Toronto police caught on video behaving badly at downtown bar
The Toronto Police Service has opened an investigation into two of its officers after video footage surfaced of them getting silly with some women at a Queen West bar (and then later in their cruiser) while on duty on Sunday night.
Seven video clips and one photo from the evening were conveniently rounded up and posted to a brand new Instagram account called citizen.to on Monday morning, all of them with the hashtag #torontopolice.
In the first video, a uniformed police officer can be seen handcuffing a young woman inside the Queen St. Warehouse while his partner looks on. Another woman stands next to the group with handcuffs around her wrists and appears to be posing for a photo.
"Officer, I didn't know being basic was a crime?" reads a block of text over the next clip, which ends with a closeup of one officer's uniform.
The person who posted the clips to Instagram told Global News that the unidentified women were celebrating a birthday party when they met the officers, who were later identified as 52 Division Constables Jian Liang and Aaron Isaac.
Isaac said in a separate interview with CTV that the officers were "executing positive community policing" at the time and that they regularly stop into bars and clubs downtown "to make sure everything is okay."
Fair enough, but does positive community policing include driving people from bar to bar while bumping YouTube videos in your cruiser? If so, I'd like to get in on that.
"Typically they have to take me by force," reads the text overlay on another video later in the night. "Uber's here!" shouts one of the women as she gets into the back of a TPS cruiser.
In another video with the caption "I know my rights!!!" the woman filming asks the cops for a cheese sandwich.
Last but not least, the camera-person zooms in on the police cruiser's computer display, which appears to show a YouTube playlist.
"Thank you @TorontoPolice for the safe ride to the bar tonight," reads the text overlay on that clip.
Toronto Police spokesperson Meaghan Gray says the force's professional standards unit is investigating the videos and that, if misconduct is determined, the "officers will be disciplined appropriately."
"We are always concerned when videos like this come up and thankfully it doesn't happen often," she said in a statement. "But when it does, we refer the matter to our professional standards section and they conduct a thorough investigation."
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