Thursday 17 May 2012

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?

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.

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