(Canadian Press) The soft-spoken young man wasn’t being recruited by neo-Nazis or the Islamic State, but he was in a downward spiral.
Andy, who asked not to have his real name published, says he hit rock bottom a few years ago when he was 19. He later got help from Calgary’s ReDirect program, which links at-risk young people with police officers and social workers to steer them from dangerous ideologies.
The voluntary program started in 2015 and was initially aimed at helping individuals in danger of being recruited by terrorist organizations or criminal gangs.
In Andy’s case, he posted something inappropriate on Facebook.
“It was at my workplace … and obviously it wasn’t good. At that time I was drunk and I didn’t know what I was writing or boasting about. Then eventually they fired me,” he says.
