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“I was shaken,” he said.

About five minutes after the attack, an officer gave him an email address to contact if he wanted to file a complaint about the assailant, who was only a few metres away, Behal said.

“I was a little disappointed, even 10 minutes later, the man was standing amongst the crowd and I was able to get a picture of him. I’m not sure why the police chose not to do it,” he said.

“My assumption is it’s because they didn’t want to escalate it and that’s their tactic. You know, I get that.”

Behal said he provided the photos of the man to police after the rally.

“I have every confidence the police are going to try and figure out who this guy is,” he said. “Journalists should be able to do their work in safety.”

Staff-Sgt. Matt Moyer was leading the team of officers during the rally. He said some demonstrators wore masks and some had flag poles and other objects that could “be interpreted as weapons.”

“We knew that we were going to have some problems in the crowd,” he said. So he ordered the officers, who were lined up using their bicycles as a barricade between them and the demonstrators, not to wade into the crowd.

“Especially for assaults of this nature, which was, you know, relatively minor,” he said. “It’s like adding fuel to the fire.”

“What I don’t want to do is send an officer into the crowd, have them turn their back, struggle to make an arrest, try to gain control of him, and then you’ve got all these contentious people with masks on … and then potentially the officer gets hurt, all for what?”