[URBAN NOTE] "Cop unmasked: Meet Const. Glenn Weddell, the officer ID'd in G20 assault"

[rfmcdonald]

The Toronto Star can do a better job of identifying apparent miscreant police officers than the police can. I wonder why.

Police Const. Glenn Weddell has been identified as the officer who allegedly slammed Dorian Barton with a riot shield and hit him with a baton during the G20, the Toronto Star has learned.

Weddell is the subject officer at the centre of a Special Investigations Unit probe, which in turn is at the heart of a public bickering match between Toronto police and the civilian agency charged with overseeing them.

Investigators have asked 11 witness officers to identify the colleague accused of beating Barton during last June’s G20 summit. Eight of them were within the immediate vicinity of Barton’s violent takedown; one of them was also the officer’s roommate during the summit, according to the SIU.

None of the officers were able to offer a positive identification, leading many critics to suggest a “blue wall of silence” was at play.

“I don’t know if they’re telling the truth or not,” Ian Scott, head of the SIU, told the Star last month. “I really don’t know.”

On Thursday morning, a Star reporter approached Weddell outside his home with a large photograph of the officer under scrutiny in Barton’s case and asked: “Is this you?”

“I have nothing to say,” Weddell replied several times. When asked whether he could confirm that the officer in the photograph was him, he said: “I said I’m not saying anything. Am I clear?”

Weddell works out of 11 Division in the city’s west end, according to a desk officer there. The badge number listed on his voice mail is 99944.

Barton’s case has been opened three times since last June.

The SIU has never had enough information to identify the officer in question — even after bystander Andrew Wallace came forward with pictures of the incident.

[. . .]

In late January, police provided the SIU with the name of a subject officer. Police spokesman Mark Pugash said police zoomed in on the badge number in Wallace’s photograph in order to identify the officer.

For their part, the SIU said they couldn’t get that information using their own investigative technology.