a fan, because it will either burn out the fan, or the switch.  And here I thought that when you are at a "crime scene", the first rule is DON'T TOUCH ANYTHING.  But no, this cop decided to fiddle with the dimmer control.  After they left, we tried to turn the light on and it didn't work.  Thankfully, we found that the control was turned all the way down (hey dummy, UP is usually 'on' you know) and were able to prevent damage to the fan and dimmer by turning it all the way up before turning the light back on.  Stop playing with other peoples property.  If you wanted the light on, just ASK.  We turned all of the lights on in the basement so you could "search" to see if someone else was here.  And you were almost ready to LEAVE without searching the basement until I reminded you it still needed to be done.

Who complained, we have yet to find out.  The one neighbour we talked to said he thought the shot came from across the street by the 7-11, which is the same general area that my brother also thought it came from.  We still are waiting to hear why this all happened, and trust me... a formal complaint WILL be launched over having a gun drawn on my brother.

EPS, especially the female lead cop, KNOWS us, we have NEVER done anything wrong, and its been proven over and OVER again that we have never done anything wrong.  WHY was the need to force your way in, without a warrant, to search, and to search for what?  More importantly, why did you draw your GUN, when there were several other options available?  I guess two young cops just can't handle a fat grey haired old man with a broken back...