On the evening of Aug. 3 in Red Deer, Alta., there was a noticeable police presence in Kenneth Pamburn’s neighbourhood. Pamburn decided to videotape the shenanigans. Just one hitch: RCMP officer Derek Haight didn’t like anyone filming his efforts, for reasons that remain mysterious. After all, it is not against the law to record the police in public.

And so it was that Officer Haight announced via loudspeaker that everyone had to stop filming the police.

Alas, Pamburn did not comply. And shockingly, he was arrested for obstruction of justice — even though Pamburn wasn’t obstructing anyone and was filming from a distance.

Nevertheless, Pamburn was cuffed, tossed in the back of a police cruiser and detained for about two hours. He also had his property confiscated, including his car keys and his cellphone. As false arrests go, this one was absolutely outrageous and egregious.

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Indeed, in the weeks that followed, the obstruction charge was dropped. It wasn’t a matter of a low likelihood of conviction, but rather that Pamburn did not break any laws in the first place.

But the story did not end there. After Pamburn posted his video chronicling the incident on YouTube, Red Deer RCMP went after the social media giant. The Mounties demanded the video be removed. Not for defamation, but rather because Officer Haight was allegedly suffering from hurt feelings due to some impolite remarks in the comments section! Amazingly, YouTube acquiesced and deleted the video!

Check out our interview with Kenneth Pamburn, who is now considering a civil lawsuit against the RCMP.

It should be noted that Rebel News reached out to RCMP media relations as well as the media relations department of Google, YouTube’s parent company. We also reached out to Officer Haight. No one responded to our requests for comment.

Shameful.