[URBAN NOTE] "G20 report slams police for 'excessive' force"

[rfmcdonald]

CBC journalist Dave Seglins' summary of the Office of the Independent Police Review Director's report on the role of police in the 2010 G20 protests merits extended reading. A sampler:

Poor planning by the RCMP, OPP and Toronto police for the G20 summit, along with orders by a Toronto deputy police chief to “take back the streets," are to blame for the more than 1,100 arrests during the 2010 weekend summit, says the province's top civilian police watchdog.

“What occurred over the course of the weekend resulted in the largest mass arrests in Canadian history. These disturbances had a profound impact not only on the citizens of Toronto and Canada generally, but on public confidence in the police as well,” writes Gerry McNeilly, head of the Office of the Independent Police Review Director (OIPRD), a citizen agency that today tabled the 300- page systemic review report.

Overall, McNeilly says, the G20 was an unprecedented event in the city’s history — one police forces were unprepared for.

“It is fortunate that, in all the confusion, there were no deaths,” McNeilly writes.

McNeilly concludes that police had legitimate concerns and faced challenges tracking “black bloc” vandals intent on violence and criminal activity as they hid within crowds of peaceful demonstrators.

But the OIPRD reports that police also had a responsibility to balance law enforcement with citizens' rights to demonstrate.

He concluded some officers used “excessive force” to clamp down on any and all protesters, with Toronto police commanders acting on orders for mass arrests.

Deputy Chief Tony Warr issued such a directive late on June 26 following a day in which police lost control and saw windows smashed and a police car set ablaze.

Gerry McNeilly, head of the Office of the Independent Police Review Director, speaks to reporters about G20 protests in June 2010. (Dave Seglins/CBC)“The night shift incident commander said Deputy police Chief Warr told him that he wanted him to take back the streets,” writes McNeilly in the report. McNeilly said the commander told him, “'I understood his [Warr's] instructions to mean that he wanted me to make the streets of Toronto safe again. He wanted the streets that had been made unsafe by the terrorists that were attacking our city to be made safe again by restoring order.'"

Referring to protesters in such a way left the impression that they were criminals, the report says, and that attitude resulted in the decision to contain and arrest approximately 1,100 people during the weekend summit.