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🧵 Why are we suing the Calgary Police? It’s hard to describe what happens to you physiologically while being smeared in public by powerful people. It’s a mix of uncertainty, fear, frustration, rage, indignation, and anguish, on a thick layer of pity — for self and others you know are in it, too. 1/

I remember the moments after a police officer smashed me in the face, purposelessly, several times while face-down on the ground. I craned to face the student next to me, going through a similar ordeal. We reassured each other. It was a show of mutual care amid utter violence. 2/

We got arrested and split up. The student was handed directly from the police to EMS. Face bloodied after multiple officers witnessed my assaults, I was never even offered medical assistance. In the days to come, the police chief would tell everyone no injuries were reported. 3/

A weird thing happens when you go through something like that but powerful people say you didn’t. You watch reality get swallowed, digested, and reconstituted by power in real time. I think a lot more people can see that now, two years on. 4/

I’ve done everything to reconstruct the events that we know happened, that we all had injuries and medical records to show for. Nearly 40 freedom of information requests. Countless hours sifting through redacted documents. All the while watching power digesting, reconstituting our story. 5/

What kept it all going was much bigger than the emotions of the fallout. It was the terror of watching Gaza turn into Iran turn into Lebanon. It was knowing that however depressed we felt about our experience, it was just a peephole into the concentration camps we tried to stop in May 2024. 6/

Formal complaints to the Chief, to the police commission, to ASIRT - all swallowed, digested, reconstituted. So we’ll sue CPS, along with the university and the city, and we will all watch them once again, in real time, lie to obstruct justice. It is how they operate. 7/

The time to let systems create accountability is long past. In hindsight, it seems it was never built to function at all. So we’ll sue. I hope you watch. To get caught up, I’ve compiled critical work at the bottom of this ⬇️, by Jeremy, Adeline and others. 8/ drugdatadecoded.ca/for-immediat...

And I hope you’ll help us out. We’re lucky to have Chris Wiebe doing a lot of pro bono work, but we will need your support regardless. Please consider chipping in 👇👇👇 chuffed.org/project/1808...

I know exactly what you mean about the surrealism that sets in when a giant oppressive system pretends you weren’t hurt in profound ways Refusing to admit damage done I’m sorry I hope they pay (financially & karma)

Thanks so much. Having observed, reported on and advocated against the astonishing violence against people who use drugs by the same systems, it feels almost trivial in comparison. But that’s part of the point: these abusers intentionally trivialize events as gaslighting.

That’s how I feel about the cruelty I’ve been shown vs my incarcerated and “severe and persistently mentally ill” population My abuse was nothing by comparison and they gaslight people like me so they can continue to abuse & neglect my patients Like I’m completely traumatized & comparatively fine

I hope you win and I hope someday I get a chance at my fight 🫶🏻