This is a placeholder post. I will fill in some specific incidents at a future date but for the most part the Pollingtons, Stampers and our landlords continued their harassment without any major changes in tactics. Noise, shouted insults, spitting, loud provocative conversations we were intended to overhear (mostly between John and/or Agostino and Christine) and car horns sounding at random intervals all night are most of the incidents in my notes.
Sunday August 4, 2019 – As I approached the building from the west at about 16:30, I noticed Richard Pollington Jr standing in the doorway of the building. The door was propped open; he was simply standing in the doorway holding something. As I came closer, I saw that it was a butcher’s cleaver; the same one I’d seen Richard Pollington carry around the driveway at times. The Pollingtons had a barbecue beside their porch, which they used frequently. I’d seen Richard Pollington Jr use that same cleaver to chop a pork loin into pork chops for the barbecue several times (it was a noisy process, but brief), but this was the first time I’d seen him with it.
I stopped about six feet away from him and waited. He didn’t move. He just stood in the doorway, holding the cleaver in his right hand and glaring at me. So I moved a step closer and said “Excuse me, I need to get through that door.”
This isn’t quite as foolish as it sounds. The leather jacket I was wearing had armor in the sleeves that allowed me to block a machete, and I was wearing reinforced gloves. If Richard Jr had attacked with the cleaver, the most likely outcome would have been his jaw being broken by my counterpunch after blocking his weapon. I’d been attacked with a machete once before wearing very similar armor. It’s quite effective. It helps that a machete is a lousy weapon in a fight; a meat cleaver is even worse. The reinforced gloves I was wearing were far better weapons in a fight, and Richard Jr had no idea I was wearing body armor.
<rant> Reinforced gloves are more or less the center of yet another display of police douchebaggery here in Canada.
On July 24, 2016 Const. Daniel Montsion assisted another officer in the arrest of Abdirahman Abdi, who was having a mental heath crisis (Abdi had been causing a disturbance and groping customers of a nearby coffee shop). There is surveillance video and bystander cell video of the arrest. Abdi ran, and the first officer caught up to him just in front of Abdi’s apartment building.
When Montison arrived, he grounded Abdi, then punched him in the head twice, hard. Montison was wearing reinforced gloves (Oakley Standard Issue ‘assault gloves’, google it if you’re interested). When he punched Abdi, Abdi was not offering effective resistance (or none at all).
Mr Abdi died of his injuries. Monison was charged with, among other things, assault with a weapon and manslaughter (which is a minor miracle in and of itself. But there was independent video…not just the word of the involved officers). Monison’s defence is that the gloves were ‘part of the uniform’ and that they weren’t weapons since their intended use was to protect the officer’s hands.
Reinforced gloves are very common in the trades. Dispute resolution mechanisms that involve the impact of fists on flesh are not exactly unknown in the trades either. But nobody ever settles a beef wearing reinforced gloves (because, if you do, you aren’t settling a beef any more. You’re trying to hurt the other guy. That’s a different thing).
And anybody who has ever punched anything wearing those gloves realizes that they are very effective weapons in a fistfight. You don’t punch someone in the head wearing reinforced gloves unless there is an immediate threat. That was not the case when Montison punched Abdi. </rant>
Richard Jr didn’t answer and didn’t move. After a few more seconds I realized he was drunk (I could smell his breath), so I went around to the back door and used it instead. I didn’t want a fight with a drunk armed with a blade, even one that wasn’t very good as a weapon. They’re too unpredictable.
Hamilton Slumlords 
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