Weapons seized by the RCMP during the Coutts border blockade in 2022 are shown in a handout photo. Some social media accounts have falsely claimed this photo was recycled by the RCMP from an older criminal case. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-RCMP **MANDATORY CREDIT**
Weapons seized by the RCMP during the Coutts border blockade in 2022 are shown in a handout photo. Some social media accounts have falsely claimed this photo was recycled by the RCMP from an older criminal case. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-RCMP **MANDATORY CREDIT**
RCMP conducted a raid during a blockade at the Canada-U.S. border near Coutts, Alta., after the crossing was paralyzed for more than two weeks in 2022 by protests against COVID-19 vaccine mandates and other pandemic restrictions. Some social media posts claim the photo RCMP shared of weapons seized during the raid is the same as an image from a Calgary police drug operation the year prior. This is false. The image from the RCMP arrests at Coutts was never shared in relation to the Calgary drug bust.
Some posts on , formerly known as Twitter, and are claiming the RCMP used a recycled photo of firearms when announcing police made arrests at the Alberta border protests. Many social media users shared similar images depicting a CTV News article about a 2021 drug bust that uses an image that appears to be the same photo RCMP released during the Coutts raids the following year. The post includes text that says, "Please tell me how the rcmp found guns in coutts?? and used the same pic from a calgary bust in dec 2021 and coutts feb 2022.... ya they can be trusted."
At the time of publication, one had more than 32,900 views and nearly 700 retweets.
Rating: False
Calgary police announced three people were charged and guns seized in a drug trafficking operation on Dec. 16, 2021. , the police service shared three photos. Two photos depicted a handgun and the other shows plastic bags allegedly full of drugs.
CTV News published on the arrests the same day. The article included the Calgary Police Service handout photos of the two handguns and the plastic bags.
The following year, protests broke out across Canada in opposition to COVID-19 vaccine mandates, including one in Coutts that gridlocked the international border in Alberta.
On Feb. 14, 2022, Alberta RCMP announced that Mounties had executed a search warrant on three trailers connected to blockade protesters. , Mounties said police seized 13 long guns, handguns, multiple sets of body armour, a machete, a large quantity of ammunition and high capacity magazines.
RCMP shared a photo of the seized items placed on a table, as well as on the floor. An RCMP vehicle is behind the table.
published articles on the arrests and included the handout photo from RCMP.
Images never changed
A social media post that depicts the CTV News article about the Calgary arrest but with an image of the RCMP weapons seizure has been spread online since at least March 2022. One user that "RCMP manipulate the public" by recycling the photo.
However, a search through online archives shows the photo from Coutts released by RCMP was never used by Calgary police or CTV News for the article about the 2021 arrests.
The CTV News article was saved three times through the Wayback Machine, a digital archive of web pages, and included the same photo of two handguns and plastic bags. It was also saved in and and contained the same images of the handguns and bags. The image in the CTV article remained the same and the RCMP firearms image was never used.
A Calgary police news release about the arrests was saved eight times between and through the digital archive. Each contain the same photos: two handguns and one picture showing plastic bags. The police news release image also remained the same.
Search engine savvy
Videos on TikTok have also brought up similar questions about the firearms seized in 2022 during the protests at the border.
A shows a Google image search with the text "2011 rcmp seizures grande prairie." The results include an image of firearms seized during the Coutts arrest from the news website My Grande Prairie Now.
The video also shows a Google image search with the text "rcmp seizure coutts border." The results are entirely images of the firearms seized by RCMP during the border raid. Audio played overtop the video says, "That's suspicious. That's weird."
While the TikTok user may have searched for RCMP seizures in 2011, the result that is depicted is a about the Coutts border blockade.
Google says the automated systems in its search function largely rely on matching words in the query to the words that appear on a web page. Information provided by Google to ºÃÉ«tvsays the search function works the same with images: matching words used to label the images.
When less common search terms are used, it's possible that lower-quality content might appear in the results because there is less content on the web available for indexing and ranking.
In the case of the firearms, the image search result pulled images with similar keywords.
There are specific ways to get in search results. Google has filters to narrow dates when using its search engine, and if they aren't applied the results aren't necessarily from that time period.
Users can use tools to specify words and dates they are searching for.
Google also has an feature that provides the photo's history and describes how other sites use and describe the image. When available, it also gives metadata on the image, which can provide information from the creator, including if it was generated or enhanced by artificial intelligence.
Sources
Social media claims can be found on X () and (), on TikTok (, ) and on Facebook () and ()
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