The hundreds of G20 protesters who were corralled, detained and arrested by Toronto police on the orders of Supt. Mark Fenton have been granted leave to appeal Fenton’s penalty, claiming it is far too lenient.

Fenton was found guilty of three charges under the Police Services Act for his decision to “kettle” and mass arrest demonstrators outside the Novotel hotel on the Esplanade and at Queen St. W. and Spadina Ave on the notorious June 2010 weekend.

He was sentenced in June to a formal reprimand and docked him 30 days of vacation.

In rulings released this month the Ontario Civilian Police Commission allowed protesters from both the Novotel incident and the Queen and Spadina incident to appeal the penalty imposed by retired Judge John Hamilton.

It was “grossly disproportionate having regard to the serious scale and nature of the respondent officer’s deliberate violation of the Charter rights of the complainants and hundreds of other persons, their unlawful arrest and detention and his lack of insight into his wrongdoing,” the Novotel complainants argued, according to the commission’s decision.

They say Fenton should be demoted for a year and retrained, the Queen and Spadina complainants say he should be fired.

Fenton, the only senior officer who faced disciplinary charges for his conduct during the G20 weekend and one of the few officers to face any consequences, argued that the penalty he received was fair given that he “was placed in command under immense pressure in very extreme unprecedented conditions with public order breaking down and severe violent acts occurring in downtown Toronto.”

Fenton is appealing his convictions on two counts of unlawful arrest and one count of discreditable conduct.