Crime scene corvid

May 26, 2016 5:01 PM

A winged thief tries to make off with evidence
posted by sardonyx (21 comments total)

Apparently Canuck the Crow is quite famous around Vancouver, even being interviewed by the CBC.
posted by tavella at 5:07 PM on May 26, 2016 [5 favorites]

Shiny object + McDonalds + fucking with cops is pretty much nirvana if you're a crow in Vancouver. Next stop, "medical" marijuana dispensary...
posted by raider at 5:12 PM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

It's a good thing the cops didn't have to *puts on sunglasses* eat crow.



YEEEAAAAAHHH
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 5:14 PM on May 26, 2016 [9 favorites]

but if they catch him, he'll be a jailbird

Unless he bargains for a plea and sings like a canary

Bird pun
posted by Krom Tatman at 5:35 PM on May 26, 2016 [5 favorites]

I wonder how this is going to work out legally? There is that theory that cops will reject their evidence after it's been handled by a bird.
posted by Flashman at 5:46 PM on May 26, 2016 [15 favorites]

An amusing take on the story, but I watched a video of the events leading up to it and that video was far from amusing. What I saw on that video was a man on the ground, shot in the leg, with the leg at a nauseating angle (have since learned he was shot in that leg at least twice, perhaps three times), surrounded by police officers, all with weapons drawn, trying to drag himself away, then a female officer kicking something (perhaps the knife with which bystanders have said he was trying to stab himself) away. Then the officers closed in on the injured man, surrounding him (perhaps tasering him) and then kicking and pummeling him while he screamed at them, eventually picking him up like a sack of garbage and carrying him out of camera range, although you could still hear him shouting. The knife sat in the open for at least 8 or 9 minutes, until eventually an officer came over and put a McDonald's garbage can on top of it. I saw no crow action at all, I did see some pretty horrendous police brutality, though.
posted by alltomorrowsparties at 5:52 PM on May 26, 2016 [8 favorites]

That's a Black Tower Raven and he's doing for the love and the money.
posted by clavdivs at 6:04 PM on May 26, 2016

The crow's name is Canuck and he has a Facebook page.
posted by My Dad at 6:36 PM on May 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

An amusing take on the story, but I watched a video of the events leading up to it and that video was far from amusing.

I sometimes think that people in the Lower Mainland have a special filter that screens out anything to do with gun violence. "LOOK AT AMERICA. SO MUCH TRUMP, SO MANY GUNS, WE SO GOOD UP HERE, EH?"
posted by My Dad at 6:37 PM on May 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

You know what's weird? You can barely see the knife in question but I was immediately almost sure it was this one. (The green version, obviously.) For whatever it's worth, it's one of the best value camp knives out there, and you can get it even cheaper if you don't care about the fire starter business. It's made by Mora of Sweden and most of my friends (and me, too) have some version of it, but to my knowledge they're not super well known outside of people who like knives.

It would definitely be a nasty weapon if turned to that purpose, and I suppose some people must buy it with that in mind. Of course I have no way of actually knowing this, but seeing that knife at a crime scene makes me think the owner must have been a knife nerd, a self-styled survivalist and/or prepper, and maybe a bit unhinged in a way that is sorta characteristic of those subcultures (see the Oregon occupiers for an extreme example of what I mean there). It's weird how much I so quickly read into what is basically a green-and-black blob on a screen.

Weird to see it turning up in this context. Weird that I noticed and recognized it. Weird where my mind went with it, and how quickly it made those jumps. Not really relevant to the story of the crow… just weird.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 7:04 PM on May 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

The knife sat in the open for at least 8 or 9 minutes, until eventually an officer came over and put a McDonald's garbage can on top of it. I saw no crow action at all, I did see some pretty horrendous police brutality, though.

Maybe this is unfair, but the first thing I thought when I read the story was "These news people are playing this all for a laugh, but it says here that the cops shot somebody and then are trying to use this knife as part of the justification, and it seems awfully convenient to me that oh a bird somehow moved the knife and that's why it's in a place that doesn't fit with our story about why we shot this guy." It could just be too much time watching US (and particularly my local, just outside Detroit) cops work, but this immediately pinged my "cops trying to get away with something" radar.
posted by IAmUnaware at 7:16 PM on May 26, 2016 [8 favorites]

Well, the guy could have actually rushed the cops with a knife and there could still have been horrendous police brutality. I mean, ganging up on someone and beating the shit out of them after you've already shot them three times and they're lying on the ground would seem pretty excessive to me, even if they'd been trying (pathetically, given how outnumbered and outgunned they were) to kill you a few minutes ago. Police should use minimum necessary force to get someone into custody, which "three bullets and a beating" pretty much never is. It doesn't matter if the person had just committed a terrible crime and was recently trying to commit another one—police are supposed to bring criminals to justice, not dispense it summarily.

Note, I have not seen the video alltomorrowsparties mentions and don't intend to as I'm pretty sure I'd find it seriously upsetting. I'm willing to assume it's accurate though, because that sort of thing is not at all unusual. Even if inaccurate in this case, the general point stands: you don't have to look hard at all to realize that police beat the everliving daylights out of helpless arrestees all day every day, and have been doing it for as long as there have been police. Some of those arrestees have surely done some pretty evil things, but it's not for police to mete out violent punishment on the side of the road.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 7:29 PM on May 26, 2016 [5 favorites]

This bird is truly the Florence Nightingale of the criminal element. (Or corrupt cops.)
posted by quinndexter at 8:02 PM on May 26, 2016

And then there are the crows in Everett, WA (a hundred miles south) who took a dislike to the local cops and routinely attack them in a precinct parking lot:

Lt. Bob Johns said he recently was flanked by the aggressive birds and “got zinged.”

“They’re like velociraptors,” Johns said.

One officer used his siren to try to scare away the crows, but it didn’t work. The birds responded by decorating his car with droppings, The Daily Herald reported.

posted by karayel at 9:19 PM on May 26, 2016 [11 favorites]

The Crow original handmade dagger, used through the film and in Lee's final fight scene with arch villian Top Dollar.
posted by adept256 at 1:17 AM on May 27, 2016

No comment.
posted by ArgentCorvid at 6:35 AM on May 27, 2016 [5 favorites]

"No, your honour - he definitely had a knife when we shot him, but ... a crow flew away with it. Yeah, that's it! A crow."
posted by Paul Slade at 8:59 AM on May 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

Yet another crow story demonstrating that once they figure out how to get around that no opposable thumbs thing, we are all seriously fucked.
posted by holborne at 9:03 AM on May 27, 2016

that no opposable thumbs thing

Oh goody, an excuse to post the porcupine quills video again!
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:54 AM on May 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

It could just be too much time watching US (and particularly my local, just outside Detroit) cops work, but this immediately pinged my "cops trying to get away with something" radar.

Exactly. Suspicious as fuck.

And then there are the crows in Everett, WA (a hundred miles south) who took a dislike to the local cops and routinely attack them in a precinct parking lot:

I'll take this as additional evidence of corvid intelligence, yeah.
posted by tobascodagama at 10:15 AM on May 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Aw, the quills video is one of my favorites. Corvids are so smart -- you really have to have some higher functions to realize that yes, this is going to suck and it will hurt more for a minute, but leaving them in will hurt worse so it's worth it to go hang by the scary humans and let them do their monkey thing.
posted by tavella at 10:26 AM on May 27, 2016 [3 favorites]