(Ottawa) A first event organized by sympathizers of the “freedom convoy” for Canada Day has been canceled following Thursday’s excesses. Four people were arrested during a rally at the National War Memorial to welcome reservist James Topp.
Posted at 10:24 a.m.
The group Police on Guard, which says it is made up of serving and retired police officers, said a family picnic it was planning in Strathcona Park a few miles from parliament has been canceled “due to a recent incident in Ottawa”. The statement was released Thursday evening after the first arrests.
The organizers were refused the permit they had requested from the city to hold the event and they feared a police intervention, according to the Twitter account Live From the Shed who is one of the voices of the movement against compulsory vaccination.
Overflows took place Thursday evening during the rally to mark the arrival of James Topp at the National War Memorial. The Canadian Armed Forces reservist, associated with radical right-wing groups, marched from Vancouver to Ottawa to oppose the imposition of COVID-19 vaccinations on federal public servants and employees in the transportation sector.
Videos published on social networks show muscular arrests. The Ottawa Police Service says it is investigating what happened. “The initial investigation reveals that an interaction with officers became confrontational and that an officer was strangled,” he said on his Twitter account.
Four people were arrested, bringing the total number to 5 since Wednesday. According to the latest report published Friday morning, municipal agents issued 275 parking tickets and towed 72 vehicles outside the city center.
The authorities have been multiplying warnings on social networks for several days to try to discourage the installation of a new convoy of trucks in the city center like that of last winter. Hundreds of trucks had blocked the streets around the parliament for three weeks, blaring their horns at all hours of the day or night for several consecutive days.
The Ottawa police remained powerless, which angered many citizens. At the height of the crisis, former Ottawa Police Chief Peter Sloly called for 1,800 additional officers to dislodge the hundreds of trucks and their blaring horns that had come to rest on the streets of downtown Ottawa. the federal capital. He resigned a week later.
The federal government subsequently invoked the Emergency Measures Act for the first time since its adoption in 1988. A few days later, a vast police operation spread over three days had made it possible to dislodge the demonstrators.