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GATINEAU, Quebec, January 4, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) – After a New Year’s Eve video went viral of Canadian police storming a family’s private gathering when a neighbor snitched on them for breaking lockdown rules, Donald J. Trump Jr. tweeted that such “insanity” is coming to America if people “don’t wake the hell up.”
Video posted to social media on January 1 shows about seven police officers at the doorstep of a private residence in Gatineau, Quebec, forcibly dragging out and pinning to the ground a young man who was arguing with them. Video also shows a woman, the owner of the house on rue le Baron, being detained by police outside the home, standing in her bare feet on the snow. Video shows that one of the officers who is dragging a man out of the home is not wearing a mask.
Il faut que ça devienne viral. RT en masse les amis. La lumière doit être fait sur cet événement. pic.twitter.com/nnxsGcQcOn
— Nusakan le récalcitrant (@Nusakan007) January 1, 2021
Six people were in the home celebrating New Year's Eve. These included the female owner of the home, her mother and stepfather, her brother and his girlfriend, and one other guest. The police had received an anonymous complaint that the revelers were breaking Quebec's COVID-19 lockdown rules that currently prohibit indoor gatherings. Two people were ultimately arrested and all were fined $1,546 each for being at the gathering.
Video of the police raid on the home has been viewed over 5 million times on Twitter.
Many small businesses are being forced to close temporarily or even permanently under the strain of a second wave of government-imposed COVID shutdowns.
This is totally and thoroughly wrong...especially when big business, government, and large segments of the professional world are totally insulated from the repercussions of the shutdowns.
Something drastic needs to be done now!
SIGN this urgent petition calling for state legislatures to cut the salaries of governors and mayors who are responsible for closing small businesses by enacting draconian COVID shutdown measures.
The bottom line is that the people imposing shutdown measures need to feel the bite of the restrictions they are imposing on other peoples' livelihoods so that they have a personal incentive to re-open their economies and make accommodation for the survival of small businesses.
Local restaurants, cafes, gyms, clothiers, bookshops, florists, and many more, are being forced to shut their doors, some forever.
Americans who have spent their entire lives building their business - and, taken all of the risk - stand to lose everything.
But, the following are all considered essential and never get shut down: lawyers, lobbyists, politicians, courts, big corporations, and the media...
And, to add insult to injury, some politicians who are imposing these shutdowns, like Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo, are actually getting huge pay raises starting in the new year. Cuomo's raise is $25,000 next year alone!
This is utterly scandalous! It is time to say enough is enough!
If small business owners are being CRUSHED by government COVID restrictions, the politicians responsible should also feel the BITE of those restrictions!
This is the only way to make the "political class" understand how devastating their shutdowns truly are to small business owners and their employees.
Small businesses are the backbone of our economy, supply millions of jobs to people across the country, and ironically provide the taxes used to fund the programs so loved by most of the governors and mayors.
Because of the nature of small and medium businesses, their owners and workers are on the frontlines of the COVID crisis.
They need to be rewarded for this bravery, not closed down.
Accommodation needs to be made for small businesses so that they can weather this storm and thrive after it has passed. These are businesses we all love using, and we want them to be there long after COVID is just a bad memory.
When this is all over, do we really want every coffee shop to be a Starbucks or Dunkin' Donuts, or every restaurant to be a McDonald's?
The answer is not only "no," but "Heck, no!"
Therefore, governors and mayors need to be personally incentivized to do everything in their power to see that small and medium businesses can survive and thrive - AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE.
That's why we're calling on state legislators to cut the salaries of all governors and mayors who are imposing draconian shutdowns where no accommodation is being made for small businesses.
Please SIGN and SHARE this urgent petition today!
**Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com
Trump Jr., the eldest child of U.S. President Donald Trump, tweeted his alarm about the raid on Jan. 3:
“This is insanity and it’s coming here soon if you don’t wake the hell up,” he stated.
This is insanity and it’s coming here soon if you don’t wake the hell up. https://t.co/48Qk0u3tWr
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) January 3, 2021
Police in Gatineau defended their actions on Twitter, saying in a Jan. 2 post that the “individuals were recalcitrant and refused to cooperate,” adding that the “individual arrested in the video had assaulted a police officer, hitting him in the face a few times.”
“We ask for your collaboration to continue to respect health measures and collaborate during any police intervention,” the police warned.
But Mathieu Tessier, one of the two arrested, told CBC News that the police used excessive force during the raid.
“The police cannot do what they did to us. They treat us like animals, like criminals,” he said.
Tessier said that it was his sister, the owner of the home, who was the other person arrested. It was his mother who was standing at the doorway. Tessier said his sister stepped out of the house, not wearing any shoes, to speak with police. The situation escalated, he said, when his mother opened the door to ask his sister to come back inside the home.
“The policemen took (my mother's) arms from the house and pulled to get her out,” he related.
That’s when Tessier said he intervened to get between his mother and the police officer. It was at this moment that Tessier’s girlfriend started filming the video that has since gone viral.
“When I see that he was pulling my mother out, I go in the middle of them so they can leave my mother alone so I can close the door and talk,” Tessier said.
The Rebel’s Ezra Levant commented that the police raid on the home was performed “Gestapo style.”
“There were six people in a house in Gatineau, Canada. A neighbour snitched. Police went in, Gestapo style. Assaulting citizens,” he commented on Twitter.
“This video is the tipping point for me,” commented Levant. “For 48 years I have been pro-police, almost fanatically so. I cannot say that anymore. I know there are still good cops out there. Some are my friends. But as the violent enforcers of the lockdown I no longer support them.”
“I will not take out my rage against the cops, because then I will wind up dead. So I will focus my rage on their bosses, the lockdown politicians,” he added.