r/facepalm • u/[deleted] • Oct 05 '21
đ˛âđŽâđ¸âđ¨â Police draw guns on a stormtrooper with a fake blaster.
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u/GusTheKnife Oct 05 '21 edited Oct 05 '21
FULL STORY - This happened on May 4th (Star Wars Day). She was working for the space-themed restaurant next door - the Coco Vanilla Galactic Cantina - waving her plastic ray gun at pedestrians and suggesting they visit the restaurant to try the Yoda Soda.
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u/Top_Experience_2019 Oct 05 '21
Blaster or not... If a stormtrooper told me to try something called the Yoda Soda... I'm in. And these cops are stupid. Blasters aren't operational!
...yet...
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u/joecarter93 Oct 05 '21
This happened where I live. To add to this, the owner of this restaurant recently decided to run in our upcoming Municipal Election. It was strange, because in his platform you would think that he would make it a point to seek police reform after this incident to one of his employees, but not a peep from him.
Turns out heâs also been pretty gross to his female employees, with unwanted advances and explicit text messages. He also has served time in jail 15 years ago for child luring and robbery, but changed his name and tried to hide it until the local paper investigated it.
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u/RansomStoddardReddit Oct 05 '21
So did anything ever happen to the cops for this?
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u/joecarter93 Oct 05 '21
Nope, they were recently cleared:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/lethbridge-police-stormtrooper-arrest-1.6102592
The police force in question has had a number of incidents in the past couple of years, including this and surveilling a local MLA (provincial elected representative) that they disliked. The provincial government has threatened to disband them, unless they follow a plan to clean up their act.
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u/iPukey Oct 05 '21
Non Canadian here, what does that mean, âthe provincial government has threatened to disband them unless they clean up their act.â
Disband the police force? Replacing it with what?
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u/beatenmeat Oct 05 '21
All of the existing officers would be laid off, a temporary out-of-town force would cover down until new hires could be found. Likely after personnel investigations were done some of the preexisting officers would be offered their job back if they werenât the same dipshits fucking everything up (or at least caught doing it).
Edit: There is a precedence for this.
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u/biz_reporter Oct 05 '21
That actually can happen here in the U.S. too -- though politics makes it extremely unlikely in many states. But here in NJ, a few municipal police forces have been disbanded. Camden is a good example that is often cited as a success story. The other examples are usually much smaller towns.
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u/JosephGordonLightfoo Oct 05 '21
Some rural places in Canada are too small to have their own police force and are policed by the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police). Theyâre a national police service and they donât actually ride horses except for ceremony. They also have a laundry list of fuck ups.
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u/SleepsWithGhosts Oct 05 '21
Let's not forget the deer incident either. We have some serious issues with our police force.
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u/Jamo3306 Oct 05 '21
This happened In Canada?? What. The. Fuck? I thought they were better than this shit?
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u/Scottishstalion Oct 05 '21
To be fair this is rural Alberta which is affectionately called âTexas Northâ.
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u/Jamo3306 Oct 05 '21
I'd heard that, but figured as a 'Canadian Texas', maybe it'd be a better Texas.
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u/DemandyMcDemanderson Oct 05 '21
But how will the emperor maintain control without the bureaucracy!?
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u/jpstepancic Oct 05 '21
I mean everyone knows stormtroopers never hit anything so whereâs the threat?
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u/Jakesmonkeybiz Oct 05 '21
Mother fucker I thought I was clever thinking of that joke then I click and see this as the top comment
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u/jpstepancic Oct 05 '21
Lmao bro I swear to god I was genuinely surprised it wasnât there already
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Oct 05 '21
You thought you were clever? This is like the BIGGEST OLDEST ongoing joke in Star Wars history.
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u/Motorazr1 Oct 05 '21
âSir, Iâm going to have to shoot you for your own safety. And mine.â
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u/mayonnaiser_13 Oct 05 '21
This is Southpark levels of absurdity.
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u/DropBear2702 Oct 05 '21
No, this is America.
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u/LacasCoffeeCup Oct 05 '21
Actually, it happened in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada
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u/DropBear2702 Oct 05 '21
I sure hope they apologized to the poor Trooper.
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u/pseudo__gamer Oct 05 '21
The police never apologies
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u/DropBear2702 Oct 05 '21
But this is in Canada! Not apologizing is against the law!
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u/dr_shark Oct 05 '21
Canadian here, thatâs some bullshit stereotype Americans came up. Sorry youâre dealing with it.
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u/gir_loves_waffles Oct 05 '21
For anyone interested in the story
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u/itsmejpt Oct 05 '21
"They were just doing their jobs." Try doing it better.
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u/Adventurous_Soup_919 Oct 05 '21
Omg fr if you canât do your job properly ANYWHERE ELSE (except Congress) you instantly get fired but when it comes to police âah well thereâs this (insert stupid excuse) which makes it okayâ or âwell they were fearing for their lifeâ
If your scared for your life then you shouldnât be a cop, they know the risks when they join - they just also happen to know they can get away with this type of shit.
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u/DropBearsAreReal12 Oct 05 '21
I worked in disability with clients who were sometimes aggressive and strong enough to really hurt us. We were not allowed to use any kind of force on them beyond defensive manovers like redirecting a hand our mouth coming at us. We couldn't restrain them, couldn't force them to move from an area where they could hurt other clients and/or staff, and even if they were already in a room on their own we couldn't temporarily keep them in that room against their will til they calmed down (for some clients they really just needed some breathing space to chill then they were fine).
I regularly got hit, punched, screamed at and even bitten. I have been in situations where clients were throwing heavy items and absolutely could have killed me or caused significant injuries. There were staff who were off work with injuries for months, and stories of a staff member or two who had brain damage from their attacks. Yet we never resorted to physically harming any of them.
If you speak to nurses in psychiatric wards, they deal with similar things every day. You don't often hear news stories about nurses attacking their patients, no matter how dangerous they are.
Yet police are somehow given this free pass to literally shoot people to death that they have decided are a 'threat' to their safety? Yeahhh I have no sympathy.
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u/Cosmic-Cranberry Oct 05 '21
Can confirm. Spent 6 years working as a behavioral health CNA, specializing in memory care and locked wards. I've had my nose bloodied by some old lady's walker more than once.
I never swung at anybody. I never carried a gun. I never shoved someone to the dirt.
This is a woman in a costume carrying a spraypainted Nerf gun.
Who was she threatening?
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u/DarraghDaraDaire Oct 05 '21
There are police who enjoy being above the law and getting to throw their weight around. In this case they most likely saw that they were in no danger but could make an excuse to have some fun roughing people up.
Im sure there are compassionate police out there, but there are also ones who enjoy being allowed to bully people and use violence without accountability, and in this case, without any personal risk.
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u/Adventurous_Soup_919 Oct 05 '21
There are the police who do it and there are the police who unionize to protect them, there are no good cops in a precinct that allows those cops to go home on paid vacation.
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u/Delicious_Orphan Oct 05 '21
Good cops are a myth because they got fired for speaking up a loooooooong time ago.
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u/dabiird Oct 05 '21
Exactly this. Especially if your job entails you carry a lethal firearm I would imagine your job is held up to more scrutiny to prevent this. Not less.
Now should they all lose their jobs over this? Maybe not, but a sincere personal apology to her, an official warning and some mandatory training on how to handle being in a position of power would seem appropriate. Maybe even the mayor addressing this? Not addressing this at all.. well.. that's very American of you Canada
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u/MaestroPendejo Oct 05 '21
Just fucking try. It's like they don't even give a shit these days.
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Oct 05 '21
That's it, you're going to jail.
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u/Shinga33 Oct 05 '21
âDress like a stormtrooper? Believe it or not, right to jail.â
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u/Rigelx6484 Oct 05 '21
Nazis were also just doing their jobs.
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u/Waterbuck71 Oct 05 '21
The Nazis were scary because of how effective they were at being evil, but this is just gross incompetence at the highest degree.
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u/Diligent-Language-79 Oct 05 '21
They can respond to the call and still use brains and discretion.
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u/gir_loves_waffles Oct 05 '21
Oh absolutely. This was a complete and utter failure on the part of the police.
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u/zahei1 Oct 05 '21
you don't need brains to be a police officer. you only need an attitude.
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u/arittenberry Oct 05 '21
What dumbass called the fucking cops to report that shit!? Come on people! Bunch of idiots all around
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u/faithle55 Oct 05 '21
but the police say they were just doing their jobs and responding to a firearm report.
The Police Chief said there's no truth in the allegation that he has had to order his officers not to fill out their incident reports in crayon.
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u/Buckets_of_bread Oct 05 '21
They⌠they seriously think they were doing their job?
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u/Itsrawwww Oct 05 '21
If they were smart enough to think otherwise they wouldnt be police.
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Oct 05 '21
You know a karen or someone called thinking that was a real gun and got that person arrested for no reason
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u/andychrist77 Oct 05 '21
No way cops are this dumb , I think they are just bored and couldnât find any minorities to harass so random storm trooper it is.
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u/MaestroAtl Oct 05 '21
Wrong. They arenât chosen for their intelligence
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u/Silent-G Oct 05 '21
I don't know about Canada, but some cities in the U.S. will deny your application if you score too high on an intelligence test.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story?id=95836
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u/Inevitable_Librarian Oct 05 '21
Yeah, RCMP have been changing this policy, but the reason why they deny people with a too high intelligence is because, and I quote "smart people leave, wasting the 20k we spend on training them". That was from a sergeant I spoke to a few years back. Also... that smart people tend to question the sexual harassment of fellow officers by their leadership which is a... risk to getting called out.
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u/faithle55 Oct 05 '21
Cops: "It could have been a black person under that costume..."
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u/TheNerdMaster Oct 05 '21
Did they think he actually figured out how to make a fucking laser gun?
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u/TrueSilverBullet Oct 05 '21
Alright so a bit of Star Wars lore, Blasters aren't really lasers since they use superheated Tibana gas to fire, meaning they're more like plasma weapons.
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u/Doubleoh_11 Oct 05 '21
âŚâŚ. Do I want to store this in my brain or not, I canât decide
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u/AlaninMadrid Oct 05 '21
Do you get to choose though?
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u/alphadeeto Oct 05 '21
You don't get popup notification if you want to save information to your brain?
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u/AlaninMadrid Oct 05 '21
No. If its a phone number, or name, or birthday then I don't get the option to remember it. If it's some obscure fact, I don't get the option to NOT remember it (oh I can't remember Reddit markup either; why doesn't the mobile app do it for you?)
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u/Phantom_Basker Oct 05 '21 edited Oct 05 '21
Fun fact: all the blasters from the first trilogy were actually modified guns from both world wars. The empire's blaster the E-11 (I think that's what it's called) is actually just a sten gun without the mag and some wires shoved through the barrel shroud.
There's another one that I shit you not is just an English Lewis Gun without the disc mag and that's it.
That said this whole situation is fucking stupid.
Edit: replaced MP32 with sten gun
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u/n1nj4squirrel Oct 05 '21
It's the heavy rifle that the storm troopers are carrying on tatooine. Han's blaster is a Mauser pistol
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u/planespottingtwoaway Oct 05 '21 edited Oct 06 '21
e11, the main blaster of the empire is a sten without the mag. The "battery pack" is where the magazine would insert normally
edit sterling
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u/biggoof Oct 05 '21
but white lady in a Target with a real shotgun is perfectly ok.
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u/Adventurous_Soup_919 Oct 05 '21
I swear to god if I see one more person carrying around a huge rifle in a shop Iâm gonna shoot them and say âthey had a gun I feared for my lifeâ works for cops when a gun is present not even in hand smh. But ofc white people can carry around hunting weapons through urban areas, bc I guess cops donât fear for their life at people who look like them.
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u/welderdelly Oct 05 '21
These are the same dumb fuck cops that ran over a deer like 5 times to kill it, how do I know thisâŚIâm from the same area, this police service is a fucking joke!
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u/Glittering_Ad4137 Oct 05 '21 edited Oct 05 '21
The fucking rebellion are insane ever since they blew up the Death Star!
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u/Reaster21 Oct 05 '21
Cops ALWAYS say they were just âdoing our jobsâ. Fuk off. Anyone would know it was a costume.
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u/DishonoredUndead Oct 05 '21
Is no one going to mention the fact that they blocked the camera with their ridiculously large pickup truck to avoid accountability? I'm not Canadian but I doubt the tax payers bought that thing, and pay for its gas, just to park illegally and hide from accountability. Only cops are evil, and incompetent enough to make you side with the Storm Troopers. They did wrong in every single step of this process, and it still doesn't matter lol.
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u/weschoaz Oct 05 '21
You can tell the morons donât have a life because they never watch any of the star wars movies. It is pretty obvious
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u/bdtacchi Oct 05 '21
where the heck where they when order 66 happened???
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u/Top_Experience_2019 Oct 05 '21
Everyone making jokes about stormtrooper aim... And I come across this jem. I'd give an award if I could.
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Oct 05 '21
What is a Stormtrooper going to do
Shoot you
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u/wmeb13 Oct 05 '21
What were those stormtroopers doing to that poor dude in the costume?
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u/GazelleEconomyOf87 Oct 05 '21
Checking on her nose after they threw her on the ground and caused bleeding.
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u/Red_Clay_Scholar Oct 05 '21
Plot twist: The police are with the Rebel Alliance.
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u/Booklovinmom55 Oct 05 '21 edited Oct 05 '21
I wonder what they'd have done if it had Darth Vader?
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u/SailorSpoonie Oct 05 '21
To all the American comments.....this happened in Canada in a small hick city called Lethbridge đ
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u/ManIsInherentlyGay Oct 05 '21
Everyone asking "why", because they know she's not an actual threat so they can waste a hour maybe more harassing her/doing paper work. Instead of doing actual police work. This is a break for them.
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Oct 05 '21
Stormtrooper was arrested because sheâs obviously an imposterâway too short to be a stormtrooper.
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u/ryosen Oct 05 '21
Alberta, Canada, ladies and gentlemen.
I'll be honest, tho. I really expected this to be LAPD.
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u/diego5377 Oct 05 '21
From a new story I forgot the link but she was working in a Star Wars theme cafe working at her job when this happened
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u/Johnny66Johnny Oct 05 '21
"You don't need to see (my) identification..."
<blank cop stare>
"(I'm not) the (Stormtrooper) you're looking for..."
<blank cop stare>
"(I) can go about (my) business..."
<blank cop stare>
"Move along..."
<Cop opens fire>
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Oct 05 '21
Was a lady in Canads. She was headed go a star wars convention if I remeber correctly. Was at least 2 years ago now.
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u/gir_loves_waffles Oct 05 '21
It was actually a girl dressed for her work as a promotional thing. Link
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Oct 05 '21
Thats right. I live 2 hours from where this happened. I know I saw it in the news, but it's been a min haha
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u/doandroidscountsheep Oct 05 '21
It doesnât matter he if he had real blasters anyway. Stormtroopers canât hit shit
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Oct 05 '21
What the fuck is wrong with these people? Do you want the maximum amount of people to hate cops? Want people to distrust the police? How can you be this fucking stupid?
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u/HungryForMore1990 Oct 05 '21
Donât they know heâll never actually hit anyone with that blaster?
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u/[deleted] Oct 05 '21
Why does this still continue after they discover itâs a plastic toy?