The man who was at the center of an online controversy just days into the new year involving a standoff with police in the village of Dinsmore has taken to social media to shed light on the bizarre incident.
Related article: 'Male in custody after police standoff in Dinsmore': https://www.theoutlook.ca/news/local/male-in-custody-after-police-standoff-in-dinsmore-1.24263953
Thomas Zaugg, 35, was open and honest with the followers of his YouTube channel in a recent video, in which he touched on the circumstances surrounding the events of January 6, when RCMP and SWAT team personnel were on-site at his residence in Dinsmore after a claim that Zaugg had been making online threats.
Police eventually took Zaugg into custody and he underwent a mental health assessment.
In the video, Zaugg touches on the realization that he lives with bipolar disorder and calls on people to better understand what people who have the condition deal with on a daily basis.
“Everyone, I’m still alive,” he says. “I just wanted to make this video update kind of thing letting everybody know I’m okay. I like to be an open book, that’s part of how I go through what I go through. I don’t have any ill will to any of the Plaid Army guys, I don’t have any hard feelings about any of that stuff. I was going through a bipolar thing. I’m happy to know that that’s what I’ve been dealing with this whole time. In Ontario, they always said that I had schizophrenia, which is not true; I don’t see things that aren’t there, I don’t hear voices in my head. I just experience these kind of manic freak-outs sometimes. Generally, these manic freak-outs, there are reasons why I have them. I want to be clear about this: I don’t blame anyone for my bipolar freak-out. That’s a me problem, so I just try and talk about this stuff so there’s more of an understanding around how to deal with people like me and not just cut us out of your friend group all the time because at the end of the day, we’re all people.”
In another video, Zaugg touches on the conditions he must obey following the incident with law enforcement, including living under what’s known as a Community Treatment Order (CTO). A CTO is a doctor's order for a person to receive treatment or care and supervision in the community. The treatment or care and supervision is based on a community treatment plan which outlines the medications, medical appointments and other aspects of care the doctor believes is necessary to allow the person to live in the community rather than remain in the hospital.
“I’m living under this community treatment order, which I’m not super thrilled about,” Zaugg says in the video. “If you don’t know what a community treatment order is, it’s basically like probation for crazy people. Which means I’m mandated to see a psychiatrist every month, I’m mandated to get an injection of this medication that I’m less than thrilled about. This is part of why I opted to go into the standoff in the first place. I was hoping that resisting arrest like that would carry some type of criminal sanction, so that if I was charged with a criminal offence, I would have gone to a remand center instead of a psychiatric facility and I would have had a day in court instead of in this kind of quasi-judicial thing which is the mental health framework of laws.”
Zaugg expressed in comments on his channel that police in the situation did him no harm, and that they received “bad information and acted with the best of intentions.” He says he doesn’t have his original cell phone, laptop, or wi-fi internet router because he is still under investigation by police. He noted that he is under investigation for possession weapons, though he pointed out that the weapons he owns are airsoft guns.
Zaugg disputes the claim that he made threats online, which prompted the standoff with police. He says the standoff happened due to cyber bullying and false complaints being called in.
