A database of news and information about people with disabilities and disability issues...
Copyright statement: Unless otherwise stated, all posts on this blog continue to be the property of the original author/publication/Web site, which can be found via the link at the beginning of each post.
Deaf restaurant kitchen worker Emomotimi Azorbo (pictured) was granted bail June 26 after being charged the previous day with assaulting Toronto Police at a downtown G20 protest.
Friends claim he was not a demonstrator.
Azorbo, 30, stumbled into several bicycles after getting into a shoving match with officers at a bicycle barrier set up to stop the progress of yelling, screaming marchers.
He was taken into custody at College and Yonge Sts. for refusing to obey police orders to leave the street.
Outside a Finch Ave. courthouse, members of two leading organizations for the hearing impaired said they are protesting against police for not providing proper interpretive services during and after the arrest.
"He was in the wrong place at the wrong time," Gary Malkowski, advisor to the president of the Canadian Hearing Society, said in an interview.
"Police did not give him the charges properly," he said. "Police violated their own policy and made a no ha attempt to get him interpretation."
Malkowski said Azorbo was crossing the intersection to buy a bottle of water at a variety store and could not understand police orders.
He is charged with three counts of assaulting police plus resisting arrest.
A justice of the peace granted Azorbo's release after his mother, Sophie, offered to post a non-deposit bail of $1,000.
Her són, who is to return to court Aug. 23, was ordered to stay out of an area bordered south to Lake Ontario from Bloor St. and east of Spadina Ave. to Jarvis St, which includes the G20 venue, until Monday. The Summit ends Sunday.
Azorbo was also told he must produce identification when police ask.
Beth Haller, Ph.D., is Co-Director of the Global Alliance for Disability in Media and Entertainment (www.gadim.org). A former print journalist, she is a member of the Advisory Board for the National Center on Disability and Journalism (https://ncdj.org/). Haller is Professor Emerita in the Department of Mass Communication at Towson University in Maryland, USA. Haller is co-editor of the 2020 "Routledge Companion to Disability and Media" (with Gerard Goggin of University of Sydney & Katie Ellis of Curtin University, Australia). She is author of "Representing Disability in an Ableist World: Essays on Mass Media" (Advocado Press, 2010) and the author/editor of Byline of Hope: Collected Newspaper and Magazine Writing of Helen Keller (Advocado Press, 2015). She has been researching disability representation in mass media for 30+ years. She is adjunct faculty in the Disability Studies programs at the City University of New York (CUNY) and the University of Texas-Arlington.
From The Toronto Sun:
