The reporter, Alexa Lavoie, was filming. The police are not permitting the filming of their enforcement activities. Whether they were going for her or somebody standing next to her isn’t clear.
She was Livestream at the time of the assault and shooting. I saw.
They couldn’t keep the whole thing from being filmed by no less than two hundred people including some of the MSM.
I have personally watched at least five different live streams on YouTube the last few days.
I watched one this morning that was filmed by some Russian guy.
At least I think he was Russian.
He was speaking some eastern European language.
He also spoke English at times.
He was right up front yesterday morning.
He was within 10’ when the horses came through.
He was 5’ from men whose uniforms said Toronto Police.
They were in dark blue uniforms without helmets.
Many of them didn’t look too happy to be there.
The people in the olive clothing with helmets were typically on the front line pushing forward.
To sum up, the police have claimed the firing two rubber bullets as shown in the video was justified because the protesters had allegedly escalated from passively resisting the officers by standing there, to actively resisting them.
There is nothing in the video showing that the protesters had started actively resisting or had started assaulting the officers.
What the video does show is that a member of a police assault team reached from behind the police front line in an effort to grab a protester, and haul him back behind the police front line so they could deal with him individually, away from the rest of the protesters. The attempt was unsuccessful. But the police appear to be claiming that the crowd’s natural reaction to the police grab is what justified the use of the rubber bullet.
Also, the bullet was used by police on someone known to be a journalist, who was recording. Because the police fired two separate times specifically at this known journalist, one might infer that the police were specifically setting up this incident for that purpose.