What I Don't Understand

What I Don’t Understand

Today, over 300 people charged during the G20 summit appeared in court. Many have already had charges dropped, or dropped with a ‘non-guilt’ diversion process where they have to donate some money to charity. These are likely charges that have either no basis in fact, or no chance of conviction. This is unethical at best. DROP the charges or proceed to court, do NOT ‘bribe’ people to make charges go away.

One thing I have not been able to understand is that there are MANY people out there who think that ALL of these people ARE guilty…of the VANDALISM that happened. It was a very small number of people who were involved in this. Police estimates are between 25 (low) and 200 (high). 5 times as many were arrested (of the high number), and of those, only 303 charged. Here’s something to think about before spouting off, how many were charged with vandalism? Very few. Most of these charges did not even need to come to the court to be dropped. They could have just dropped them, and NOT have had people pay for lawyers today. This is completely unacceptable in a democratic society. This is tantamount to a SLAPP suit (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation), in that, the goal would appear to be to waste the ‘accused’ money, only to have the charges dropped. They could have also been dropped at the bail hearing.
I must also say that those who WERE charged with the vandalism (most charged AFTER the summit, based on video and photo evidence) should pay for what they did. Either restitution or jail time.

The Crown has had almost 2 months to go through 300 or so charges. In that amount of time, they could have called the representative lawyers, or sent out letters to drop those charges. Instead, they decide to hold a circus, complete with the ETF, and withdraw the charges. Again, this costs the accused money and time, for something that could have been done much more simply. Most did not seem to have spent much time at all in court. The only thing this does is create a media storm, strengthening the vitriol against those who were unjustly detained.

At a certain point, you just have to say STOP. You’ve done more than enough harm to the City and the reputation of the Justice System.