Actual G20 Police Accountability?

When the Office of the Independent Police Review Director (OIPRD) released its scathing G20 policing report yesterday, the Twitter machine lit up.

The HiveMind® got to work trying to remember if there had been any charges laid against cops and we could come up with just two: Glenn Weddell and Babak Andalib-Goortani.

At the same time, one of the people I follow, Paisley Rae, was having an interesting exchange with the person or persons behind the Toronto Police handle. For a bot, Toronto Police seemed fairly intelligent and responsive.

I followed @TorontoPolice and asked for information on the status of the two charged cops, because even with one very distinctive name, they seemed to have dropped off the news radar. He or she promised to find out.

And now because I'm following, I get all kinds of missing persons reports, PSAs, press releases etc., like this one.

It amused me. I mean, they must have known for weeks when the OIPRD report was coming out, right?

Cops have sense of humour? MT @TorontoPolice "Operation Distraction", Monday, May 14, 2012 - Friday, May 18, 2012 is.gd/5MoRHP #G20

— Fern Hill (@fernhilldammit) May 16, 2012

And today, we finally get the news we've been waiting nearly two fucking years for -- there might be some accountability after all.

A handful of senior Toronto police commanders are expected to be charged in coming weeks for a variety of misconduct offences over their leadership at the G20 summit in June 2010, CBC News has learned.

The charges are in addition to 28 frontline officers slated to have disciplinary hearings for a range of misconduct offences, including unlawful arrests and use of excessive or unnecessary force against prisoners.
. . .
Until now, no details of specific charges against the officers have been released, however court documents reveal specific allegations against eight officers who have already been served with "notices of hearing."

While that says 'court documents', it isn't clear to me whether these are internal hearings or Real World (as in, Having Serious Consequences) hearings.

We'll see, I guess.

BONUS: A CBC round-up of G20 reports to date.

Beyond STFU!

This is another chapter in the PMSHithead "Yippee ki-way mother f**ker!" saga.

Do you remember how, not so long ago, Senator Nancy Ruth Jackman got herself into one hot mess because she suggested to indignant women's organizations who felt threatened by the Harper government's big Stalinist boot that they should STFU?

That was pre-G8 and G20 police rule.

So if you heard on the news that an environmental activist was visited by the RCMP, days after he phoned up the Harper Politburo PMO to express his concern, you'd guess he was some mouthy 20-something radical, right?

You'd be wrong.

Compare and contrast

As fern hill pointed out here and also here, Jason "Vatican Taliban" Kenney's self-righteous little shrieeek about the niqab was an opportunity to attack the Charter of Rights. It was as well a dog-god-whistle to their reformaTory islamophobic base supporters as well as a CPC-engineered media diversion away from *Airshow* MacKay.

Funny, isn't it? Especially when you consider who are those who completely cover their faces - and routinely remove their badges - in the exercice of their roles during *Security Theatre* multi-million dollars performances.

It's why we call Contempt Party members Con Jobs.

Addendum: Read Tabatha Southey's thoughtful piece about women's right to choose how to clothe oneself and what those choices communicate.

It's the Contempt culture!

According to a news report in the French media, the G20 currently taking place in Cannes has a budget of 20 million euros - roughly 28 million Canadian dollars.

Yes. You read that correctly.

In June of 2010, PMSHithead's Contempt Party government spent $858 million on security alone for the G20.

Joe Wormington provides a chilling update on the most contentious aspect of that security: the illegal detention of hundreds of men and women who were rounded up by police, deprived of their basic human rights and never charged.

Past DJ! posts about the police actions, here and here.

This is what a *fiscally prudent, transparent and accountable* minority Con government did.

Now that the ReformaTories have flim-flammed themselves a slender majority with a minority of votes, all bets are off. Stevie Spiteful will sell off our natural resources and will spend our tax revenues on consultants who will advise them on how to slash government services.

From here:

Occupy Montreal protesters joined an anti-G20 protest organized by the anti-capitalist group known as CLAC Thursday night.

Hundreds of people marched through downtown after gathering at Phillips Square just after 6 p.m. The protesters expressed frustration with what they described as a focus on big business, not financial inequality, at the G20 summit in Cannes, France. Before dispersing shortly before 8 p.m., someone lit an effigy of Prime Minister Stephen Harper ablaze.

Smells like bacon frying, no?

'Farcically Ill-Equipped'

'Farcical' is right.

Stephen Maher in The Vancouver Sun yet takes Tony Slush apart. Title: 'Up Muskoka River without a paddle'.

So Clement's defence is that the mayors made the recommendations, which they didn't, and that Baird made the decision, which he didn't.

We need to know why there was no paperwork for the auditor general, because we are up Muskoka River without a paddle if politicians are able to hide their files from the auditor general, the only official with the power to pierce the veil of secrecy in Ottawa.

Clement's explanations are gibberish, and he does not appear to have the judgment necessary for his current job as president of Treasury Board, the minister in charge of enforcing spending rules.

Whether it's gazebos, the long-form census or the InSite file, Cashmere Tony is an embarrassment.

To everyone but PM SHithead himself, of course.

Prime ministers need loyal servants, so even though Clement's G8 shenanigans show that he is farcically ill-equipped to carry out his job, Harper is unlikely to move him or to force him to fully account for the rule-breaking porkfest in Muskoka.

But good on the MSM for staying on this.

Shame

So. How did a guy who won his House of Commons seat by a measly 28 votes in 2006 wallop his competition by nearly 11,000 votes two years later?

Simple corruption.

The NDP is accusing federal Conservative cabinet minister Tony Clement of using a controversial, $50-million G8 legacy fund to buy re-election, prompting a heated denial from the government.

Municipal documents obtained by the New Democrats show Clement met with local mayors and councillors in the midst of the 2008 election campaign. They discussed how to identify projects that could be eligible for the legacy funding.

Twelve days after that meeting, a local news outlet reported that Clement had posted video endorsements from "local townspeople, mayors and council members" on his campaign website.

Somebody needs to investigate. In particular, this bit:

The auditor general has also criticized the government for shutting bureaucrats out of the process and for maintaining no paper trail to explain how or why the projects were selected.

However, hundreds of pages of municipal documents obtained by the NDP through provincial freedom of information legislation, show that federal bureaucrats did in fact participate in local meetings about the legacy fund -- including the one held during the 2008 campaign.

The documents also show that municipal officials were told to direct all questions and send funding applications to Clement's constituency office, not the government.

Shame on the people of Muskoka who sold their vote for a bunch of crappers. But the bureaucrats who sold their integrity should be fired and prosecuted.

As for Tony Slush, I'll keep my opinions on his just punishment to myself.

For now.

Image source. The blogger said presciently back in April this year:

Sweet for Tony Clement and the Conservative Party. They’ll probably get re-elected in Clement’s riding given all the tax money which has been spent there.

ADDED: Alison does the math.

My Toronto Includes Civil Liberties and Pride

Despite our dickweed mayor, Toronto is fabulous.

Last year, because of our (anti-ReformaTory) fabulousness, Stephen Harper and his police-state trainees crapped all over us.

So, unless you have an urgent date with a cottage this weekend, it's time to turn your butts out again for G20 Redux: Fundamental Freedoms Festival.

Time: Saturday, June 25 · 2:00pm - 5:00pm
Location: Queen's Park, Toronto

To get you in the mood, here's a summary of indignities, costs, inquiries, and questions still outstanding.

And a reminder of how outrageously our civil liberties were stomped.

Of the some 1,100 protesters and bystanders who were arrested over the summit weekend, only 24 have been found guilty of anything at all. And, according to the province’s latest update on G20 prosecutions, just 56 cases are still outstanding.

BONUS: From a great piece by Ivor Tossell on Rob Fucking Ford and Pride: 'Toronto comes with Pride'.

The Latest Hockey Riot

Excellent analysis of the riot in Vancouver.

Booze-fueled, consumerist über-nationalism.

I did receive this incisive bit of analysis from Dru Oja Day, an editor at the Media Co-op. “If you ask people to pour all of their emotions and anger into a game, then a major event (Montrealers have rioted after first round game 7 wins!) is going to occasion some outbursts. Hockey commentators like Hockey Nights’ Don Cherry are constantly associating hockey with the troops overseas (he went to Afghanistan and fired a live shell, for chrissakes) and promote fighting and big open ice hits. We shouldn’t be surprised.”
. . .

As one of those real heroes, Harsha Walla said to me, "There is a sense that people rioted over a 'stupid apolitical hockey game'. While I too wish people were motivated by social justice issues, the hockey game is NOT apolitical by any means. The riots were a fundamentalist defense of a type of nationalism, most evident in the beatings and stabbings of Bruins fans in Vancouver last night. NHL hockey is not simply a game, it is representative of obedience to consumerism and is part of the state's attempt to forge a false identity - despite vast differences and inequalities across race, class, and gender, through the spectacle of sport."

The state does reap what the state sows. We should remember that as the hand-wringing by police and government officials commences in earnest.

The piece also points out that bystanders were safer at an idiotic hockey riot than at the G8/G20 protests last summer.

Do NOT help identify the idiots. Soon -- very soon -- it will be you and me the cops will ask for help in identifying.

Toronto G20: The Gift That Just Keeps Giving

Doncha just lurve this 'fiscally responsible' Contempt Party Government®? Looky here at what the CBC found.

Police officers from forces outside the Greater Toronto Area brought in to work at last summer's G8 and G20 summits made millions of dollars through lucrative contracts paying them overtime and vacation rates, according to newly released RCMP documents.

CBC/Radio-Canada has obtained copies of RCMP contracts totalling $7 million for the hiring of 657 officers from 17 different local forces from coast to coast. The invoices detail how over the course of a week or two in June 2010, more than half of all the work performed by those officers was paid for at premium rates of 1½ or two times an officer's usual wages.

Many more such goodies to come, I trust.

Meanwhile, the Star is still waxing indignant about the third attempt at a SIU investigation and is calling for an inquiry into the whole schmozzle.

Only a broad public inquiry, with the power to compel evidence under oath, can cut through the finger-pointing and obfuscation surrounding this fiasco. Its mandate should include looking at why Prime Minister Stephen Harper insisted on holding the G20 in Toronto in the first place. It should examine Premier Dalton McGuinty’s ill-judged decision to grant police enhanced powers of arrest without properly informing the public. And it should look into the policies and conduct of police commanders and their forces.

And while we're on the subject of calling for inquiries, what the hell happened to Saturday's rally that I blogged here?

Sweetie and I turned our butts out and found that DesiFEST had taken over Dundas Square.

We looked around for potential ralliers and saw a clutch of about seven people and a camera-guy. Could have inquired, I suppose, but instead thought 'Fukkit' and left.

Came home to check the info. Yep. Saturday, May 28, 2011, 2 to 5 p.m., Yonge and Dundas Square.

I left a WTF? comment on the Facebook page. Looked again a little while later and it had been deleted.

As they say: EPIC FAIL.

And no explanation or apology anywhere that I can find.

My apologies to DJ! readers who also tried to attend.

On the bright side, DesiFEST looked like fun. Sure smelled good. But sweetie and I had rearranged our lives to attend the protest bunfest and decided to carry on.

Another G20 Rally *sigh*

Feet on street time again.



In the comments here on the third SIU attempt to identify one of the G20 cop/thugs, Kev lets us know about the rally on Saturday.

A public inquiry into Toronto G20 and police accountability rally -- Saturday

The deets:
Toronto rally
Saturday May 28, 2011
2:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Yonge and Dundas Square
Facebook page

I'll be there.

Third Time the Charm?

Here we go again.

For a third time the SIU will probe the alleged G20 beating of Dorian Barton.

The case was reopened after the Toronto Police Service agreed to give the unit the name of the person who identified the subject officer who is alleged to have stuck Barton, who suffered a broken arm and severe bruising.

"In anticipation of the timely receipt of this new information, the unit is re-opening the Barton investigation," SIU director Ian Scott said Thursday, adding the service came forward with the information on Wednesday.

Oh, yeah?

We'll believe it when we see it.

Dear Toronto Police: We Are ^NOT Stupid

Shorter Rosie DiManno: Cops should STFU about members of certain communities failing to come forward, until some cop comes forward and IDs this one.

What's a little human rights abuse and corruption matter?

Remember this?



In the UK, kettling was just ruled illegal.

One night last December, having already spent five hours trapped by the Metropolitan police in Parliament Square, I was imprisoned on Westminster Bridge along with 1,000 other mostly young protesters, in sub-zero temperatures, for more than two hours. We were held in such a tight space that some suffered respiratory problems and chest pains: the symptoms of severe crushing. This is kettling, and in its strategic brutality and unabashed doublethink, it is the perfect hallmark for the Cameron era.

In a landmark ruling, the high court ruled on Thursday that the Met's use of the tactic during 2009's G20 protests was illegal. Their wider use of kettling, common throughout this winter's student and anti-cuts protests, is currently being challenged at the European court of human rights. Despite the high court warning that it must only be used as a "last resort catering for situations about to descend into violence", the Met are unrepentant. "At the heart of this case," they responded, "lies a vital public order policing tactic that prevents disorder and protects the public." They will appeal against the high court ruling, and continue to use kettling "where necessary".

The practice is a prime example of collective punishment and as such violates the Geneva Conventions. Major human rights abuse, in other words.

We in Toronto are well aware of what human rights abuse looks like up close and personal. And now from the Star we learn that the abuse is ongoing.

Hundreds of citizens were documented by police in mostly non-criminal encounters during last year’s G20 summit — and their names and personal details still live on in an internal police database.

Over three days, more than 500 people were stopped, questioned and documented by Toronto police officers in key G20 patrol areas downtown and near a temporary jail location, according to a Toronto Star analysis of police contact card data obtained in a freedom of information request.

Police use the database as an investigative tool to connect people, places and times. For example, in the case of a homicide, detectives can enter a victim’s name and see who they associated with in the past — and where and when.

The level of “carding” was unusually high during the summit, which could be expected given the police presence.

And that, of course, was in addition to the largest mass arrest in Canadian history, along with assorted beatings, rubber bullets, mistreatment, and bubble-blowing.

Silver lining? For a change, the white folk were targetted.

In a 2010 series, the Star examined six years worth of city-wide contact card data and found that Toronto police document black people at a higher rate than whites.

This was not the case in downtown Toronto on summit weekend. In fact, the proportion of white people who were documented increased 27 per cent from the 2008 daily average.

There is soooo much we need to learn from this travesty.

Some of it is already known but we are NOT allowed to see it, because, ironically or idiotically, we are in the middle of choosing the next gang of corporate bought-and-paid-for flunkies to rule over us.

The least you can do is sign the damn petition urging the release of Auditor General Sheila Fraser's report. Nearly 69,000 people have signed since 11 a.m. Thursday morning.

Bribery and a Boot to the Nads

So, the pork ladelled into Cashmere Tony's riding was supposed to have been to reduce border congestion.

The Canadian Press dropped an incendiary bomb on an otherwise torpid campaign on Monday, reporting that an early draft of Fraser’s report found that “Parliament was misinformed” about some of the spending. It indicated that the government asked Parliament to okay $83 million for a fund to reduce border congestion, while intending to use $50 million of it to spruce up Industry Minister Tony Clement’s Huntsville riding, far from any border.

I'd say it did a dandy job of that. I can personally confirm that there are no big rigs idling on the streets of Huntsville waiting for their turn at US Customs.

No. Wait. That money was intended as a 'thank you' to Muskokans.

Claude Doughty, mayor of Huntsville, the main site of the summit in Ontario’s Muskoka region, defended the program, saying some of the projects were meant more as a “thank you” to area municipalities for being host than as G8-related facilities.

“I don’t think there was ever any intent that some of them would be used by the world leaders,” he said. “You have to appreciate that a lot of people in Muskoka did a lot of work to prepare for the G8, myself included. And for those municipalities that went out of their way to really do those things, this was a bit of a token of saying, ‘Thank you.’ ”

A great big thank you that Muskokans are really really grateful for.

Oh. Wait.

However, some of the “legacy” items are largely unused. The University of Waterloo’s environmental research centre, completed 11 months ago, remains deserted and without signage. The echoing hallways of a summit centre are largely bare save for pieces of community art, while a brand-new seniors centre, banquet hall and drop-in daycare were empty on Monday afternoon.

But. But. Other sites of big events have had thank-you dough thrown at them too.

From the second, later, version of the draft:

2.2 - In the past, federal funds have been made available to some regions hosting international or Prime Minister-led events on Canada's behalf. Regions have benefited from several million dollars made available for hosting. For example, in April 2001, Quebec City received about $4.5 million as it hosted the Summit of the Americas, and we noted a $5 million fund attached to the June 2002 G8 Summit in Kananaskis.

I haven't seen anybody note this. Muskoka is worth TEN TIMES Quebec City or Kananaskis?

Even 5 million bucks fraudulently acquired divvied up by a lying (see census) cabinet minister, a small town mayor, and a resort (?????) manager is too much.

But TEN TIMES that?

And leaving aside the corruption, lying, and sheer greed, the whole deal is a GINORMOUS slap in the face to Torontonians, as noted by that left-wing scribbler, Joe Warmington, who, remember, himself got caught up in the police state.

But my favourite expenditure of the dozens to spruce up Industry Minister Tony Clement’s Parry Sound-Muskoka riding is the $274,000 on portable toilets. It may be a crappy business, but not on the day you cash the cheque from the federal government. At least the Muskoka outhouses had doors, unlike the humiliation the wrongfully incarcerated experienced at the Eastern Ave. lockup.

It's sheer WIN for the ReformaTories. Bribe greedy, small-minded yahoos and AT THE SAME TIME boot TO in the nads.

Democracy & soap bubbles are fragile.

All snerking aside about how the G20 provided a boost to the local economy police officers's salary, the report tabled in the House of Commons last Friday (and it seems, eons ago) by the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security released was not positive about Contempt leader Harper's shindig.

A parliamentary committee studying last summer's G8 and G20 summits is calling for a full judicial inquiry into the events' policing and security.

In a report tabled Friday before the government fell, MPs listed 12 recommendations and insisted that the federal government issue an apology to "thousands of Canadians and visitors to Toronto who had their rights violated during the G20 summit."

More here. By the way that document, which had been available for public viewing, is no longer. Last evening the Radio-Canada investigative journalism program Enquêtes probed cop violence and other aspects of the G20. It made a case for the argument that activists from Québec were strategically targeted for pre-emptive and particularly brutal apprehension. This is an adaption of the joint news documentary it produced with CBC's Fifth Estate. In other news related to the G20, the tabling of Auditor General Sheila Fraser's forensic scrutiny of its MASSIVE costs is delayed until Parliament resumes. No chance that information can be publicly disclosed during the election since the document is under lock and key. That blast of expelled fetid air you just heard is a sigh of relief from Contempt leader Harper and his ex-PMO politburo.

Harper is a Victim. Really.

Poor, sad Stevie Spiteful.

Harper says he didn't want an election and now he has to run for it.

Harper was betrayed, betrayed! by Bruce Carson, he the PMO tells us.

Harper and his Harper Regime©™ were found in contempt of Parliament for these actions - although these are the same old same old tactics the Cons have been exploiting since Stevie became leader of the *new* ReformaTory Conservative (NOT progressive) party in 2004.

And now this damning G20 report, calling for a MASSIVE inquiry.

Oh. Wait. Could Stevie be playing at being a victim, a role-reversal trick that bullies typically like to pull?

In the words of our esteemed blogging colleague Alison @ Creekside:

The Cons' contempt for Parliament was just a part of their contempt for all of us.

The Cons' contempt. It's why we call them Cons.

More police ...

Incompetence? Laziness? Inability to respect protocol? Decisions based on wrongful prejudices?

Whatever it was that caused police officers to behave inappropriately when called to a hotel room, it could have resulted in a woman's death - had forensic technicians not quickly and expertly assessed circumstances to be quite the opposite of what cops "believed".

Police say they received a call from a staff member at the Days Inn on Gordon Street, who believed a woman was dead in a room. Police arrived and determined the woman as deceased, sealing the room to protect the scene.

However, police say that forensic investigators later found the woman was alive but with very faint vital signs. She was then taken to the hospital and treated for non-life threatening injuries.

If this woman had died because cops failed to request medical assistance - who would be held liable and responsible for their actions?

Not the cops - it's never their fault, is it?

The Fiery Star

Now, this is what I call newspapering. Three pieces today in The Star on the G20 insanity in Torontonamo:

Make Our Police Accountable by A. Alan Borovoy, who needs no introduction to fans of civil and human rights.

An unsigned editorial demanding a full inquiry.

And an opinion piece by Dave Coles, President of the Communication, Energy and Paperworkers Union, and one of the people who outed the agents provocateurs at Montebello, Security Operation or Political Theatre?

Keep the pressure on. We bloggers will help.

No. We Will Not Forget.

As usual, our lords and masters are betting on the fact that we'll forget about the travesty that was the G20 in Toronto.

The inevitable Facebook group, Canadians Demanding an Inquiry into Toronto G20, has been created and it is already attracting attention. CBC reports that as of this morning it already had a membership of 11,400. Just now, when I joined, the membership stood at 11,785.

Let's zoom up the membership on it and get some more attention.

Agents Provocateurs, 3

Anybody got a photo of an undamaged 3-digit Toronto cop car?

Are they working some kinda insurance scam? Just askin'.

From here.