Cops ripped for arresting reporter trying to ask Freeland questions

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A reporter was arrested Monday while trying to ask questions of Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland in public.

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Freeland, along with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, were in Richmond Hill to commemorate the fourth anniversary of Iran’s military shooting down Flight PS752 as it was bound for Canada via Ukraine. Everyone  on board was killed, including 55 Canadian citizens and 30 permanent residents.

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Video of the incident shows David Menzies of Rebel News walking up to Freeland with a microphone in his hand and asking why the government has yet to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist group. Freeland doesn’t respond.

Menzies asks a second question while walking alongside Freeland before being blocked by a plainclothes cop — an RCMP officer working on her personal security detail — who grabs him and says he is under arrest for assault.

Menzies questions why he is being arrested for asking questions, but was ultimately cuffed with the help of York Regional Police officers and led away. He was later released without charges.

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The arrest was slammed on social media, with Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre saying this is the state of freedom of press after eight years under Trudeau’s leadership.

“I find theatrical gotcha journalism tiresome but he’s entitled to his approach,” Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner also shared on X, formally Twitter.

“The intervention here by police is unwarranted/egregious.”

Laureen Harper, wife of former Prime Minister Stephen Harper, weighed in as well.

“Police colleges should show this footage to trainees on what not to do,” she wrote. “What an overreaction, and what no coffee provided?”

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Elon Musk replied to one X commenter who thought the reporter “was falsely arrested on a trumped up charge of ‘assaulting an officer.’”

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“Sure looks that way,” Musk wrote on X. “Fine for the officer to body block someone trying to get close to a senior government official, but false to say that he deliberately assaulted an officer.

Ron Chhinzer, a former police officer in Peel Region who has aspirations for public office, called the arrest “an absolute embarrassment to the profession.”

“There is no defending this, nor should this be defended. This is wrong on every level — morally, ethically, and legally.”

Jerry Agar, a Toronto radio personality and Toronto Sun columnist, ripped into the cops’ treatment of the reporter as well.

“It’s irrelevant it’s David Menzies,” he said. “It’s irrelevant it’s Rebel. If you won’t defend in a circumstance like that the people with who you disagree then who’s there to defend you?”

Sun editor emeritus Lorrie Goldstein noted on X how Toronto Police did not arrest a pro-Palestinian protester making threats at the Eaton Centre. “Excuse me? We’re not arresting someone who threatens someone else with “I’ll put you six-feet deep,” but the officer here says Menzies assaulted him? Seriously?”

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