Firefighter brawl case starts

The man who posted a fight on youtube.com between Vancouver police and an off-duty firefighter said yesterday he was shocked at how big the video got.
Ryan McCafferty, 37, who lives near Seattle, was vacationing in Vancouver last St. Patrick’s Day when he filmed a scuffle between Curtis Mason, his son Grant and four police officers.
The Masons are now charged with resisting arrest and assaulting a peace officer. Their trial began in Provincial Court yesterday.
“I put it on youtube as a lark,” McCafferty said outside Vancouver Provincial Courthouse.
“People started telling me it was big news in Canada. I had no idea.”
The video, posted on youtube.com under the title: Vancouver 3/17/07 Police Brawl, has received more than 200,000 views since it was posted the day following the incident.
Response to the video, McCafferty said, had many people “bad mouthing the cops and the firefighters” and prompted him to post a second video, commenting on the first.
The second video has been viewed more than 15,000 times.
-jeff.hodson@metronews.ca