{"id":266647,"date":"2025-09-30T13:54:17","date_gmt":"2025-09-30T13:54:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/266647\/"},"modified":"2025-09-30T13:54:17","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T13:54:17","slug":"rcmp-tried-to-get-photojournalist-amber-bracken-charged-and-detained-without-bail-documents-show","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/266647\/","title":{"rendered":"RCMP tried to get photojournalist Amber Bracken charged and detained without bail, documents show"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Photojournalist Amber Bracken says that the Mounties\u2019 efforts to deny her bail and keep her in jail is frightening.DARRYL DYCK\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

The RCMP wanted a well-known photojournalist kept in custody for months or more after Mounties alleged she assaulted a sheriff following her high-profile arrest at the 2021 Wet\u2019suwet\u2019en pipeline standoff.<\/p>\n

Documents filed with the B.C. Supreme Court as part of a civil suit launched by photographer Amber Bracken<\/a> and The Narwhal media outlet against the RCMP <\/b>showed how the Mounties tried \u2013 and quickly failed \u2013 to get Ms. Bracken charged and detained without bail for an incident related to her release from three nights in jail.<\/p>\n

Ms. Bracken had been arrested in November, 2021, along with 14 others<\/a> after RCMP moved in to remove protesters blocking access to a Coastal GasLink construction site near Houston, B.C., on Wet\u2019suwet\u2019en territory.<\/p>\n

Ms. Bracken was arrested inside a cabin where some of the protesters were refusing to leave the pipeline project\u2019s so-called exclusion zone, which a special unit of the RCMP was tasked with clearing to make way for work crews. <\/p>\n

Her initial arrest prompted international concerns that heavy-handed police had violated the freedom of the press. <\/p>\n

Amber Bracken: Press credentials didn\u2019t help me against the RCMP in Wet\u2019suwet\u2019en territory. Who do they help, and who do they hinder?<\/a><\/p>\n

In the lawsuit, Ms. Bracken and The Narwhal allege RCMP leadership knew she was a journalist and that she should not be arrested for contempt of an injunction as long as she was reporting on matters of public interest and not taking part in unlawful activity. <\/p>\n

Instead, she was taken to the nearby RCMP detachment on a Friday afternoon and spent the weekend in jail, according to the lawsuit.<\/p>\n

During a civil hearing last Friday, court heard that upon Ms. Bracken\u2019s release from the Prince George jail, she got into an altercation with one of the sheriffs who was escorting her out of her cell.<\/p>\n

The sheriffs accused Ms. Bracken of assaulting a peace officer and called the RCMP. Mounties quickly determined she had committed the offence and recommended to the Crown that it was in the public interest to detain her until trial, according to police files entered into the civil proceedings.<\/p>\n

It would take months for such a case to come to trial.<\/p>\n

In the documents, the Prince George RCMP list several reasons why Crown counsel should order Ms. Bracken be kept in custody.<\/p>\n

The RCMP argued that because Ms. Bracken lives in Edmonton, she would be unlikely to return for any future hearings and that her alleged assault of the sheriff \u201chas interfered with the administration of justice.\u201d <\/p>\n

The RCMP also claimed Ms. Bracken has shown \u201cno regard for the laws under which she lives. Should Bracken be released it would place the justice system into disrepute.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Crown never approved the charge, and Ms. Bracken was released the next day. <\/p>\n

Ms. Bracken said after the court hearing last week that the Mounties\u2019 efforts to deny her bail and keep her in jail is frightening. <\/p>\n

\u201cI value my personal freedom and I really wouldn\u2019t be a photojournalist if I didn\u2019t also value the checks on power that are foundational to a free society,\u201d she said in an interview. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen that reality sinks in \u2013 the police would keep me in jail until trial on a charge like this \u2013 it\u2019s absolutely chilling.\u201d<\/p>\n

Secret Canada: Ottawa abusing access to information law to avoid releasing documents, watchdog says<\/a><\/p>\n

On Monday, the RCMP declined comment on the incident and their internal files, stating the matter is now before the courts. <\/p>\n

A lawyer for the federal Department of Justice <\/b>told the court last week the government wants the details of Ms. Bracken\u2019s second arrest struck from the current civil suit.<\/p>\n

The court heard that hours before she was ultimately released for good, a Prince George detachment staff sergeant called a Crown prosecutor and then that prosecutor called him back 20 minutes later. The details of those conversations were redacted from the police files entered into court.<\/p>\n

Sean Hern, the lawyer representing Ms. Bracken and The Narwhal, told the court she was admittedly not at her best when she argued with sheriffs after being told she had to then retrieve her expensive camera equipment from the local RCMP detachment. <\/p>\n

Before he played jail video of the incident, Mr. Hern told court the assault alleged by the sheriffs amounted to Ms. Bracken pushing a finger into the man\u2019s chest. <\/p>\n

But the sheriff told police Ms. Bracken had become \u201cextremely agitated and struck him in the left shoulder with an aggressive punching\/pushing motion,\u201d according to court records.<\/p>\n

The proceedings are set to continue this fall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Photojournalist Amber Bracken says that the Mounties\u2019 efforts to deny her bail and…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":266648,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2148,2138,671,104,2132,692,2147,2131,2143,2144,2140,2133,2130,79,407,746,2142,2137,2159,2134,2135,454,2139,1165,728,2149,108,2154,2155,50,2157,2152,2156,2150,2153,2136,85,2146,80,2145,2151,1458,158,1164,2141,1154,107,2158],"class_list":{"0":"post-266647","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-alberta","9":"tag-arts-news","10":"tag-bc","11":"tag-breaking-news","12":"tag-breaking-news-video","13":"tag-british-columbia","14":"tag-canada","15":"tag-canada-news","16":"tag-canada-sports","17":"tag-canada-sports-news","18":"tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","19":"tag-canadian-breaking-news","20":"tag-canadian-news","21":"tag-economy","22":"tag-education","23":"tag-environment","24":"tag-federal-government","25":"tag-foreign-news","26":"tag-globe-and-mail","27":"tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","28":"tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","29":"tag-government","30":"tag-life-news","31":"tag-lifestyle","32":"tag-local-news","33":"tag-manitoba","34":"tag-national-news","35":"tag-new-brunswick","36":"tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","37":"tag-news","38":"tag-northwest-territories","39":"tag-nova-scotia","40":"tag-nunavut","41":"tag-ontario","42":"tag-pei","43":"tag-photos","44":"tag-political-news","45":"tag-political-opinion","46":"tag-politics","47":"tag-politics-news","48":"tag-quebec","49":"tag-sports-news","50":"tag-technology","51":"tag-travel","52":"tag-trudeau","53":"tag-us-news","54":"tag-world-news","55":"tag-yukon"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266647"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266647\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}