Madonna's dancers, Toronto police officer recall how pop star was nearly arrested
DAVID FRIEND | THE CANADIAN PRESS
MAY 25, 2016
TORONTO - Few people tell Madonna what to do, but Toronto police certainly tried.
It all came to a boil nearly 26 years ago — on May 29, 1990 — at the third and final Toronto show of the "Blond Ambition World Tour."
Friction between the pop singer and local police had captured global headlines and Supt. Frank Bergen remembers it well — because he was assigned the unenviable task of standing up to the "Material Girl" at the height of her stardom.
As the story went, police told Madonna's management they'd received complaints from audience members at the previous evening's show over her simulated masturbation while singing "Like a Virgin."
Officers said if she didn't scrap her crotch-grabbing antics at the SkyDome, now known as the Rogers Centre, they'd be forced to arrest her on obscenity charges.
Bergen, a 29-year-old Toronto constable at the time, was grappling with his own perspective on the situation.
He says the obscenity kerfuffle was led by a police detective and Crown attorney who took a strong position that Madonna's show shouldn't go on.
"What I was struggling with was how do you go to the microphone and tell everyone the show is cancelled," Bergen says.
"My role and my position was we were not going to shut the show down."
The entire article:
http://www.timescolonist.com/madonna....UlrKPQyq.dpuf
