by David Averre and Natasha Anderson at Daily Mail
Police forces in Canada are coming under scrutiny for their excessive violence with peaceful Freedom Convoy protesters in Ottawa, as leaked text messages reveal a group of law enforcement officers allegedly celebrating the moment a grandmother was trampled by mounted police and video shows another man being beaten after he says he peacefully turned himself in.
The text messages, which were leaked by Rebel News and whose authenticity has not yet been verified, appear to show several officers delighting in the brutality via a Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) group chat.
The crackdown on the self-styled Freedom Convoy began Friday morning, when hundreds of police descended into the protest zone in Ottawa and began arresting demonstrators. At least 196 people had been arrested as of Monday and 115 vehicles had been towed, police said, while other trucks and vehicles left the protest zone after being warned starting Friday. Heavily-armed riot cops used pepper spray, while mounted police and armored vehicles were also brought in to help begin clearing the downtown area, which had been paralyzed by a three-week blockade over the truckers’ Covid jab protest.
Several clips have shown peaceful protesters being beaten into submission, including a truck driver who claims he was attacked after having given himself up to authorities. Other footage shows a woman, who appeared to be using a mobility scooter, being trampled by mounted police in Ottawa, Ontario, on Friday.
One of the text messages in the exchange appears to show officers applauding the incident involving the woman.
‘Just watched the horse video – that is awesome,’ the chat member allegedly wrote.
‘We should practice that manoeuvre.’
Meanwhile, one group participant wrote: ‘Time for the protesters to hear our jackboots on the ground,’ while another said: ‘Don’t kick all of them out until next weeks group gets our turn.’
Moments before the unidentified woman was trampled, she told another Freedom Convoy participant – who was recording the protests – that she was rallying to ensure a better future for her grandchildren.
‘Our grandchildren. This is what we’re doing it for. So they all can have peace and love and happiness,’ she is heard saying on video, before chanting: ‘Peace, love, happiness. Peace, love, happiness.’
It comes as the province’s Special Investigations Unit (SIU) announced it was investigating an incident in which a 49-year-old woman was ‘seriously injured’ in an interaction with a police horse.
The incident also followed an incident two weeks ago in which a 4foot-10inch great grandfather was cuffed and shoved to his knees for honking his car horn in support of the Freedom Convoy.
The RCMP said it plans to launch an inquiry into the text chats. But the RCMP did not confirm the authenticity of the messages in its Tuesday morning response to DailyMail.com, nor did the organization answer an inquiry about disciplinary consequences for the officers involved.
The Freedom Convoy demonstrations initially focused on Canada’s vaccine requirement for truckers entering the country, but morphed into a wider protest against the country’s highly restrictive Covid precautions and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s faux-liberal government.
Ottawa protesters are largely gone from the Parliament Hill area Tuesday after having been chased away by officers sporting riot gear in what was the biggest police operation in Canada’s history…
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