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| O'Callahan |
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| Haigh |
Do police have the right to mark your skin with a pen?
That question recently went before a judge as a trio of Occupy Montreal protesters asked for compensation for having this done to them in 2011.
Nina Haigh, Adam O'Callaghan and Benoit Godin were forcibly taken out of the square in late November 2011 by police who marked their hands with invisible ink that could only be seen under black light.
The officers wrote the numbers as a way of identifying who owned which items on the site.
The three found the notion of being written upon as psychologically jarring and made it the focal point for their lawsuit asking for about $20k each.
"Three of us went to court for slightly different reasons, my reasons were to fight how they branded protesters with ultra violet inks with the intent of subterfuge and without our permission," Haigh told Coolopolis.
O'Callahan also fought for the principle of being permitted to go unbranded by police. "Eighty percent of the arguments concerned marking of the human body," he told Coolopolis. "Lawyer Julius Grey was interested in the human rights aspect of the case, we hoped to create a precedent of not allowing marking of the human body."
Quebec Court judge Sylvain Coutlee noted that bars and movie theatres routinely use such a marking technique and it's not a violation of the body. No blood was taken. None of the three went to a doctor. It's neither invasive or unreasonable, he noted.
Their claim was rejected. "The judge decided its perfectly ok for this to happen which I still feel is wrong to alter a humans body without consent," siad Haigh.