FILE PHOTO - Kamloops RCMP handed out fines to a group of anti-mask protesters at Superstore.
Image Credit: GOOGLE STREET VIEW
January 11, 2022 - 11:05 AM
A group of anti-maskers was kicked out of a Kamloops grocery store last night and were handed fines by RCMP.
Officers responded to Superstore where members of a group called Take Action Kamloops was in the store for so-called Mask Free Monday.
Forty-three tickets of $230 each were handed to protesters under the Emergency Programs Act, in an enforcement of public health orders. While 18 protesters left without incident, and without tickets, five were arrested after refusing to identify themselves to officers at the scene.
Police received reports last night of increased intimidation during the weekly protests that descend upon the Columbia Street West grocery store, according to a Kamloops RCMP news release.
An organizer using the group's social media page, whose name is unknown to iNFOnews.ca, instructed people to either throw away the tickets or fight them in court, calling them "fake fines."
Police arrived around 6 p.m. yesterday, Jan. 10, with the "intent of using an educational approach to convince attendees to follow public health orders or depart the premise," RCMP said. Protesters were either fined or arrested when that attempt failed.
A woman was taken under arrest at the scene and filmed a confrontation with a Kamloops RCMP officer, later posting the video to social media.
Although she claimed to have a "mask exemption," she said told the officer that she did not need to show him a copy. The officer said she could present the exemption in court and arrested her for failing to show identification.
Since November, the group had been promoting Mask Free Mondays at Superstore weekly until it moved the efforts to Aberdeen Mall for Christmas shopping. It has also encouraged its members to contact the Kamloops school district trustees, calling the school board "scum" and "public enemy number one," then organized a protest in front of the School District 73 building.
The group, which often flouts conspiracy theories on its social media, was active in promoting prominent Canadian anti-masker Chris "Sky" Saccoccia. Saccoccia spoke to a crowd at Riverside Park in November 2021.
“We’ve always promoted an education first approach and that will continue,” Kamloops RCMP Supt. Sydney Lecky said in the release. “In the past, some of these protestors were reportedly intimidating employees and customers, approaching people in the store and telling them to take off their mask."
The five that were arrested were later released, as the investigation is ongoing, RCMP said.
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