Two tales of RCMP Excessive Response Teams

What was the point of this exactly? 

Sending in snipers in camo with dogs to crawl through the grass towards a group of unarmed people blockading a road because they fear the wholly-owned Canadian subsidiary of a Houston, Texas exploration company is setting up to frack their land. 

Oddly enough, Canadian law supports the rights of the foreign company to frack over those of the people attempting to protect their community from it. 

Hence the blockade protest, ongoing since Sept 30 when Elsipogtog First Nation Chief Aaron Sock issued the company an eviction notice not recognized by our courts and government. 

Yesterday, three days after the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples called conditions facing First Nations in Canada "a crisis" and the same day our PM also left the country, hundreds of RCMP moved in to enforce the rights of the fracking company.    40 people including the chief were arrested for refusing to abide by the court injunction to leave and the media was presumably pleased with their pictures of burning cop cars after the situation blew up.

In France, fracking has been banned since 2011 - despite legal challenges from corps - due to its potential for contamination of groundwater and causing earthquakes.
In BC, 85% of our 8,000 natural gas wells are fracked with another 40,000 on the way.

Elsipogtog Update : Eyewitness account at Halifax Media Co-op - excellent, important read.

Another Excessive Response Team story from rural BC.

Here's a guy from the RCMP Emergency Response Team with his M-16 exactly as he looked when he and three others set out to arrest war veteran and PTSD sufferer Greg Matters for assault in Sept 2012 after Matters and his brother got into a family fight the day before. 

Matters was unarmed and surrendering to them when he was spooked by the ERT helicopter sent in from Kamloops full of more officers circling closely overhead and tried to run away. When a faulty taser failed to work on him, he was shot twice in the back with an M-16 and died. 

The Independent Investigations Office which had cleared the officers of "having committed a criminal offence" in April stated Matters was shot "in the chest" but last week a forensic pathologist testified at the coroners inquest he was "shot twice in the back". He either was or was not wielding a hatchet at them according to officers' testimony.

The ECT also assaulted and arrested Matters' mother and had no warrant so the BC Civil Liberties Assoc. has lodged a complaint with the Commission for Public Complaints against the RCMP.

Prince George Citizen : RCMP jumped the gun: lawyer

How did anyone with an ounce of sense think a stressed out guy the police knew had PTSD from having been physically attacked by superiors in Bosnia would react to four guys dressed like this showing up on his property accompanied by a helicopter?  

The Elsipogtog First Nation are in negotiations with the fracking company and local government officials; Greg Matters had a number of people he trusted to bring him in for questioning over what was a family dispute .
Yet somehow they both wound up dealing with RCMP escalating excessive response teams advancing on them through the grass with sniper rifles. 

There's something very wrong with this picture.
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