YouTube Taser Death Parody under the Spotlight

It's common knowledge by now that YouTube is the place to go if you want to see something that will make your hair stand on end with indignation. There's always something there that will get your blood to boil, it's just not always in plain sight, and what you see today might not be there tomorrow, because eventually the censors come and do their job - and that's a good thing in this case.

Robert Dziekanski, a Polish immigrant, was recently held by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in the Vancouver, British Columbia airport. Under unclear exact circumstances he got tasered by one of the officers and eventually died. Mike Greenway decided that this event should not slide the online community and decided to create a Mega Man ROM hack video to "recreate" the tragic event.

The clip was entitled "Megaman vs Polish Immigrant" and it shows Mega Man strolling (if that's what usual police officers do, then that's the word) through a Vancouver themed airport level and, eventually, coming to a meeting with a sprite of former-end-boss Dr. Willy that was modified to look like Mr. Dziekanski. The result of the meeting is a menu where the officer's options are to "use restraint", "call a translator" or to "tazer mercilessly". The option also showed how much energy each decision provided needed and, of course, the last one was the choice and eventually drained Mega Man's energy bar. The result of the actual meeting - you've already read above, suffice it to say that the video doesn't change it.

Officials from the Canadian Polish Congress told Canda.com that they consider the video to be "disrespectful to the victim, his family and the Polish community", while RCMP Staff Sargeant Josh Ward stated that "Any right-thinking person who would look at the video would be offended by that. A gentlemen lost his life and it is in extremely poor taste."

I'll let you decide for yourself what the situation is: