Toronto's Police: What a Shame!!!

I've received with horror the news that the Chilean U-20 team was involved in a argument with the Toronto's Police in which the team got, by far, the worst part. According to the media (which was also badly treated by the Police and the Security of the stadium), everything started because a couple of Chilean players, who attempted to give some authographs to some fans located near the exit of the stadium, were badly beaten by Police who used electrics canes and peper gas to 'reduce' them. This is just U N B E L I E V A B L E. I can't think of a rational (or even irrational) justification for such Police's behavior. For me, it is unthinkable that two soccer players representing an OFFICIAL DELEGATION of a foreing country be treated this way. I've seen protests and marchs while in Montreal where protesters were far more aggressive than Chilean players (if player were aggressive at all) and they did not receive a treatmemt that even remotely resembles what these players suffered in Toronto. They were treated as criminals, if criminals in Canada were treated this way.

But things did not stop there. No later than 10 min after this incident, the Police went on the bus (yes, the rest of the players were on the bus waiting to go to the hotel) and took with HANDCUFS 7 players to the dressing room to be interrogated. Can someone give me an explanation of why Chilean soccer players were treated as delincuents? For more that I try, I can't find a reasonable explanation for this; the only explanation I find is that they were treated that way precisely because they were Chileans. I don't want to sound politically CORRECT (and I will not) but I can't help thinking that Toronto's police behaves that way because they chilean players were, in police's eyes, just a bunch of delincuents coming from a third world country....for Toronto's police these kids had in mind, all the time, the idea of disturbing the peace and security of the stadium (perhaps even the city) because they do not know other thing to do but to be delincuents.

I do want to be wrong, really wrong, in my appreciation of the facts. I do not want to believe that everything was caused because policemen involved in the argument are people who think that someone coming from the the south part of the world has to be either a drug-dealer or a delincuent. It is already frustrating to see when this happens to innocent people just because they were born in the wrong part of the world. But it is even more frustrating to see that this happens to a bunch of people who is officially representing a country that Canada claims to be a friend of. This behaviour resembles too much the behaviour that other countries, who claim to be friends of Canada, have had with some canadian citizens in the past. I just thought (until now) that Canada was not getting infected with the same virus, the virus of intolerance and arrogance.

I am glad that the Chilean Government already took part on the incident (the Chilean Foreing Affairs Ministry has already required a full investigation of the facts) because this means that Canadian authorities will have to give at least an explanation. The least Canadian could do is to destitute those policeman that were involved in the issue proviso the official investigation proves them guilty. It is the minimun thing someone would expect from a country that calls itself a developed one. After all, these guys are just soccer players (for anyone who doesn't know yet, they all have been playing soccer for almost a month here, so they ARE soccer players) and not delincuents and they deserve to be treated as such. Shame on the Toronto's police and on all those who still judge people for their color, religion or place where they were born...sadly, I am starting to realize that I have people like those closer to me than what I like to.