Sask. man jailed in Atlanta over traffic infraction

A Canadian tourist got a taste of American-style justice when he was jailed in Atlanta for a minor traffic infraction.

Randy Kaniuk, of Shaunavon, Sask., was on his way to see a Toronto Blue Jays/Atlanta Braves game last week when he got into a fender bender trying to pass a truck on the road. Police charged him with “failure to maintain lane.” Then they put him behind bars.

“I was there for six hours,” he told Yahoo Canada News on Tuesday.

He said the officer told him he was taken into custody because he was a foreigner, and he might leave the state without paying the fine.

“I never got my Miranda rights. I didn’t even know I was being arrested,” Kaniuk said by phone from Kitchener, Ont., where he’d stopped en route home. “I asked him why he had the cuffs on so tight, and he said it was procedure.”

The name of the officer who issued the ticket is noted as Kyle McClendon. A LinkedIn profile for that name describes him as a state trooper with the Capitol Police, which provides security at the state capitol.

Kaniuk and his 22-year-old nephew Jamie had driven 3,000 kilometres – 31 hours straight – to attend games last Tuesday and Wednesday.

Jamie was left on the roadside when Kaniuk was whisked away to the jail Wednesday afternoon.

“I’m really angry what they did to my nephew,” Kaniuk said. “I told him through the (police car) window, ‘Go to the ballgame. I’ll meet you there.’”

He had no idea what would happen next.

“I was fingerprinted. I was eye-scanned. They touched my feet. They patted me down, put me up against a wall,” said Kaniuk, who owns the Historic Shaunavon Hotel and is a member of his town’s economic development committee.

He was kept in what he described as a “big holding room” with about 20 others, half men and half women. When he asked to use the washroom, he was sent to a glassed-in cubicle, visible to all.

“It was so surreal,” he said. “Talking about [it] now, I’m starting to get myself worked up.”

Kaniuk said he was fined US$75 plus court costs, for a total of $109, but he asked to have that payment applied against the $158 bond he’d already paid, so now he’s getting a $49 refund cheque in the mail.

He said he plans to file a formal complaint — as soon as he’s safely back in Saskatchewan.

“(I thought): Are you going to condone it by doing nothing? And let it happen to the next Canadian?” he said.

“I want somebody to hear about it and at the very least get an apology,” he said.

The Jays won the Wednesday game 9-1.