The mayor wants you to move past the G20 weekend already. The PM brushes off human rights violations and glibly attributes days of clashes to a “thuggish element.” It’s doubtful that he’s talking about the police.
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But as the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) observed over the weekend, he should be.
“I’m surprised and concerned with the level of rights violations,” says CCLA lawyer Abby Deshman.
Her organization released a statement of concern in late May that now reads like a G20 policing playbook. The CCLA’s worst-case scenario warned, “Ad hoc searches, absent reasonable and objective security grounds, are unacceptable. Under no circumstances should individuals be denied entry to a public area simply because they refuse to be searched, or the government believes they will engage in non-violent protest.”
Of course, the police did precisely that. The CCLA also warned that “large-scale arrests may be used as a tool for crowd control and disruption of peaceful protest. The fact that a protest is disruptive, inconvenient or noisy is not sufficient grounds to arrest.” Tell that to the people trapped for hours in the pouring rain at Queen and Spadina on Sunday. The CCLA will have released its report by the time you read this.
“There were definitely widespread searches extremely far from protest sites,” says Deshman. “They targeted youth, people in black or carrying knapsacks. I don’t think that’s reasonable grounds for a search.”
One CCLA observer noted that an officer used the Public Works Protection Act as an excuse to search his bag at Queen’s Park. The secret provision passed by McGuinty’s cabinet under the Act gave police the power to arrest those near the summit site who refused to show ID.
But, hey, all notions of Queen’s Park as a free speech zone were trampled underfoot when mounted police galloped in. “At a place that was supposed to be ideal for people to express themselves, for hundreds of riot cops to show up and make people run using mounted police is unacceptable,” says Deshman.
Matters got worse for those who didn’t escape the catch-all clutches of mass arrests. The CCLA can speak firsthand about the Eastern Avenue detention centre, as two of its observers were held there. They were not allowed to contact an attorney and spent 18 and 20 hours in jail.
Deshman herself was shot at with plastic rounds while observing the peaceful Novotel protest that blew even-tempered TV Ontario reporter Steve Paikin into a Twitter frenzy. There, cops allegedly beat and jailed freelancer Jesse Rosenfeld, who was reporting for the Alternative Media Co-op.
Of the five-hour police entrapment at the intersection of Queen and Spadina, Deshman says, “It was a peaceful gathering. There were reporters, human rights monitors, people waiting for streetcars. For all these people to be detained and arrested for breach of the peace is an abuse of power.”
There isn’t a final tally on abuses, and the CCLA is being flooded with calls reporting injuries and arrests. If you experienced a rights violation or abuse, contact the Office of the Independent Police Review Director (oiprd.on.ca/cms).
Don’t let politicians and police persuade you to let bygones be bygones. “We have rights for a reason,” says Deshman. “They are the foundation of our society, and we need to pay attention.”
pault@nowtoronto.com
