Kabbadi Cops

The Canadians playing Kabbadi a 4000 year old indigenous sport of India.

Kabaddi Cops, a short film by Greg Cote documents the amazing spectacle of white Canadian police officers - shorn of their uniforms and guns - clad only in shorts forming rings on the playing field, hands raised, moving as blithely as ballet dancers and yet as sleekly as tigers in the fierce kabaddi dance of raiders and defenders. It is the only non-Asian kabaddi team anywhere in the world.

Greg Cote choose a group of local punjabi residents of Ontario as the opposition.The film was inspired by the efforts of Inspector Barry Dolan who in 2002 came up with the Police Kabaddi team to ease tensions and bring about harmony and trust between the police and the South Asians, after a protest against racial profiling at the Peel police station.

The south asians residing there are always negatively taken by the police officers.They are often misunderstood and are the prime suspects for petty crimes and vandalism..

Greg Cote himself being a police officer tries to deal with this sensitive issue.

Cote says the film is his attempt to amplify the voices of a few officers attempting to bring about change within their own police department and to make police departments more user friendly for the visible minority immigrant. Kabaddi Cops showed recently at the IAAC Film Festival in New York where it won the best short documentary award and also won over Salman Rushdie: "The idea of a bunch of Canadian policemen learning kabaddi in order to integrate with the Asian community is something I wish to see!"

Meanwhile Dolan who had formed his Kabaddi players from his own police department has also formed a women's police kabaddi team.