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"One Friday night in January, 1962, Rabbi Norbert Leiner, a teacher at the Orthodox Jewish Ner Israel Yeshiva, was stopped by the police in the Bathhurst-St. Clair neighborhood in York Township.The police in the area had been put on alert for a suspicious person whom neighborhood residents claimed was stalking the area. Although Rabbi Leiner looked nothing like the suspected stalker, the police nevertheless confronted him, used abusive language,and demanded that he enter their automobile.Rabbi Leiner refused, citing the Jewish Sabbath's prohibitions against riding in a vehicle. The officers pushed the rabbi into their car, drove him to the police station, and held him overnight. At the station, officers slapped Rabbi Leiner after he again refused to cooperate with fingerprinting and other procedures because of his Sabbath observances. Rabbi Leiner was released the next day when authorities admitted that he had been mistakenly apprehended. Both the Jewish and the non-Jewish press attacked the police for their actions, and a specially convened royal commission condemned the authorities for the incident.Although the arrest was not deemed anti-Semitic, the commission admonished the police for failing to understand or be sensitive to Rabbi Leiner's religious observances. At the same time, the commission did not spare Rabbi Leiner, criticizing him for not cooperating to the extent that he might have." |
