It’s all gone viral on Bill Blair.
All that hard work trying to change the police culture he inherited from more militant predecessors gone just like that, in the blink of an eye, the smoke of a tear gas canister.
So there he was last night in the hours after police cars were set ablaze and cops played cat and mouse into the night with G20 protesters across the downtown, trying to defend the indefensible – the aggressive actions, sometimes senseless, of his police officers.
Blair defended the actions of his officers at a brief press conference called to deliver a statement on the days events.
But was he completely in the loop on command decisions on the ground? The question has to be asked given his answer to a query about the use of rubber bullets from one CanWest reporter. Blair said no rubber bullets were used against protesters, but clearly they had been and CanWest had the photos to prove it.
All through the day, journalists covering the running battles in the streets were reporting being shoved and manhandled by police.
Steve Paikin of TVO, a journalist widely respected for having an even keel, says he was asked to leave one line outside the Novotel Hotel by police. When he told them he was just trying to do his job, he was threatened with arrest.
He reported witnessing three other officers beating a scribe from the UK’s Guardian as he was being led away from the scene. He said two cops held the man while another punched him in the stomach. So disturbed was he by the incident that he took to the Twitterverse to relate it as soon as he could get to a computer.
While the airwaves, mostly on conservative talk radio, were full of stories of police acting with admirable restraint against taunts from protesters, (and I’m sure they’re true) from where I was standing Saturday the posture of police was mostly one calculated to intimidate.
Blair promised police would take a stand against protesters if that time came and it did at Queen’s Park, hours after the Ontario Federation of Labour and its affiliated unions set off on a peaceful march.
Police, literally hundreds of them in riot gear batting their batons against plexiglass shields emerged from the north end of the park and parts beyond to seal off the intersection at University and College.
Then came the cops on horseback, cramming protesters onto the south lawn. They were followed by paddywagons and more cops in riot gear armed with handheld Tasers.
Before long tear gas was flying, horses charging and officers cherry picking protesters from the crowd following a number of skirmishes, some of which were hard to see from certain vantage points because of the buses brought in to block the view.
The tactic seemed to be to keep onlookers and journalists far enough from the scene to keep witnesses to a minimum.
Police holding the perimeter set up around the entire intersection weren’t in the mood to engage onlookers with polite talk either. At one point it looked like the order to stand down had been given. Many among them began putting down their shields and removing their riot helmets.
But all of a sudden a few of them sprang from the line to grab a man from the crowd. The good cop, bad cop routine was being played out on the frontlines to, it seemed.
Hate to say I told you so. But anyone whose been walking the downtown and watching the police buildup in the lead up to the G20 had to know this was coming.
Easy to blame a few hundred anarchists, but what if the fences had never been erected? What if the streets had been left to the people? The police buildup only invited this reaction from a minority who do not speak for most of us.
So instead the issues facing the globe being the focus of discussion, the theatre in the streets was. The area that needed to be protected for dignitaries arriving for the G20 didn’t need to be turned into an armed fortress.
To be fair, Blair is not the only one who’s blame worthy here.
At times during his press conference he seemed a man stuck in the middle, fighting at one point to say anything good about the officers brought in from out of town to bolster the troops.
Certainly, they were a huge part of the problem. If it wasn’t made clear to them that this G20 gig was not an opportunity to get out and kick butt, then it should have been.
Can Blair repair the damage? My guess is Toronto cops will just be emboldened by Saturday’s events. And that’s unfortunate. Blair needs to send a clear signal to the public and discipline those among his officers who got out of line. There’s ample video evidence.[rssbreak]
