2025-06-23

so i was hanging out at the library, and i was on my way to an appointment. i am crossing the road and i see a cop car. to preface; i do hate police. i have talked to several homeless people about their experiences with police slashing their tents and stealing their possessions and harassing them.

i have previously witnessed (circa 2019-2021, sometime around then) two police officers frogmarching a guy off the LRT for sleeping peacefully, bothering no one. they were using excessive force and they didnt tell him what he had done wrong.
to make a long story short, i hate cops for intimidating our community, showing up late and escalating situations, being a drain on taxpayer money, coming in from rich suburbs to harass the most vulnerable members of our community in the urban core, voluntarily choosing to uphold a institution founded in slave-catching, and aiding and abetting and concealing the murder of mathios arkangelo and countless other people of colour. anyways i was walking from the library, and i see a cop car, and for all the above reasons, i decide to flip it off. i just stand there, middle finger extended, on the corner near the hotel, at the cop car.

i have headphones on so i didnt hear when they flashed the sirens at me, but i sure as hell did notice when they illegally pulled across two lanes of traffic on 100st and parked blocking the intersection between a hotel and a library. a tiny little cop came out of the drivers seat- she mustve been around 5'3" to 5'6", mid 30s, blonde hair up in a ponytail with a claw clip, and the thing i remember most- Crazy green blue eyes. they reminded me of the eyes in the posts of israeli soldiers- violently indignant, sure of her power and how she was abusing it, and willing to escalate the situation to any extent. she approached already speaking, her hand on her taser on her belt.
i took down my headphones and said "what?" she said "thats stunting, thats a 250$ ticket, you're distracting a driver and you could've caused us to crash and kill someone" i said "i assumed our esteemed officers were better drivers than that" before i remembered the cardinal rule of police interactions: shut the fuck up. she tried to get me to elaborate on that several times, saying things like "you think this is funny" and "you can't treat us this way" she came within 3 feet of me, and then i think she noticed that im 6foot and roughly double her size.
when i later recounted this event to my friends we were all pretty sure that this would'nt've happened to able bodied man, and if i had been a person of colour or visibly unhoused things would've gone way way worse. to be clear, i am afab and white and i use a walker.
anyways. by this point her partner had come out- 5'6-5'8", male, salt and pepper hair in a goodclips crew cut, late 40s to early 50s, and the kind of red that i speculate is a result of alcohol abuse, although i couldnt say for sure as i was wearing a mask so i couldnt smell his breath, and he stayed 2 feet to 5 feet away from me at all times. anyway. tiny blondie gets in the passenger seat of the car and says im being detained, asks if im happy and this was worth it.
i just stay silent. she asks me for information such as my name and home address, and before i give her the answer i ask "am i legally required to give you this information?" to which she responds yes, with increasing frustration.
her partner is standing in front of me so i just keep eye contact with him, trying to pour every ounce of loathing and pity and contempt i have into the eye contact. he tries to get me to speak several times "do you have a problem with police? what did we do to you? why are you fingering us?" he keeps referring to flipping him off as "fingering" which is honestly so surreal and out of touch, like, he called it fingering them like 15 times. it was insane.
i said nothing except when i was answering the questions of the lady cop about my full name and address. she accused me of lying about my last name before finding it in their database. i was scared as hell- no hostile group should know my full name and address.
i was worried they were gonna come harass my roommates or stalk me or break in or something. i have experience being scared though, so i kept my face completely neutral and glared daggers into the male cop ahead of me. he kept talking, of course, making moralistic arguements as to why showing my displeasure with police is fundamentally wrong and bad. i didnt respond.
he called me "creepy" three times because i didnt respond and kept holding eye contact. i resisted the urge to tell him that its very telling he thinks my right to silence is creepy. i won the staring contest by the way, he looked away first. he chastised me for several more minutes while the lady cop put in a call to her supervisor on her phone. after a long time, they said i was free to go, but they didnt seem pleased.
i unfortunately was too overwhelmed by the insanity of the situation to ask for either of their names and badge numbers, or their licence plate. i later learned that i wasnt getting a ticket, and that that was a unlawful detention, as flipping off police isnt a crime or a ticketable offense, and was ruled a god given right by a quebecois judge.
i was paranoid as hell for the next week, terrified they would show up to my house. the worst part is that i wanted to insult them, to make them feel the way i know they make everyone around them feel- on edge, disheartened, violated, insulted, but you cant because they will straight up just arrest and kill you. theyre bullies who you cant fight back against. and im angry as hell about it.
i know my experience was comparatively mild especially as compared to the experiences i've heard of homeless native people in edmonton, but it was still unlawful intimidation and detention, and it still shook me and made me viscerally mad.
police do not protect us. police show up 3hrs late and shoot your neighbour's dog. police deserve to feel as unsafe and uncomfortable as they make everyone around them feel. they renounce being a community member worthy of compassion by wearing a uniform that allows them to do whatever cruelty benefits capitalism and the state, and they do not deserve to go two feet without being flipped off, glared at, yelled at, refused services, and treated as the worst kind of scum, because they are. they are.

Edmonton Police Service (EPS)

100st and judy padua way, specifically the westin hotel corner of that intersection

Anonymous