Canadian Cop Apologizes for Threatening Drunk Driving Suspects with Nickelback

The last band you'd expect to hold truth to power and call out the police is Nickelback.

Last week, Prince Edward Island police officer Constable Robb Hartlen posted a dire warning on Facebook to all those who've been wrong and been down to the bottom of every bottle. For anyone picked up for drinking and driving, Hartlen threatened to force them to listen to Nickelback's 2001 album Silver Side Up in the back of his cruiser; kind of like the Canadian equivalent of Metallica's "Enter Sandman" being played during "enhanced interrogations" at Guantánamo Bay.

The post rapidly went viral, and Constable Hartlen—who polices a town of 2,000—was thrust into the spotlight. Hartlen told VICE that he hoped frontman Chad Kroeger might actually play along with the post. "I actually like Nickelback," Hartlen told VICE. "Everyone says they don't like Nickelback. It's fashionable to do so."

Using Nickelback as a form of (if not cruel, then very unusual) punishment might have struck a personal chord with Kroeger, who was convicted of a DUI back in 2008 and has his license suspended for a year after blowing twice the legal limit into a breathalyzer while speeding in his Lamborghini.

But whatever happened between Nickelback and the Kensington Police Service, Hartlen ended up taking down the initial Facebook post and quickly replaced it with a mea culpa, apologizing personally to the band after they reached out to him.

"I am sorry to Chad, Ryan, Mike and Daniel. Not as just members of Nickelback, but more importantly as fellow Canadians," Hartlen wrote. "I'm sorry guys because I didn't take a moment to think of you as just guys. Having to watch as media around the world takes a pot shot at you and having no way to defend yourself."

It's not like cops to say 'sorry,' but if you think that the apology wasn't sincere, look at this photograph.

"As Canadians, we are better than that," the post goes on to say. "We don't embrace being a bully and being cruel and belittling of the work others have done."

That's quite the 180 on the part of Constable Hartlen. But what could be more Canadian than a small-town cop apologizing profusely for using a Canadian band's to punish drinking and driving suspects?