It was with much weeping and wailing that Willow Kinloch presented her sensational case of alleged police abuse at a press conference last week, three years after the fact.

But for a public primed and a media stoked for yet another grainy spool of police tape exposing the unsightly rigours of law enforcement, Kinloch’s holding-cell reality reel became a headline-grabbing showstopper.

Armed with her surveillance footage and flanked on one side by her remarkably inconsolable mother and on the other by her morally indignant lawyer, the 18-year-old Gulf Islands gal recounted a tale that is now at the centre of two separate law suits and two official, high-level investigations — all funded by your hard-earned tax dollars.

Kinloch’s sordid saga unfolded in May 2005, when she was 15. Having recently arrived with her family from the small community of Mudge Island, Kinloch got extraordinarily drunk one evening at a teenage drinking party.

According to Kinloch, her pals dropped her off on the doorstep of her apartment complex around midnight. Alas, the teenager was locked out, having lost her keys.

Neighbours — alarmed by the sight of a young girl staggering confused on their stoop — called 911, which dispatched paramedics who in turn deemed the delinquent a more suitable candidate for the local constabulary.

Kinloch, described by Victoria Police as “combative” that night, was taken to the station house and placed in a padded cell to sober up.

In his statements to the CBC last week, police spokesman Grant Hamilton said Kinloch did not take this opportunity to quietly reflect upon the circumstances surrounding her arrival in the proverbial drunk tank, but instead began hollering abuse.

“She was kicking the cell. She was punching the cell,” he said.

At 4:30 that morning, police attempted to take Kinloch home. Unable to raise the Kinloch family by phone or through the apartment intercom, and deciding that they couldn’t legally release a teenage girl onto the city streets, officers drove Kinloch back to the station as “a child in need of protection” under the authority of the Child Family and Services Act. “We had to forcibly remove her from the vehicle to put her into that padded cell,” says Hamilton, describing the girl’s violent reaction to being returned to police lock-up.

A jail surveillance tape offers an eight-minute snapshot of what happened next.

There is no audio on the tape, so it is impossible to hear the verbal exchanges between Kinloch and her charges, which Kinloch herself has suggested were hellfire colourful.

Granted, the grainy, jerky images are ugly, as is much of the dirty, day-to-day police work that law-abiding citizens would rather was swept out of sight and mind.

In the vintage footage, a jailhouse matron pins Kinloch to the padded wall after the girl kicks off her shoe at the female guard. Within moments, two officers surge into the tiny room and cuff Kinloch around the wrists and ankles before tethering her to the door of her cell.

Kinloch has filed a criminal lawsuit against the Victoria Police Department. Her family has filed a civil suit for undisclosed damages against the City of Victoria and the four officers involved.

Where others may have taken away a life lesson from this unseemly incident and moved on with their lives, Willow Kinloch has gone another route.

Why has she chosen this moment in time to air her grievances? Two words: Robert Dziekanski.

Some fools rush in. Others, more calculating, take their time.

Clearly, Kinloch was emboldened by the power of graphic video to sway public sentiment, as witnessed in the case of the Polish immigrant who died after RCMP used a Taser to subdue him at the Vancouver airport last year. A bystanders’ footage of that police incident spurred several provincial and federal investigations.

While Kinloch’s judgment may have been clouded that Spring evening so long ago, clearly the young woman who presented herself to the cameras last week was correct in her assessment.

Before the Kinloch tape had even stopped turning, B.C.’s police complaints commissioner had ordered an external investigation. This on top of internal investigation ordered by Victoria’s police chief.

But wait just one second. Why are taxpayers on the hook for two official investigations when Willow Kinloch and her family have already opted to seek redress through our publicly funded courts?

A potential settlement in this case notwithstanding, by the time all is said, done and investigatively exhausted, B.C. taxpayers are looking at a million-dollar hangover.