G20 - One Year Later

It's now one year past the G20 that was held in Downtown Toronto. Yesterday, the anniversary was marked with a protest and march calling for the resignation of Chief Bill Blair, and calling, once again, for the establishment of a public inquiry. As more reports come out, the need for a public inquiry is becoming more and more obvious. Except of course to those who think that nothing was done wrong. Even though, every report coming out has said that things were done wrong. Even the Chiefs report says that things could have been handled better, and that they did in fact make mistakes. Yet, nothing concrete will be done.

Yesterday, I got a chance to return to Queens Park for the Anniversary march. Hearing the stories again, and seeing the injuries STILL visible one year later really makes you think. To me, the day wasn't just about calling for resignations and an inquiry, but also catharsis. It was a great day...considering what brought it about.

We've heard this week, that kettling will no longer be used. That is a good decision. However, if you look at video of how it was implemented at the time, it was done WRONG. If you look back at how this is supposed to be done, and how it's written into MANY police manuals, you'll see that they do NOT block off all the exits as was done here. The correct way to do this, it to allow at least ONE exit route for people. THAT makes it more constitutional than how it was implemented in Toronto. There is a reason for this. IF there is something that 'requires' something like this, you need to announce it to the crowd, AND allow people to leave the area. Its written into law. If an unlawful assembly is declared, you must give people 30 minutes to disperse. However, the way police deal with this, is to push them into smaller and smaller areas. You could leave, however, you would be arrested. This was illegal since they didn't give them FREEDOM to leave the area before that. Of course, there is also video out where a Police Officer gives it away... "there are unlawful assemblies going on all over the place". Which simply has no bearing in fact. The police SET UP the whole idea of doing this. If that was not an order from above, then it was a conspiracy on the ground. Like has been said before, kettles boil.






More to come...