[CaberTosser]

Originally Posted by Ronji

I witnessed an interesting thing coming home from work yesterday evening.
On Groat Road, and 111 ave, a guy with out a shirt, was perched up at the top of a spruce tree approximately 20 feet up.
Roads were blocked off and closed by the police, traffic rerouted.
Approximately 25 police officers, including all the tactical team, and 1 police dog, and at least 1 officer at the Inspector level.
3 fire trucks with ladder and full firefighter crew.
Ambulance and 2 EMT's.
Approximately 45 emergency service people on site.

They spent an hour dealing with this guy (who obviously wasn't all well)
The tactical team went up in the aerial ladder, and stuffed him in the bucket. Cuffed him and loaded him on a stretcher, to I assume Alberta Hospital.
This all took about 1 to 1.5 hours.

It was a complete waste of manpower and resources. I feel sorry for the people who were waiting for a police officer to respond to a robbery, accident, trouble call etc.

I must be getting far cynical in my years. I would have left him up there. Sooner or later he would have got hungry.

I always look over for the remainder of the tree noted in the following article when I drive by. As I passed by it today I either missed it or the remainder of the tree has finally been taken down. I assume that when the body was finally located the Police & Fire Dept topped the top 40% of the tree with a crane in order to lower the body as well as to forensically examine how he was tied off to determine whether it was a homicide or a suicide. The missing portion of the tree stood out when driving the adjacent main drag. This one was just so weird it made the news, normally suicides aren't reported:

http://nationalpost.com/news/canada/...ast-six-months