90 Police Officers Get a Slap on the Wrist. Simply Not Good Enough.

“Indifference is the essence of inhumanity".” George Bernard Shaw

There are still far too many unanswered questions when it comes to the police brutality during the G-20 weekend in Toronto.

Why?

On whose orders were peaceful protesters beaten?

Why were journalists targeted?

If we had read similar personal accounts from outside of Canada, we would have been aghast, believing that something like that could never happen here.

These were blatant human right abuses and they took place in OUR country.

There is an excellent accounting here, with downloadable posters.

According to Jim Coyle in the Star:

... much of this city’s self image — was shattered during a policing embarrassment that scooped up hundreds of innocent citizens, while vandals were left to run amok on Yonge St. trashing shops and police cruisers. There are many more answers to be had about what how that shameful exercise came to occur. But, unhappily, the Ontario legislature defeated a private member’s bill Thursday that would have provided for a public inquiry into the events.

“Who was making the decisions? Who was giving the orders? Where was the supervision of those police officers?” asked New Democrat MPP Peter Kormos. He called the police response to peaceful protest and dissent regrettable, shocking, disturbing, reprehensible.

90 police officers are facing disciplinary action for hiding their identity at G20, but disciplanary action means the loss of one day's pay. How is this justice?

And not only was this a weekend of unheard of brutality in this country, but it was also an orgy of spending, while Stephen Harper was inside preaching austerity.

The federal government wracked up bills for refrigerators and microwaves from Future Shop, pins, pullovers, and gifts, and huge hotel bills for meetings as it spent almost $860-million on the G8 and G20 summits in June.

The biggest costs were on security and policing, with the RCMP wracking up $330-million including $65-million for temporary accommodations, $39-million for command centers and buildings, $44-million for meals and travel and $33-million for private security firms. Another $15-million was paid for “perimeter security” – fenced-off zones – and $18-million for “specialized equipment.”

We need a FULL public inquiry. Nothing less.

As CCLA General Counsel Nathalie Des Rosiers told the committee: “Either we will emerge (from the G20 weekend) with stronger democratic institutions . . . and better policing or we will have tolerated mass violations of civil liberties with callous indifference.”

So far, Ottawa and Queen’s Park have taken the latter course. Rather than calling a broad public inquiry, they point to various and sundry mini-reviews already underway. Each will shed light on a certain aspect of the G20 weekend, but none has the necessary mandate to link all the political and police decisions or the power to compel evidence under oath.

This is simply not good enough.