[Jeff Alton]

This happened in my town, I have seen the video and heard the press releases, so here are some points to consider....

- fellow had been stuck there for 8-10 hrs in a secure area not speaking english and proabably pretty hungry.
- not a single security, Canadian Border Service, Airport employee etc tried to find out why he was there.
- the womam, a regular citized, seemed to be able to calm him down with hand gestures before the cops arrive

Now, I am the last person to take a 'bleading heart" stance when it comes to the police. I can't stand when someone complains about getting roughed up or feels like they got treated poorly when they were arrested. However, there are a few things about this that stink, and stink real bad in my opinion.

1. When the police seized the tape and would not give it back, the spokesman said how the attending officers had tried really hard for a long while to calm the person down. Cough cough, 26 seconds was how hard they tried......

2. When the tape was siezed, the spokesman said they would not give it back as it was a "big piece of the investigation".

3. Once the person who shot the video went to court and got it back, yes, it took a court battle to for the owner of the video to get it back. The same police spokesman said it was only a very very small piece of a very complicated event.

4. And here is the big one for me. Once the person steps in from the side of the camera and checks for a pulse, the rest of the officers do nothing to try to save him. One coils up his taser wires while the rest stand around.

I was not there so I will offer no comment on the use of the taser other to say that I will give the attending officers the benefit of the doubt for the choice of using it, at least until a court or investigaiton finds otherwise. However, I do have a problem with the fact they all just stood around and made no attempt to revive the victim.......

I just walked past the scene last night as I arrived home pn an international flight. I could not help myself from stopping and taking a look around the area. It is a sealed and secure area, no way out really. The general public, at the time was separated from the scence by secure glass panes. The person was still on the secure side of the airport, in otherwords the only way in there was to have passed through security at your point of departure.

Like I said, I wont judge the officers choices of use of force, I will leave that to the folks tasked with doing so, but I think they maybe could have made a bit of an attempt to offer some sort of help for the victim, for which they are trained.

I wonder how many security gaurds, border service folks and security people manning the 700 cameras at YVR either watched this guy numerous times, walked past him at the start and end of their shifts or maybe even joked with a co worker about how long he had been there......

Anyways, it is a said chain of events. Should he have acted the way he did and an airport? No. But the outcome sure did not fit the behaviour displayed.

Cheers