Frontline Reporting

Twitter meets good old fashioned roll up your sleeves and jump into it reporting in the streets of Toronto today. A TVOntario reporter witnesses some brutal police behavior and brings it to his readers almost instantly:

@spaikin: so the police just started arresting people. i stress, this was a peaceful, middle class, diverse crowd. no anarchists

@spaikin:i saw police brutality tonight. it was unnecessary. they asked me to leave the site or they would arrest me. i told them i was dong my job.

@spaikin: literally more than 100 officers with guns pointing at the crowd. rubber bullets and smoke bombs ready to be fired. rubber bullets fired

@spaikin: police on one side screamed at the crowd to leave one way. then police on the other side said leave the other way. there was no way out.

@spaikin: the demonstration on the esplanade was peaceful. it was like an old sit in. no one was aggressive. and yet riot squad officers moved in.

@spaikin: i can appreciate that the police were on edge today, after seeing four or five of their cruisers burned. but why such overreaction tonight?

...

@spaikin: the journalist identified himself as working for "the guardian." he talked too much and pissed the police off. two officers held him....


@spaikin : a third punched him in the stomach. totally unnecessary. the man collapsed. then the third officer drove his elbow into the man's back.'

@spaikin:no cameras recorded the assault. and it was an assault.'

@spaikin: :the officer who escorted me away from the demo said, "yeah, that shouldn't have happened." he is correct. there was no cause for it.

UPDATE: More

UPDATE 2: Jesse Rosenfeld, asthmatic, with only one kidney and recently subjected to a savage police beating is still missing.