Cosplay is now a life-threatening pursuit in Canada.

The police culture of Canada on display in Alberta yesterday. Twitter video of a cosplay storm trooper standing in front of Coco Vanilla Galactic Cantina, with Star Wars music playing, with the owner standing in the doorway yelling that the storm trooper is his employee and the gun is a prop, on May the Fourth, there she is getting tackled to the ground by screaming cops like a serial killer.

From CTV, the Communist Televisision network:

While dressed as a stormtrooper, Ashley, 19, went into the parking lot of the Coco Vanilla Galactic Cantina in Lethbridge at the direction of her manager. She danced with blaster in hand on May the Fourth — the day fans celebrate the film franchise as a play on the iconic "May the force be with you" line.
Lethbridge Police Service arrived with guns drawn and the stormtrooper dropped the plastic toy to the ground.
"Apparently a couple of people had called 911 and said that there was somebody with a gun on 13 Street N.," said Brad Whalen, the restaurant's owner. "A number of police officers had shown up to our business with guns drawn on our employee."
Whalen says Ashley suffered a bloody nose after she was tackled to the ground by officers and handcuffed.
"The officers approached the person and provided verbal directions to that person to drop the weapon, to put themselves on to the ground," said Insp. Jason Walper of the LPS. "The person did not comply with police verbal directions. Eventually they did after multiple repeated orders given by the police officers."

Okay, I can hear some of you saying this is all just a sad mistake. No, it is not. This is police standard procedure. How do I know? They've done the exact same thing before. Repeatedly.

For the Stupid Set, I'm going to lay out a map for you. Cosplay in Canada is dangerous. The person in the costume and the bystanders not in costume run a very high risk of death by gunfire, due to assholes calling 911 and badly trained cops responding with their weapons drawn. You could -die- because some cop has an accidental discharge from the fully automatic assault rifle he hasn't been properly trained to use. Somebody standing in a store two blocks away could die from the same thing. .223 ammunition can travel up to two miles.

That's how it is. The question is, should we put up with that? No, we should not. This is supposed to be a free country, my friends. If there's one thing kids should be fucking well free to do, it is play dress-up and run around showing off their costumes without the risk of getting shot by the cops.

And fuck whoever called 911 on that poor girl. In a just society that asshole would spend a week in jail for making a false report.

The Phantom

Update: This just keeps getting better.

The business owner said he headed outside, and witnessed a number of police officers with guns drawn.
"She had, at that point, been down on her knees, her blaster -- the plastic blaster she was using -- had been over by the corner of the parking lot, the police had already looked at it. They picked it up and had seen that it was just a plastic prop."
In the release from police, LPS said the employee sustained a minor injury but did not require medical attention. Whalen said when police made her get down on her stomach on the ground, she got a bloody nose.
"My concern isn't that police responded to someone who called and reported. My problem is that after they determined that it was a fake prop, police still continued to yell at her with the guns pointed, telling her to, 'get down on her face, get down on her face,' and then proceeded to handcuff her after they knew that it was a plastic prop toy," said Whalen.

Upperdate: Here's what sometimes happens when Karen calls 911.

TL/DR, the cops fired seven rounds into a guy with no weapon in his hands who had his hands up in surrender. Four of those rounds hit him when he was lying on his face on the ground. Clue for the clueless, much more than seven rounds rounds were fired, its just that they missed him most of the time. At point-blank range. Inside a Costco. An open Costco, with people in it.