Calgary SWAT Arrest Pastor for ‘Inciting’ People to Attend Church
Artur Pawlowski is charged with “inciting or inviting others to attend an illegal public gathering” aka church.
The Calgary Police Service arrested pastor Artur Pawlowski, the head of Calgary’s Street Church, and his brother Dawid after they did not allow authorities to interrupt Sunday’s service.
The authorities charged “with organizing an illegal in-person gathering, including requesting, inciting or inviting others to attend an illegal public gathering, promoting and attending an illegal public gathering.”
I just got off the phone with one of Artur Pawlowski’s lawyers. It has been six hours and police are refusing to allow Artur to talk to his lawyers (or his son). This isn’t an arrest. It’s a rendition — a police state kidnapping. https://t.co/bMwAj1iNfP pic.twitter.com/RZ913cQns3
— Ezra Levant 🍁 (@ezralevant) May 9, 2021
The way the police swarm around them you’d think the Pawloski brothers committed heinous crimes. You would think they bombed an elementary school.
The police swarmed the brothers with their heavy-duty cars. Then the heavily-armed SWAT team came down on the brothers and dragged them away.
Artur told Rebel News about the awful treatment in jail. He also did not know that his legal team has been trying to reach him. Rebel News updated that the legal team has reached Artur. Totally not a coincidence, right?
From Rebel News:
Since that moment, he’s been treated brutally — thrown painfully into a police car; then forced to sit on a concrete slab, in a jail cell where the lights are never turned off. He is separated from his brother, who was arrested too, but he has no privacy — curious police come to gawk at him like he’s a circus animal.
But incredibly, Pastor Artur hasn’t lost hope — in fact, he’s more resolved than ever.
Our reporter Adam Soos managed to speak with him for five minutes. Here’s the full recording of that call:
As you can hear, Pastor Artur wasn’t aware of the massive wave of support for him around the world — obviously police wouldn’t tell him that. And he was also unaware that his three-person legal team has been trying relentlessly to speak with him — but that police refused to put their phone calls through to him.
The latest order imposes restrictions on attendance, mandates masks, and requires social distancing:
Calgary Police Service said officers served an organizer of the church service with the court order “in an effort to ensure that citizens attending the Saturday service were abiding by the current COVID-19 public health orders.”
“The order was served prior to the church service, and CPS did not enter the church during the service,” the police agency said. “The service organizer acknowledged the injunction, but chose to ignore requirements for social distancing, mask wearing and reduced capacity limits for attendees, and continued with the event.”
Artur made headlines in April when police tried to shut down the Easter service. He yelled at the police to leave and “come back with a warrant.”
“Get out of this property, Nazis,” Artur yelled. “Gestapo is not allowed here.”
Normally, invoking Nazis and the Gestapo makes me cringe. But Artur and his family grew up in Poland behind the Iron Curtain. Soviet Russia was not the Nazis, but man. Pretty damn close. Josef Stalin’s regime killed over 20 million people.
Artur “equated increased government control in Canada over religious gathering to what he experienced living under the Soviets.”
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In their earlier visit/incursion to his church he called them Nazis.
This humiliating arrest, on a highway, carrying him trussed like a captured animal to increase his humiliation, shows how accurate the Nazi designation was/is.
If they don’t want to be called Nazis, perhaps they should act a little less like them. One of the reasons my favorite scene in Avengers was one I really was surprised they managed to get snuck in past the Woke.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYcweKLnOzc
And we thought all the Nazis moved to South America post WW2, looks like a fair number headed to Canada.
Trudeau is an incompetent boob. His only ability to survive is to keep in the bosom of the fascist left, who will shill and fight his battles. He, in return, becomes one of them.
Wait till you see the hellish blob Kamala Harris becomes.
I seem to recall that the Gestapo arrested priests and ministers and put them in the camps because there was reason to believe their activities “might harm society.” The police must be so proud.
From what I heard,, the official only stated that she had papers she needed to show him and did not state it was a court order.. He told her to go away and make an appointment. This would suggest a trick to justify the arrest. Using brute force is now the hallmark of a woke government. No longer civil societies.
Canada, weren’t these the “nice” guys?
Well, they are polite. They must have said as they arrested the perp …
“Thank you kindly for bending to our tyranny!”
And, I think the best example of their kindness can be found just one year ago when this happened …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2kXYUpQwJI
Look at how many police officers it took to arrest this pastor.
We back the Blue, but we expect the Blue to back us, too. Police should refuse to enforce unconstitutional edicts. They cannot allow themselves to become the long arm of tyranny.
In this new era of selective enforcement, the police need to select, and do so on the side of rights and freedom.
All I see is a long march towards fascism. No one who can stand in its way is doing so. They are allowing the friends of freedom to be attacked, tread upon, and rot in jail.
None of this will end well. It never does.
And, that is the very scary reality of this story (and too many others in Canada and the States) the “police” and “law enforcement” in general appear to be increasingly a “domestic ‘standing army'” with a single goal of repression through posturing, overt intimidation and excessive force, no longer is protection of the public the role. The “rule of law” no longer derives from individual freedom and liberties. One begins to wonder if there have been any “free and fair elections” and an “independent ‘press'” in decades or ever in these countries.
Remember the words of that scumbag obama:
“We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded,” Obama said in July 2, 2008.
https://yaliberty.org/news/obama-calls-for-civilian-force-as-large-as-the-military/
In Canada it’s not unconstitutional. Be grateful that we live in the only country in the world where we have actual rights against the state.
It’s becoming increasingly obvious that we only have those rights if the state is willing to allow it. The First Amendment is virtually gone. The second is under constant attack. The rest of the Bill of Rights have been stripped of most of their meaning. We still don’t have to quarter troops, though.
Maybe I’m just cynical, but why would I back the blue? So they can arrest me if I stand up to BLM? So they can arrest me for going to church? So they can watch their own cities burn and refuse to do anything to stop it?
Face it: cops aren’t the good guys who protect cities. Their loyalty isn’t to law and order, but to their city paymasters. What percentage of cops would refuse a clearly unconstitutional order if it meant risking their livelihood/pension? My bet is close to zero.
My local sheriff is awesome. I bet it’s that way in a lot of places. The city cops are just another gang.
I’m not going to demonize an entire group, but there are definitely bad apples. Painting a broad brush is the kind of crap that BLM gets away with when they shouldn’t.
So, what percentage of cops would say, “This is wrong. I’m not doing that and you shouldn’t do it either” when the mandatory gun “buybacks” begin?
“Look at how many police officers it took to arrest this pastor.”
Should’ve sent in the Mounties, it would’ve only took one and he wouldn’t have used force. Because Mounties are “fearsome, incorruptible, dogged yet gentle champions of the law” or something to that effect. Perhaps the quote is out of date.
This is what happens in country’s where classical liberalism died, or never existed. Progressivism – which is just the 21st century equivalent of fascist socialism – has all but entirely displaced classical liberalism on the left.
I don’t know what the Canadian equivalent of the ACLU is. But, if there is one, I suspect they wouldn’t have any problem with what’s happening in Canada just like the ACLU doesn’t care about the usurpation of freedom local and state government are committing here all in the name of ‘public health.’
The CCLU, and there’s a handful of tiny organizations that try to uphold basic human rights in Canada but they’re of no consequence. It’s worth noting that the overwhelming majority of Canadians are in favour of this arrest. It’s difficult to communicate the breadth and depth of contempt for religion that exists in this country.
When religion is seen as in competition with the state, those who worship the state will always vilify religion.
WOW
Welcome to the new U.S.S.R.
Canada nice.
leave and “come back with a warrant.”
And… they came back, but it wasn’t with a warrant. Possibly because they knew they couldn’t get one.
What makes you think they’d have any trouble getting one? It is Canada, after all. No constitutional rights, just suggestions.
What makes you think our constitutional rights are now more than mere suggestions?
The fact that here when we say “come back with a warrant we expect that this will pose them at least some difficulty. In Canad not so much.
Then there’s FISC.
O journalism, wherefore art thou.
1) Calgary doesn’t have SWAT. Only L.A. has SWAT per se; other police forces have a variety of “special services” teams of varying militarization.
2) Pawlowski was not arrested by a “heavily armed SWAT team”; he was arrested by the bog-standard Calgary Police Service.
3) Rebel News/Ezra Levant is expert at overblown hyperbole to gin up outrage. He’s very good at not exactly lying, but phrasing things to promote a specific narrative. In particular:
4) “he’s been treated brutally — thrown painfully into a police car; then forced to sit on a concrete slab, in a jail cell where the lights are never turned off. He is separated from his brother, who was arrested too, but he has no privacy — curious police come to gawk at him like he’s a circus animal.” – this is how every person who is arrested is treated. There’s nothing unusual about this.
5) his three-person legal team has been trying relentlessly to speak with him — but that police refused to put their phone calls through to him – the police in Canada can hold anyone, for any or no reason, incommunicado, for up to 24 hours. Unlike the US you do not have a legal right to be arraigned within 24 hours or to speak to a lawyer immediately. While it may technically be a violation of your Charter rights, it is effectively impossible to successfully sue the police for this, so it happens routinely if the police want to “sweat” a detainee.
6) ““The order was served prior to the church service, and CPS did not enter the church during the service,” the police agency said.” – there’s a Canadian law that makes it illegal to disrupt a church service in progress. This has been used successfully against police trying to shut down church services elsewhere in Canada, which is why CPS took such pains to point this out.
Does any of this make what the CPS did acceptable? No. No, no, and f*ck no. But it is routine, and Ezra trying to make out that this is somehow “extraordinary rendition” or “brutal treatment” only hurts his narrative. Canada’s police forces have routinely engaged in behaviour that would have a US cop arrested and convicted, for decades.
Why does journalism exist? Good question.
Well, it’s nice to now know that Canada is such a fascist, police state that authorities can treat the citizens in such a barbaric manner. Makes you wonder why all those U.S. liberal celebs thought it would be a good idea to move to Canada during the Trump administration.
Notice that none of them actually moved. They know what they’re doing.
Someone missed the forrest…
Levant and Mark Steyn have a much better view of “rights” and their abuse than you do. A refresher course in Canadian abuses would stun Americans… a wish list for the Left.
Yeah, I think you missed the point. The fact that he was treated like a common criminal is the abnormal circumstance.
It amuses me you think this is “abnormal”.
Gulag Archipelago
If the police wanted to look bad, this is how they would handle it. If they wanted to be compared to Nazis, this is how they would handle it. If they wanted to be hated and feared, this is how they would handle it.
If the police wanted people to be safe and view them as partners in coping with a pernicious disease, this is the absolute last thing they would have done.
You shall know them by their acts.
whether theatre for the media or not, this sort of action is beyond the pale–if their intent was to intimidate(meaning the police)then believe their effort failed–there is no way to spin, pitch, twist an event like this to disguise it for anything else than what it is–excessive use of force under color of law–whether a church, a temple, a mosque, a shrine, etc you don’t infringe on the natural right of worship without probable cause and a warrant and(without crystal clear evidence/probable cause)you damn sure don’t go armed to the teeth–what a travesty and disgrace
without probable cause and a warrant
Neither are required to arrest and charge someone in Canada. And once the police have entered your private property on any warrant or no warrant whatsoever, anything they find as evidence of a crime is fair game, whether covered by a warrant or not.
Canada is not the US.
If this comes to a police station near you will we back the blue?