Ontario Ombudsman, André Marin:
"Responsible protesters and civil rights groups who took the trouble to educate themselves about their rights prior to the G-20 had no way of knowing they were literally walking into in a trap. They were literally caught in the act, an act of public entrapment."
For what it's worth, From The Real News Network, the Ontario Ombudsman report on G-20 policing.
And, from the Ontario Ombudsman Channel on Youtube, a video of entire press conference by Ontario Ombudsman, André Marin:
Caught in the Act: Ontario Ombudsman's special report on G20 regulation
"Ontario Ombudsman finds G20 regulation of "dubious legality"; Citizens unfairly trapped by secret expansion of police powers. TORONTO (December 7, 2010) The Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services quietly promoted the use of a likely illegal regulation to grant police "extravagant" powers on the eve of the G20 summit, Ontario Ombudsman André Marin says in his latest report."
Also, see the press release at the Ontario Ombudsman's website.
I think it is important to pay close attention to what Ontario Ombudsman, André Marin says at the press conference in the second video. "Responsible protesters and civil rights groups who took the trouble to educate themselves about their rights prior to the G-20 had no way of knowing they were literally walking into in a trap. They were literally caught in the act, an act of public entrapment."
A review the weeks events revels to me, a disturbing practice run for martial law - that was carefully prepared and carried out by a combined force of the RCMP, the OPP and Toronto Police as well as members of police forces from across the country - a dry run where a central command in Barrie, in a Colorado type CENTCOM war fighting communications and command centre directed police on the ground through a massive multi-million dollar phalanx of information gathering systems, including aerial surveillance, and the networking of public and private security cameras - to harass large groups of peaceful demonstrators, and then, to apply force in the form of crowd control techniques like boxing-in, then illegal detention, and finally illegal arrests of large groups of legally demonstrating citizens.
The most interesting example of this was on the Sunday at Queen and Soho where neighbourhood people who, at the beginning, were calling out support to police as they boxed in peaceful demonstrators at Queen and Spadina, (about 400 metres away), were then themselves victims of another boxing-in attempt by riot police as Barrie Command and Control decided the situation was an excellent opportunity to practice a counter flanking tactic.
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I wonder how people who were not here, from across Canada who supported the police actions on that weekend and commented online at many newspaper websites that I read - especially at CTVglobemedia Inc. owned entities that spun the spectacle of lawlessness and disorder seemingly in order to confuse rather than inform - will respond to this report after much time has passed, and confusion about the weekend has been better digested?
Do the images of the burning police car, repeated over and over and over, and the oft re-run images of the handful of 'black block' children who were allowed by police to smash the windows of businesses from Queen to College on Young street that Saturday, via a mysterious 45 minute black-out of Toronto Police communications --- those activities that police then used to arrest any one they felt like in an area bigger than most provincial capitals occupy --- still, in their minds, did the situation demand such police powers that to suspended Canadian's right to peacefully protest was justified?
To sum up, for you who see see nothing peculiar in all this, the actions of less than 100 'black block' demonstrators - in the midst of peaceful demonstrators numbering in the tens of thousands - were used as a pretext to illegally arrest 1,000 people, detain them, in some cases assault them, allowed a combined police operation of police forces from across the country to practice de facto Martial Law for 48 hours in the centre of Canada's largest city.
If based on these facts, if you still think this was necessary, you still don't see a hidden agenda, a paranoid delusion by our government about the people of this country (or perhaps it alludes to their plans for us?) then politicians should have stood up in Provincial Parliament and passed such laws in full public view. Laws that would allow our police forces to act in a legal way because the national security called for it --- instead of using trickery, like the Saturday black-out in communications, and secret laws expanded to encompass situations they were not intended to be applied to, and surreptitiously training officers on how to skirt the law, and as well as instructing them incorrectly about their rights and responsibilities during the lead up the the G-20 week - and as such leaving individual officers at risk of prosecution and civil suit, as well as codifying a culture of lawlessness in many police forces across the country and leaving good officers bewildered as actions they're being ordered to do they know are illegal but forcing them for fear of their careers to break their personal moral codes, they're reason for being an officer in the first place, tattered and trampled under they're own boots?
All these things in my mind, points to a disturbing lack of confidence by our elected representatives about whether they believed in what they were doing, about they're ability to reason and lead. About they're understanding of what we have built in this great land, this great liberal democracy - a land of good people who care for one another even if they may disagree one thing or another. What place did this lawless come from? What cultural diaspora did this weekend from hell come out of?
From some rotten, dusty, paranoid corner of some old tower on Parliament Hill?
Near the Prime Ministers Office?
No one's saying a thing from that corner - as usual.
mh
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