'Nerd' shocked his toys in G20 weapons cache
Fantasy role playing weapons put next to weapons seized during summit
Police are living in a fantasy world if they think arrows on display Tuesday had anything to do with the weekend G20 violence, a Whitby man said Wednesday.
Brian Barrett was shocked to go online Tuesday and see a photo gallery showing toy weapons seized from him while en route to Mississauga for a fantasy role-playing game.
His hand-made scale armour, cushion-tipped arrows and hockey-taped shields were among the items Toronto Police chief Bill Blair said were “seized from criminals” who wreaked havoc on the city Saturday.
They weren’t the only misleading items on display during a Tuesday press conference.
When Blair was asked about a chainsaw and crossbow, he agreed they had been seized from a man near The Esplanade in an incident unrelated to the G20 summit.
“Some of the things that are related are these arrows with devices tied on to them so that they could pour gas on them, ignite them and shoot them at us,” Blair said. “That was seized from criminals.”
Not so, said Barrett, “champion of Twilight Peak” and weapons safety officer for a 15th century role-playing game called Amtgard.
Barrett was passing through Union Station from Whitby, clad in his 85-pound scale armour, when he was “thrown into a bench” and held at gunpoint while officers dumped out his backpack — also on display Tuesday — and rifled through its contents, he said.
Among the items taken from him after more than an hour of detention were his armour, two shields, a round buckler, foam maces, a foam flail and five arrows that had their points taken off and padded “so that they’re safe enough for 13-year-old and 14-year-old kids to play with.”
Asked why the items were displayed, Toronto Police spokesman Mark Pugash said, “If there were things there that were not connected with the summit, they should not have been there. There was no intent to mislead anyone, but if people feel that they were, then I would apologize.”
Link:
http://www.torontosun.com/news/g20/2010/06/30/14570096.html
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