A POLICE OFFICER from Toronto who appeared on a YouTube video telling a young woman not to blow bubbles at a G20 protest has launched a defamation suit against the video-sharing website.

Constable Adam Josephs was on anti-riot duty in Toronto in June when he was filmed admonishing a young female protester who was blowing bubbles in an attempt to calm the fraught atmosphere on the day.

“If the bubble touches me, you’re going to be arrested for assault,” Josephs is filmed as saying. “If the bubble touches me, you’re going to be arrested for assault.”

Later, the video shows the same woman being held up against a wall and arrested, and then being loaded into a police van.

Josephs – who earned the nickname ‘Officer Bubbles’ for his appearance, and became a poster boy for police heavy-handedness – is now suing YouTube for hosting a stream of videos posted in the weeks afterward that showed a cartoon officer  closely resembling himself, and carrying his ‘A. Josephs’ nametag.

The cartoon videos, he believes, subject him to ridicule and have led to threats against himself and his family, according to Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail.

Josephs is also seeking to compel YouTube to reveal the identity of the user ‘ThePMOCanada’, who had posted the satirical cartoon videos, and the identities of a number of users who had posted comments on them.

“This level of ridicule goes beyond what is reasonable,” his lawyer James Zibarras said. “The reason we brought the lawsuit is that people have the right to protect themselves against this kind of harassment.”