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Citizens will pay a financial price for Toronto's amateur policing during G20 summit
Media outlets, including the National Post, have reported that 650 people have been arrested in Toronto at the G20 protests.
The police dragnet has been condemned by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.
The G8-G20 Integrated Security Unit Web site includes the following sentence: "The ISU is a joint forces team comprised of security experts collaborating together to ensure the safety of the Heads of State, the community and minimize to the fullest extent possible, the potential impact of police security operations (emphasis added)."
It's becoming pretty clear that after some anarchists went on a rampage on Saturday (June 26), the ISU sought vengeance several hours later by roughing up peaceful protesters and rounding them up.
The ISU includes the RCMP, the Toronto Police Service, the Canadian Forces, Peel Regional Police, and other security and law-enforcement partners.
Prior to the summit, the ISU stated that they "are now ready to provide a safe and peaceful environment for the G20 Summit on June 26 and 27, 2010, in Toronto".
It clearly wasn't safe and peaceful for law-abiding protesters who were exercising their constitutional rights to freedom of assembly and freedom of expression in a designated protest zone at Queen's Park.
The actions of these police agencies in Toronto stand in sharp contrast to the behaviour of most of the Vancouver police during an anti-Olympic riot on February 13.
For the most part, Vancouver police kept their cool, which reflects the disciplined leadership of the senior brass, including Chief Jim Chu.
Of course, there were some complaints about the VPD's conduct. There always are. But during the Olympics, it was far more professional than the amateur antics displayed by Toronto's cops over the weekend.
The Vancouver police learned some lessons about crowd control after the Stanley Cup riot along Robson Street in 1994 and after the so-called Riot at the Hyatt on December 9, 1998. This coincided with a visit to Vancouver by then-Chinese president Jiang Zemin.
In recent years, Vancouver city cops have occasionally used uniformed officers to videotape protesters, which modifies their behaviour.
The VPD has also stopped encircling crowds of demonstrators, which can catch up bystanders on their way home. They learned that lesson in 1994.Since the Riot at the Hyatt, Vancouver police have avoided marching on protesters with batons and riot gear. Instead, they've preferred holding their positions, which we saw during the Olympics.
As a result, city taxpayers have not had to pay nearly as much in legal costs defending officers in the recent past for their actions during political protests.
What we saw in Toronto was a failure of police leadership. And rest assured, it's going to cost the citizens quite a bit of money by the time all the lawsuits and official complaints against the police are addressed.
Follow Charlie Smith on Twitter at twitter.com/csmithstraight.
http://therealnews.com/t2/component/seyret/?task=videodirectlink&id=6755
Whether it be a business, politics, military, policing... leadership is key, and it sets the tone for all others who are part of that organization. I watched Chief Bill Blair on Toronto's CP24 conducting press conferences and his tone was smug, arrogant and hostile. He had an attitude that suggested he had little to no time for reporters or their questions, and dismissed any suggestion that police forces had been overly aggressive or taken liberties that perhaps they shouldn't have. When questioned about the use of a "bean bag gun" he denied that they had been fired, and that he had been at the ISU HQ all day and would have known if one of those non-lethal weapons had been fired - even though the journalist questioning him say "with respect Chief, we have footage of the bean bag ammunition scattered throughout areas where protests took place".
It is a poor leader that would assume he is aware of everything that is taking place in such a chaotic situation, would dismiss any reports of information that does not comfirm the facts he has presented, and would not concede that some things could have been handled better by his people. His arrogant attitude of police infallability is almost certainly passed down along the chain of command and emboldens other police officers to infringe on civil liberties because they feel they are "in the right" and cannot be held accountable for their actions.
I'm sure it was also this attitude that led to decisions which saw police using aggressive tactics to encircle peaceful protesters and swarm them with angry-looking and heavily armoured riot officers, or mounted police units. These tactics were completely unecessary when simply using plain-clothes officers to infiltrate the groups and isolate the "Black Bloc" anarchists would have sufficed (and would have been a more efficient and cheaper option as well, in my humble opinion).
While I'm saddened to have seen "thugs" destroy the streets of Toronto this weekend, I can't help but think it was the police who were the biggest bunch of thugs during G20...
Soon afterwards, while catching a meal on the patio at Fran's Restaurant on College Street, we heard glass breaking on Yonge Street, and saw a mob of about 150 coming around the corner, hurling chairs into windows. Someone threw a bottle through a window showering me in broken glass. What was most striking was that there were not any police in sight.
Evidently this group had started rioting on Queen Street over half an hour earlier -- where the police drove one of their cars into the middle of the group then abandoned it. It was soon set on fire -- making a great photo op.
The group proceeded up Yonge Street smashing windows all the way up Yonge Street, at least eight blocks, without being stopped by police.
There were reported to be 19,000 security people on duty, and a senior officer told me they had 7,000 police.
As an academic and an activist, I have participated in numerous demonstrations in Canada, the United States, Europe and South America, and I have never seen such a dereliction of duty.
Normally, there are buses full of riot police right in the downtown core, ready to move at a moment's notice.
The police knew that they should focus their energies on the Black Bloc, especially so late on Saturday afternoon.
But when the rioters came smashing their way up the main street of Toronto, the police disappeared for half an hour.
It would appear that the security forces allowed this riot to happen in order to justify the $1 billion which appeared to have been wasted on security measures in Huntsville and Toronto.
They must not be allowed to discredit those of us who protested peacefully.
We must hold this government responsible for wasting $1 billion dollars on security measures, and then trying to justify it by allowing
David Langille is the executive producer for Poor No More, a feature documentary on Canada's working poor.
Mass Arrests, the Security State
and the Toronto G20 Summit
- by Socialist Project - 2010-06-27
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=19938
Real News Journalist Attacked at G20
TRNN's Jesse Freeston, one of the members of media attacked or arrested at G20
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&I...
G20 Police State:
Toronto is burning! Or is it?
- by Judy Rebick - 2010-06-27
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=19939
Quite the opposite, what we saw in Toronto was "active policing" vs. "deescalating policing". The goal was not to protect certain areas of the city but to actively engage with potential threads. The one billion spent needed to be justified somehow.
BTW, because of some similar actions by German police over the last few years there is now talk about a "license plate" for riot cops which would allow easy identification of transgressing officers, it would be nice if VPD et. al. could sponsor an idea like this as well.
I complimented the VPD, Mr. Joker. It's not the first time, either. I'm guessing that the VPD is keeping quiet about the Toronto cops' behaviour out of professional courtesy. They might have to work together in some area in the future. However, I bet privately that they're laughing at the amateurishness and taking some glee in the fact that the Toronto police misadventures make the VPD look so good in comparison.
Charlie Smith