That report is just terrible, absolutely terrible. The poor man probably didn't see it coming and that makes it all the more traumatic, as he said, like grabbing an electricity pylon. Just awful.
I doubt the kids story because his film and camera was never taken and also he has a hobby of following the police and photographing them.. Maybe the kid kept getting in their way so the police got pissed off.
The RCMP in British Columbia don't seem to think so, not with the number of excessive use of force incidents and the number of in-custody deaths that have never been satisfactorily explained, which is also related to the accountability problems that have long been observed. Frankly, I was disappointed that the BC government didn't go through with calling the RCMP's bluff and form a provincial police force like Ontario and Quebec have instead of being pushed into signing another 20 year policing contract that means it will be decades before the issue can be revisited.
At least that kid didn't encounter the Mounties at the Vancouver airport or outside a hockey game otherwise he might not have lived to tell about it.
A friend of mine did some looking in to the information available about this young man. Apparently his father was politically active in Communist Poland, and was known to secretly photograph actions of the police there (and then).
So if this information is accurate, the young man may come to this honestly.
An update on this story - the young man "has been contacted by provincial investigators who look into alleged abuses in the private security industry."
If the guards are so ignorant they don't know how a film camera works then it wouldn't take much button pushing to make them believe you deleted all your pictures would it?
if the 16year old wants to be a photojournalist, he better get used to mistreatment by a lot of people ...
its not all glory, wine and roses ...
i know when i did newspaper work before and after 9-11 it was never easy ...