ROTHENBURGER – Police ‘surge’ against protesters shows patience, restraint
FOR GRIPPING TELEVISION, yesterday’s wall-to-wall coverage of police action against the protesters in Ottawa was hard to match and it will, no doubt, continue today and tomorrow.
Watching it unfold brought mixed feelings of sadness and relief. Sadness because it had come to this; relief at the professional way in which police moved in to start regaining control of the streets in front of Parliament Hill.
We’ve become used to watching riots south of the border in which police use batons, rubber bullets and tear gas against demonstrators, cracking skulls and dragging them off to paddy wagons.
That visual of the American way of doing crowd control goes back decades.
Who can ever forget or, at least, not be familiar with, Kent State in 1970, when the Ohio National Guard used real bullets against students protesting the Vietnam war, fatally shooting four and wounding nine?
Mel Rothenburger is a former mayor of Kamloops and a retired newspaper editor. He is a regular contributor to CFJC Today, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a director on the Thompson-Nicola Regional District board. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.
ArmchairMayor.ca 
Yep, Real professional riding horses into a worked up crowd of protesters. The idiot that thought was a good idea needs to find a new line of work.
It’s really impressive how the police have handled this (and thanks to the CBC for the play-by-play). The past two years have shown that Canadians value human life. Through patient work, the police in Ottawa are demonstrating those same values.
Well said Mr. MR. I was a bit afraid, still I am actually, that some sort of violence would’ve made headlines but thankfully nothing so far. I may just add the the rhetoric coming from these “protesters” is just downright absurd.