Sheriff assaults Dr Simona Tibu

I've read this news recently and was not going to react, except that I've read that an acquaintance has actually met this person. It's about a Romanian dentist who was viciously beaten in Edmonton by a sheriff.

LE: The dashcam video of her arrest was released January 12 - find the link at the end.

Here’s how the story unfolded, in her own words, in a clip by CTV News: Cops Go Bad, RoCa Media, burrnabycomputer.

Jana G. Pruden wrote an article in the Edmonton Journal (link below, in Sources).

EDMONTON - An Edmonton dentist alleges she was physically and sexually assaulted by an Alberta sheriff after he pulled her over on the highway for speeding earlier this month.

Simona Tibu, 41, said she feared for her life during the incident. Photographs provided by Tibu show her in hospital with dark bruises and deep scrapes all over her face and elsewhere on her body.

“I’m not afraid because I did nothing wrong,” Tibu said Monday. “I shouldn’t be beaten for speeding.”

Tibu said she was driving from her home in Camrose to her dental office in Edmonton around 8:30 a.m. on Saturday, Aug. 3, when a sheriff on a motorcycle stopped her on Highway 21 for speeding.

The sheriff hit her car window “violently,” she said, and when she threatened to record their encounter on video, he knocked the cellphone out of her hand. She said he then ordered her out of the car, where he hit her breasts and held her against the trunk of her car. Tibu said she could feel his groin against her, and that when she tried to push him away, he got “very mad” and hit her repeatedly on the head, then smashed her head onto the road while she was handcuffed.

Tibu said a passerby stopped and called 911. RCMP spokeswoman Josee Valiquette said the sheriff also called RCMP officers for backup.

The incident ended when RCMP and Camrose police arrived, and Tibu was taken to hospital.

Alberta Justice and solicitor general spokeswoman Michelle Davio says the allegations against the sheriff are currently being investigated by RCMP and professional standards investigators, and that he remains on duty.

Valiquette said the criminal investigations of Tibu and the sheriff will be handled by different RCMP officers.

Tibu said she was charged with resisting arrest after the incident, but Davio could not confirm that a charge had been laid against her.

Tibu said she has hired three lawyers to handle her case.

“He believed that I’m a poor immigrant, and because I stood up for myself … he decided to teach me a lesson,” she said. “He chose the wrong person to fight with.”

Tibu said if the officer is not suspended by Thursday, she will hold a protest.

Valiquette said RCMP cannot release any details of their investigation into the incident.

jpruden@edmontonjournal.com

twitter.com/jana_pruden

The sheriff hasn’t been suspended, which suggests that there’s a low chance he will be found guilty of anything.

Here’s the posting of my acquaintance, the producer of “Noi Romanii” TV show, who has once even had me as a guest on his [earlier] radio show.

Raul has started a petition and you can find the link below – I signed it.

There’s a lot to be said about this story, and again, just as in the letter to Romania, I find myself agreeing with the general message but not with some important details. Allow me to explain.

First of all, as a Libertarian, I believe Police should resort to violence only when absolutely necessary, and this was not such a case. I also feel kinship and solidarity toward this fellow ex-Romanian, but I do need to qualify this with a few important observations, as I don’t think most Romanians who come to North America have fully made sense of the world that surrounds them. I tried to explain some of these issues in a series I called plm:

• Part 1, about the surprisingly cozy relationship between Police and the special treatment reserved to those in Power, in UK as well as Romania and Stockton, California.
• Part 2, about some problems with the Canadian police, more precisely the Dudley George case here in Ontario, Dziekanski in Vancouver and Mr Big / Unger in Manitoba.
• Part 3, about how the Romanian police appears impotent in comparison to their North American colleagues.
• Part 4, about how in certain circumstances, mostly elsewhere, you can get away with attitude (tupeu).

There’s already too much here, let me continue in the second part, where you can find the dashcam video of her arrest.

Sources / More info: edm-stibu, global, PETITION, police brutality

zamo, police brutality, police state, resisting arrest, violence, state, government (Tags)