Vancouver police will not press any charges against a man who was photographed apparently peeing on the Komagata Maru memorial in early December.
The decision disappointed Pargan Mattu, who took the photos and shared them with media.
"I'm not really happy with that," he told The Huffington Post B.C. on Tuesday. "If anybody pisses in a public place, they get a ticket or they get arrested, so they're supposed to do this. I don't know why the police are not charging him."
Mattu and a friend were visiting the monument, which commemorates the 1914 event when 376 migrants from India were denied entry to Canada based on their race, and forced to remain on a boat in Burrard Inlet for months.
Mattu and his friend had been standing at the memorial for about 10 minutes when a man approached them and threw a soccer ball at the monument, said Mattu.
"(He) started screaming and said, 'What are you guys trying to prove,'" Mattu said. "I said, 'What are you trying to prove,' and he said, 'I can prove anything.'"
Mattu said the man, who did not appear to be drunk at the time, started peeing on the memorial. Mattu took photos and promised that he would call the police.
Charges will not be laid because the incident did not meet all the necessary criteria, Vancouver police Sgt. Randy Fincham said in an e-mail.
"In laying a charge, investigators would need to establish that a criminal offence took place, laying a charge was in the public interest and that there was a substantial likelihood of a conviction," he wrote. "In this case, it was determined that all three criteria had not been established."
Fincham added, however, that police have spoken with the man believed to be involved in the incident. "The man has been made aware of the cultural significance of the memorial and that his alleged activity in and around the memorial was inappropriate and insensitive to the South Asian community," Fincham wrote.
Like this article? Follow our Facebook page
Or follow us on Twitter
Follow @HuffPostBC