On August 22nd North Huron Reeve Neil Vincent started the council meeting with a request for members of the Public/Press gallery to put their cameras back in their packages. Several members of the Public/Press gallery had cameras around their necks and therefore could not comply with this illegal and arbitrary request if they wanted to. Several seconds later Neil Vincent orders the police to be called and adjourns the meeting.
At this point no law had been broken, and Wingham Copwatch starts recording as the meeting is adjourned, North Huron’s video camera is turned off and the police are now on the way. Recording is allowed as the meeting is adjourned. No laws have been broken by the Public/Press Gallery.
A Wingham Police officer has been dispatched to “remove three unwanted males that are refusing to leave.”
The officer arrives at Town Hall a few minutes later and speaks to a Town Staffer in the hallway. This town staffer tells the officer three people are refusing to leave and they were violating 30.1 of NH’s procedural by-law.
Now you might be thinking they had no legitimate cause to call the police, and you would be 100% right. North Huron does NOT have a by-law that prohibits camera possession in the Public/Press Gallery, a legal fact forgotten by the Reeve, Officer, 2 Councillors and the Prosecutor. That’s why the charges were easily beaten in court.
Another thing you might be saying to yourself is “How could they refuse to leave if they were never asked to leave?”
So, why did the Town Staffer lie to the police and say the three were refusing to leave? The answer is simple. She needed to fabricate a reason in order to justify calling the police and to facilitate the removal of the unwanted three.
At this point the Town’s cameras have been shut off, the Reeve has ordered the police to be called without any cause, and a Town Staffer has lied to the police. A request for the officer’s body camera footage was made and the Chief of Police stated ‘I’m not going to lie to you, he shut his camera off as he went in Town Hall’. That’s right, the officer shut his camera off just before he was to interact with the “three unwanted”….or did he?
Now the officer enters council chambers after being lied to by a town staffer. He targets three individuals and tells them they are breaking the law as they are refusing to leave. NOTE: At this point no one has been asked to leave, and no one is breaking the law…well, at least not the three in the Public/Press Gallery anyway.
One of the three tells the officer he was not recording the meeting, and was only recording the officer. That man was arrested and charged for recording the arrest/interaction. Another gentlemen was also ordered to leave under threat of arrest as he was suspected of recording the police.
During the arrest the officer states his body camera is running and recording. When asked if the arrest could be recorded the officer stated “I’m doing it now, YOU are NOT going to get it on video!” This triggered the officer’s unwarranted aggression.
Now you might be thinking “Wait a second, didn’t the Chief say the officer turned his camera off just before he went into chambers?” Skip ahead to the trial and the story switches to he hadn’t yet turned his body camera on for his shift.
The officer clearly stated he was recording, and now the video is gone. Why three versions of the “truth” about the officer’s body camera from the Wingham Police department? It would contain the conversation with the Town Staffer that lied to the police in order facilitate the unwarranted arrests, and would more than likely lead to charges and firing for the town staffer that lied. If the officer counseled the staffer on what to lie about, he should be immediately fired.
During this interaction a North Huron councillor told the officer that the member of the Public/Press gallery with a camera on a tripod was using the camera during the 30 second meeting, a fabrication to facilitate the arrest of that person. That councillor also lied in his written statement to the court/police stating the three were asked to leave prior to police arrival.
Another councillor’s statement to the police/court also states the three were asked to leave and the three refused, which is a total fabrication.
How can all these statements to the court/police have the same “error”? The obvious and only answer is collusion. They believed they needed to prove the three were asked to leave to win their case in court and further embarrass and humiliate the three, which just happen to be critics of council and alleged WFP members. This just happened to be the exact same attitude the Prosecutor had immediately before the trial when he claimed he had a slam dunk case and blindsided the defendants with the new witness statements. Turns out the Reeve and the Prosecutor are buddies according to a very reliable source.
So, how did the victim’s of Vincent’s regime beat the charges when faced with North Huron turning off their cameras, the police body camera footage deleted/missing, councillors and staff that lied to police, Prosecutor that claimed he had slam dunk case, and having to prove a negative in court (wasn’t recording or wasn’t asked to leave)?
The truth is the charges were beaten with one question in court. It seems inconceivable that the Prosecutor legitimately believed he had a case as every lawyer (and a JP shhhh) that reviewed the case believed it would be withdrawn if the Prosecutor objectively read the file. Thankfully multiple members of Wingham Copwatch were there to record the arrest so the truth could be exposed.
It was also proven in court there was no cause to call the police in the first place, Neil Vincent took zero steps to determine if he had cause to call police and that a town staffer lied to the police along with two North Huron councillors.
North Huron Council Contact Info:
Neil Vincent: 519-357-2336
Bill Knott: 519-523-4534
James Campbell: 519-523-9264
Brock Vodden: 519-523-9393
Ray Hallahan: 519-523-4798
Trevor Seip: 519-357-7759
Yolanda Ritsema-Teeninga: 519-357-1905
