  “Does not approve”
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A Canadian who demanded courtesy from a U.S. border security guard says he was pepper sprayed and held in custody for three hours for asking the disrespectful officer to “say please” when ordering him to turn his car off during a search.
“I refused to turn off the car until he said please. He didn’t. And he has the gun, I guess, so he sprayed me,” said Desiderio Fortunato, a Coquitlam, B.C., resident who frequently crosses the border to visit his second home in the state of Washington. “Is that illegal in the United States, asking an officer to be polite?” The incident occurred on Monday at the Aldergrove border crossing, east of Vancouver, shortly after 12 p.m. He said he was questioned by a border officer who demanded he turn off his car and, when asked to make the request more politely, threatened to spray him with his pepper gun if he did not comply.
“I just felt I should stand my ground about it. I should not be treated like that. No matter what kind of position you are in, if you want respect you have to show respect,” he said yesterday. “I asked him three times and when I didn’t turn the car off, because he didn’t say please, he pepper sprayed me…. It was terrible. For half an hour or so I couldn’t see anything.” Mr. Fortunato said after he was sprayed he was forcefully taken into custody by several officers. He was held for three hours before he was released without being allowed entry into the United States. Mr. Fortunato says he was dismissed with a warning to be more cooperative in the future. By his own admission, Mr. Fortunato is a stickler for courtesy and respect. Once, he said, he asked a Canadian border agent to be more polite when requesting documents, to which the agent responded with a sheepish “please.”
He’s just lucky he didn’t end up on Dvorak’s “Bad Cop Beat Down of the Week.”
#27, doewll,
He was given a lawful order three times and each time he refused because he didn’t like the way the man said it.
If you refuse a legal order and get sprayed you asked for it.
1) If he broke a law then arrest him. If he resists arrest then you may use what reasonable means are available to effect the arrest. You don’t torture someone to get your own jollies.
Spraying pepper spray in someone’s face for fun is a criminal offense.
2) Can you show me the regulation that states the car must be shut off?
As I thought. You are just another small dicked ditto head feeling pleasure at other’s suffering.
Was it so hard to say Please for the copper?
I mean they are trained to serve the people. Not to serve them pepper in their eyes. Sheesh!
Given the reported propensity for police, border guards, and similar law-enforcement officers to be brutish and disrespectful as an initial approach to a situation, one would be foolish to not try to get along with them. I do not think that the kind of dirty work that cops have to do predisposes them to being polite and courteous as a default behaviour. If you had to deal with human vermin and filth most of your day, would you feel like being a model of politeness? Besides, even border guards and cops have spouses, and who is to say that this guard did not just have a fight with his wife and is in a bad mood, and which of us has never go to work in a bad mood?
Part of being courteous is recognizing that the other guy may be having a bad day or hour, and you should try to get along, not make a stand on a minor point of etiquette.
But the pepper spray was overkill. Perhaps a very strict interpretation of the law would have been a more appropriate response to this smart aleck with the etiquette book up his ass.
Doing a thorough search of his car and person, holdng him up for six hours or whatever, would have been retaliation enough.
The guard could have said, “Okay, buddy; you wnat to play by the rules? Wait until you see OUR rules!”
The guy with the gun always wins.
i recently made a trip to canada on a bus, and when we entered the canadain guard asked us all to hold up our id and he walked down the isle and talked to us a joked. he looked at passport and said, “that’s you not your brother, right?” while laughing. when reentering the united states, we weren’t so lucky. the us guard didn’t talk at all until we asked him how his day was and he responded, “it would be better if i weren’t on a bus”
That cop should have used a tazer instead. How is he supposed to know what the Canadian’s intentions were? If this d.b. had a problem with the cop being rude while doing his duty to protect and serve then he should have filled out a complaint card.
It is not polite to tell a person to be polite.
#33, 9
I do not think that the kind of dirty work that cops have to do predisposes them to being polite and courteous as a default behaviour.
Then they shouldn’t be a cop or Border Agent.
wait until that guy gets stopped at road block 99 miles from a border (as our border is now 100 miles wide, and a border includes oceans) by the Homeland Security Border Patrol Agents….. they make Customs Agents seem like the most polite people in the World!
The Canadian Border Patrol at Portal, ND are a bunch of over zealous, power hungry assholes.