Pepper Sprayed Point Blank in the Face
Assaulted by multiple police officers.
Part 1: The Crane Operator & the Bulgarian Immigrant
Ben, whose flatbed truck served as a stage throughout the Ottawa protest, says the energy during those three weeks is difficult to describe:
I mean, it was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced…the unity, the love…you can’t explain it except that it was supernatural to bring that amount of people together for three weeks and not have [a serious incident occur]…Everybody was loving each other. It was beautiful.
Some members of the public told him they’d been pushed close to the breaking point by the endless pandemic measures, and that the Freedom Convoy had given them “hope again to live.” Armed forces veterans thanked him for what he what doing, which strengthened his resolve: “Because they fought, got injured, and even died for the freedoms that we’re supposed to be able to enjoy in this beautiful country.”
According to Ben, many local residents
were just super stoked and happy…They could feel that there was change in the air, and that something beautiful was happening. I mean one, maybe two people that I met personally were against us being there, but the locals who supported us said: ‘these Negative Nancies…complain about every concert or Canada Day event, you know. So there’s nothing that’s going to appease these people.’
During his interview with Bright Light News, Ben describes what happened the final morning of the protest. Lines of police dressed in riot gear moved quickly and aggressively. He watched as they didn’t even try to open the doors of parked trucks. If the driver was still inside, they smashed the windows:
I got out of my truck at that point…I opened the windows, I unlocked the doors, and I stepped outside the truck and I just stood there. They proceeded to push me across the intersection…and I ended up on the grill of the one truck…I had nowhere to go. I was backed up against the truck. And there’s officers beating me with batons and whatnot, telling me to move. And I was asking them, ‘Where do you want me to go, you’re surrounding me?’
…And out of nowhere a guy comes out from behind the front officers and sprays pepper spray in my face. Somebody kicked the feet out from under me and kind of took me out there for a bit.
Ben was never arrested. He says while he was on the ground, nearby protesters managed to yank him free. “It felt like I didn’t have any weight to me. They just grabbed me and pulled me right out as if I was a little kid.”
His brother, who was nearby, walked him to his hotel room. For the first three hours he says he couldn’t open his eyes “without actually grabbing my eyelids and prying them open with my fingers.”
His wife arrived at the hotel five or so hours after the incident, and spent the afternoon wiping his face as his eyes watered. Later that evening, when she touched her own face, she was surprised at how much it burned: “She said her face burned from my tears.”
If you watch even part of this video interview (Ben discusses the police at 17:20 minutes), you’ll see that he’s a calm, quiet guy. He looks leaner and more compact than in the video footage from February, in which he’s wearing winter clothing.
There appears to be no lasting damage from the pepper spray. When the interview was conduced three weeks later, Ben was able to laugh ruefully: “I had no idea how pepper spray actually can affect a person…It’s insane how well that stuff works. It’s a very good deterrent. I can see why they use it.”
Part 3: A War for Freedom
Serve and protect, heh?