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No excusing this

In a week of cataclysmic events for Toronto the Good – an earthquake, tornado watch and floods – came another unexpected stir, this one from the mayor’s office in the fallout over the G20.

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I never thought I’d see David Miller, a man of great integrity, take the low road of political expediency, siding with police over the unprecedented clampdown and mass arrests of mostly peaceful protesters.

On police actions during the G20, he’s just dead wrong.

At times during his press conference called Monday (June 28) to turn the page and remind the public and the world what a great city we are, Miller sounded like an apologist for the police, it hurts to say.

The only time he seemed to stray from the script was when he switched from applauding the police actions as remarkable to merely calling them admirable.

Not that I expected him to take the cops to task for the harassment, intimidation and at times brutality witnessed against peaceful demonstrators in the streets. Sorry, folks, I know some of you out there don’t want to believe cops messed up, but that’s the unvarnished truth.

The mayor is a smart man, and he knows better than to pick a fight with the cops and the chief he helped appoint to the job when he’s mere months away from his exit from politics. It’s also understandable that the mayor doesn’t want to fan the flames.

Still, some dismay would have been in order.

Perhaps Miller hasn’t seen the video of protesters singing O Canada (or is that Oh Canada?) being attacked by police in riot gear.

Or read the reports of people being searched for no apparent reason, others visited by police at all hours, some of them arrested. Scary.

Upholding what’s become the party line, that a small group of Black Blockers – criminals, vandals, thugs – made the cops’ job impossible, just doesn’t wash.

It’s an oversimplification, frankly, of the madness and illogic of police tactics witnessed on the streets.

We can’t know why the police did what they did at any given time, Miller said, because we don’t have the information police had. True enough.

I’m not suggesting that the mayor should have intervened in an operational police matter. That would be illegal. But certainly a phone call was in order to defuse tension.

The police seemed to have learned something from the embarrassment of Saturday, when they fired tear gas and ran horses into a crowd during a standoff at Queen’s Park to fish out people for arrest.

On Sunday, police walked from behind a line of riot cops to arrest people out of the crowd during a faceoff at Queen and Spadina. Restraint was being duly exercised.

They also backed down from a potential confrontation with demonstrators and cyclists who rode en masse to the temporary detention centre on Eastern set up to hold those arrested.

The fact that no one was killed during G20 protests is not a standard to aspire to.

Ethan Eisenberg

No matter which side of the political fence you’re on on this one, two facts are undeniable: tear gas was fired at protesters for the first time in Toronto’s history (not to mention rubber bullets) and more arrests were made at this G20 than at any other to date.

Those two facts alone suggest that the police were either woefully ill-prepared or wilfully belligerent. Of course, as we like to say in our newsroom, two things can be true at the same time.

At the very least, an investigation is in order. Police announced early Tuesday that “all aspects” of summit security would be reviewed, but just as a matter of course. The chief was clear at the June 29 press conference that there’s no need to apologize for police tactics, casting doubt on the objectivity of any review.

Amnesty International and Canadian Journalists for Free Expression are calling for one. So are mayoral candidates George Smitherman and Rocco Rossi.

Miller bristled at the suggestion, confident in his belief that if there were what he termed “isolated” incidents of police violence or wrongful arrest, there are mechanisms in place to deal with them.

Where have we heard that one before?

Missing from that logic is the fact that police were granted extraordinary powers of arrest for this summit.

Preposterous (is there any other word for it?) as it seems, the standard for those who call the shots in this city has become the fact that no one was seriously hurt or killed in the melees and disturbances over the weekend.

Well, people were hurt and denied medical attention, tasered, fired upon with rubber bullets and muzzle blasts, held by the hundreds in a detention centre under substandard conditions (and I’m not just talking about the cheese sandwiches).

To say nothing of the widespread intimidation and fear spread by cops’ offensive posture throughout the weekend.

Perhaps if those so quick to deride protesters’ concerns had spent some time on the ground instead of in the comfort and security of their television rooms, they’d understand.

The mayor did express some concern over police handling of the situation Sunday night at Queen and Spadina, where riot officers cornered demonstrators and innocent bystanders in a torrential downpour and held them there for hours for no apparent reason.

Let’s call it what it is: collective punishment.

Was Police Chief Bill Blair completely in the loop on command decisions being made on the ground? The question has to be asked, given his answer to a query from one CanWest reporter at Saturday’s press conference about the use of rubber bullets. Blair said no rubber bullets were used against protesters, but clearly they had been.

Blair isn’t the only one who’s blameworthy here. Clearly, cops brought in from other forces to bolster the ranks, unfamiliar with the police culture here, took liberties with protesters.

The city was also ill-prepared, forced to coordinate summit activities with only six months of preparation.

Can Blair repair the damage done to the Toronto police’s more progressive image, carefully cultivated under his watch?

Unfortunately, Toronto cops only seem more emboldened by the weekend’s events.

A presser held Monday at the Alternative Media Centre on Harbord by independent journalists arrested during the summit attracted about two dozen officers, some inexplicably with riot helmets at the ready.

Later in the day, people gathered at headquarters to protest the weekend’s police violence and intimidation were met by hundreds more cops. Have we gone insane?

enzom@nowtoronto.com

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