Reports From G20

After nearly two years the official written evaluation of how the security was handled by our police forces states what most people thought in the first place. The RCMP came out of the mess with the highest marks and were treated rather well for their role in a combined force of thousands.

The Toronto police and its staff drew a sad picture of their role as prime security stake holders. From the Prime Minister not taking the advice about the location of the meeting to the wasteful spending of a billion dollars was called into question. The Toronto police were cited for poor planning, training and communications which caused the front line police to be confused , poorly guided and overacting to many peaceful demonstrations.

The Chief of police was in charge once he was directed by the government officials and with his senior staff members issued orders that gave the police  the right to react to the people as if they were terrorists. On the first issue of the black block being dealt in a casual manner on the first day caused much damage and confusion.    Security seeing the mess gave orders to take back the city from the terrorists. From that moment the police were combating terrorists and not monitoring peaceful demonstrations.

The change from lawful, peaceful demonstrators to terrorists gave the front line police the go ahead to do as they pleased and many overacted and committed crimes against the people. The most awful abuse of power was with the kettling of hundreds of innocent people, many just going to work to be kept standing in the rain and thunder storm for hours. The senior commander who made the call is in real trouble.

The other matter was the arresting hundreds of people and herding them to a detention center where human rights were abused again. All this is over except the issue of accountability and needless to say the ones at the very top will be hardly scathed while there will be many of the police at the front will be dealt with in a summary manner.

We are all glad this is over and when the dust settles most of us will have our faith in our police system restored. The over a thousand who were treated in a shameful manner will remember and will not soon forget their ordeal.

I have heard from many people whom I respect give a simple answer to the abuses and I get sick when I hear their excuse. If they did not want trouble they should not have been there. How stupid a statement when this all happened in the center of a city of millions where people had to go to work, catch buses and carry on their life in the middle of a unnecessary circus that went bad because our security blew it, they then became the problem rather than the solution,

There were thousands of Innocent protesters who looked to the police to protect them as they exercised their lawful privilege in a democracy to protest. I hope this will never occur again and our government use our tax dollars for our needs and not on excessive  photo ops.