CASE DISMISSED! Rebel News scores win over Calgary police

On August 2, the Calgary Police Service emailed Rebel News a court order demanding that we quickly hand over a whole bunch of our photographs, audio recordings, and video recordings, or else we could be fined, and that I could even be imprisoned for it.

Earlier today, I explained in more detail how these politically-motivated police are trying to seize our footage before heading into the Court of King's Bench here.

After the hearing today, I spoke again with our lawyer, Sarah Miller, who did the background legal work and filed the paperwork. The judge agreed with her affidavit, agreeing with us to quash that improper court order from the Calgary police.

“The judge had obviously read our application materials, read our affidavit materials, and granted the order,” Sarah says, noting it wasn't a 100% certain outcome. “She [the judge] said that she had done her homework and reviewed the materials and was ready to grant the order. She said she thought it was the appropriate outcome.”

That's good, because we didn't know until just a few days ago that the police were going to consent to this dismissal. In the judge's words, this wasn't a “run of the mill” case, asking a superior court to quash a junior court — that doesn't happen very often, and judges don't want to do unusual things without care.

The Calgary police also agreed to pay costs, albeit a trivial amount.

“It's not written in stone, per se,” the lawyer notes. “But they've agreed to pay those. It's going to be about $675.”

So we spent about $9,000 preparing for today's hearing because the police don't know what they're doing. We spent $9,000 because a cop wanted to seize our materials but didn't do it right.

And the Calgary Police Service will pay $675, thank you very little.

I'm sure the cops are going to come back with a proper order, because they were humiliated today. They signed an order consenting to their work being thrown out; the judge said she thought it was appropriate their work be thrown out; the judge ordered them to pay us.

The police shouldn't be able to seize a journalist's material just because they don't like the journalist — and that's exactly what happened here. But they're embarrassed, and I'm certain they're going to try again. Of course, Sarah says she'll be there to fight for us when the time comes.

They're coming for Rebel News, but they'll have to get through me and Sarah Miller first. If you want to help us out, go to DefendRebelNews.com. It's nice to have the cops ordered to pay us $675, but that's just a fraction of what we've really paid to defend freedom of the press — thanks for your help.