Take the elevator up to the 10th floor of Toronto police headquarters and there in front of you is Bill Blair’s baby. Blair oversaw the renovations and upgrades that turned the room into a state-of-the-art military-style command centre. On the day of the most challenging security operation in Toronto police history, the G20 summit of world leaders in June 2010, Deputy Chief Keith Forde took me up from the seventh-floor boardroom to see the command centre in action.

Everyone had their designated posts. People watched the police feeds on giant wall-mounted monitors, while others communicated with the headquarters of the RCMP-led Integrated Security Unit (ISU) in Barrie, the inter-service group responsible for the overall security of the G20; they were all in their places that day as order on the streets of Toronto began to break down.

Everyone except Bill Blair.

I spotted him tucked into an anteroom, watching events, not through police cameras or any official communications channel, but on Toronto TV station CP24. Forde hadn’t seen any reason why I shouldn’t be there. He had thought that as the board chair I was allowed anywhere in the building. I greeted Blair, but he barely acknowledged me. Then he quickly turned to the deputy chief and barked, “Get the chair out of here!” His reaction spoke volumes. It dawned on me many months later — Blair had deceived me and his board during the period the police service and the police service board had spent planning the G20 police operations. He knew the jig was up when I saw him that day and saw the setup on the 10th floor.

We know what happened that weekend, perhaps the darkest chapter in Toronto police history. Officers — as many as 100 — removed their identity badges during confrontations with protesters, in clear violation of police board policy requiring every uniformed member of the police service to wear their name badge. As many as 1,140 protesters, peaceful and otherwise, were arrested. To this day, the numbers remain speculative, because processing of those arrested on that weekend was so slipshod that the numbers provided by the prisoner processing centre, the RCMP and Toronto police do not align. The detention of these people and the time they spent in an overcrowded, chaotic centre represent the worst breach of civil rights in the history of peacetime policing, not only in this city, but in Canada.

A previously little known — and discredited — police tactic known as “kettling,” rarely used in Canada, detained innocent citizens for hours during a torrential downpour. It turned out that the geniuses who enforced this tactic did not know how to disengage from it or what to do with the hundreds of people they had kettled — literally contained inside a solid circle of cops. The vast majority of these detainees were ordinary residents of the neighbourhood on their way home or out for a walk and had nothing to do with the protest.

An even more draconian practice was implemented as police assumed the extraordinary power to search people outside a security fence that had been erected to protect the venue of the summit, the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. Police believed they were authorized to do so by the provincial government under an arcane piece of legislation, the Public Works Protection Act. The government had given its approval hastily and in secret. But the regulation passed by the cabinet gave police no such powers. Neither the fact that the regulation had been enacted nor that it was wrongly interpreted was ever properly communicated to the public. Eventually, the act itself was repealed under intense pressure.

The 21,000 security personnel on Toronto streets during the summit included 6,200 Toronto officers, 5,000 from the RCMP, 3,000 from the Canadian Armed Forces, 3,000 from the Ontario Provincial Police and 740 from Peel Region as well as contributions from Halton, York, Ottawa, Hamilton, London, Niagara Falls, Peterborough, Durham, Sudbury, Waterloo, Barrie, Newfoundland and Labrador, Winnipeg, Montreal, Edmonton and Calgary. Collectively, the police response was one of confusion, communication breakdowns and overreaction.

Some of this would have been comical had it not been so damaging to the image of the city and policing in the 21st century. At one point, as protesters stayed many steps ahead of slow-footed police during Saturday’s day of damage, one out-of-town police unit purchased a street map from a subway kiosk to find out where they were supposed to be headed. There certainly was enough blame to go around, and I have taken my fair share, but it is important to know how the board’s hands were tied ahead of that June weekend.

As that fateful Saturday dawned, I honestly felt we were ready. On the morning of June 26, 2010, I decided to take an early morning walk around the security perimeter put in place as part of this unprecedented operation. I saw police dealing with people in the friendliest of ways, offering help with directions, calm and smiling. Later that morning, my wife was part of a march organized by the labour movement, and she texted me afterward to tell me it had been peaceful, with police chanting along with the demonstrators. Yes, we were ready.

I headed to my office at police headquarters after my walk and flipped on CP24, a local news station. Deputy Chief Forde spotted me and invited me up to the boardroom, where he was watching the events with other senior officials from the RCMP and Ontario Provincial Police. Perhaps a half-dozen of us sat and watched. Marchers were heading west on Queen St. when suddenly I saw a plume of smoke. There had been no disturbances, so it couldn’t be tear gas. Had someone tossed a firecracker? “That’s a signal,” Forde told me.

And indeed, within seconds a bunch of people in identical black clothing appeared on the street. It was a carefully planned diversionary tactic, a call to arms by “black bloc” protesters scattered throughout the march. The black bloc has become a ubiquitous presence at every international summit protest since the 1980s. Many members are self-described anarchists. They wear black clothing, black bandanas, gas masks or goggles, and are organized with military precision, darting out of crowds to vandalize targets that they say represent capitalism or oppression.

Almost as soon as they break from the mob, they are back in the middle of it, changing out of their black garb to avoid detection. Soon, I saw the police cars burning. I saw the image of the protester on top of the car hitting it with a baseball bat. I saw all that. But there were thousands of people protesting and thousands of officers guarding the city. It seemed to me that those were isolated incidents.

In the run-up to the summit, we had carefully studied what had happened during the so-called Battle of Seattle in 1999 and 2001 Summit of the Americas in Quebec City. Closer to home, we had the experience of handling the huge Toronto Tamil protests of 2009. Blair allowed peaceful demonstrations along Toronto’s busy University Ave., but he made sure protesters saw his heavy armaments parked around the corner from the protest site.

He even allowed a shutdown of one of the city’s major commuter routes, the Gardiner Expressway, showing respect for the protesters by allowing them to temporarily take over a major thoroughfare. People complained — sometimes vehemently — about the inconvenience, but we proved that large, diverse cities have room for peaceful dissent. I have nothing but praise for the chief’s handling of that potentially incendiary situation.

But what was happening on our streets on that G20 Saturday was different; it didn’t look like the pitched battles of Quebec City or the chaos of Seattle. At the Toronto G20, some 20,000 police officers engaged in three days of battles using tear gas and pepper spray against the black bloc and thousands of other protesters who took to the streets.

At the end of that June weekend in 2010, I looked back and assessed things this way: the entire crowd had not turned violent and the police had not turned en masse on the protesters. Two police cars burning looked dramatic, but they looked more dramatic because those two isolated images were broadcast nearly non-stop on cable news networks. I believed I was looking at things in context. All the speculation about whether police had set fire to the cars themselves and whether the trouble was instigated by police provocateurs dressed in black came later. I don’t buy either theory. As I digested the events, all I believed I had seen was two burning cars, a kettling and a bunch of windows being kicked in (though the kettling puzzled me — and everyone else — that night). In the hours and days after the summit, neither I nor Toronto City Council had any objective basis for believing that police had been out of control.

The following Monday, Blair and I had a brief chat. We did not make a big deal about the kettling. We did talk about the black bloc and about a couple of cars burning. The view we shared was, given how bad things could have been, the summit had gone reasonably well. A few days later there was a board meeting, and on behalf of the board I publicly expressed appreciation for how well it had been managed. Toronto City Council passed a similar motion unanimously expressing its appreciation for the work of our police.

We didn’t know much of what had happened at Queen’s Park — not the scope or the depth. The kettling fiasco had not been fully brought to light yet and we were still learning how disastrous the detention centre had been. We knew police had detained several hundred people and then the chief had come in and directed the front-line people to let them go. We didn’t know at that time that there had been a dispute between the service’s top brass and Supt. Mark Fenton, the front-line commander who was insisting on giving people tickets or sending them to the detention centre, completely misreading the chief’s direction. We did not know then that the chief had pulled rank on the RCMP-led Integrated Security Unit (ISU) to give this order.

But in the immediate aftermath of the summit, Blair and I felt we had survived an operation imposed on us by Stephen Harper. That’s why I had no problem speaking on behalf of the board to thank the officers for their hard work. I expected there would be discipline for some police overreaction. But I did not anticipate the fire-hose magnitude of the revelations that were just ahead.

Within a few days, the Toronto Star and others began to publish photos of violent takedowns that had occurred. They published first-person accounts of mistreatment and police heavy-handedness. We learned of the removal of badges at Queen’s Park and the conduct of “Officer Bubbles,” Const. Adam Josephs, the star of a YouTube video in which he threatened to charge a 21-year-old female protester with assault if one of the bubbles she was blowing touched him. The video received worldwide, embarrassing attention. A York Region officer was caught on video telling a citizen, “This ain’t Canada right now.”

The cooling of relations between me and Blair began as more and more of this information was revealed, a drip-drip-drip of damaging front-page revelations. Blair retreated into a denying, resisting stance, refusing to acknowledge the severity of the damage that had been done. He never emerged from the police-culture cocoon to acknowledge that things had gone wrong.

Things had started to go wrong during the planning process. The story of the lead–up to the G20 is the story of a prime minister dumping a major event with significant security implications on a city on short notice, utterly disregarding advice from local politicians. It’s a tale of a police chief who kept crucial information to himself and a board that did not push him hard enough.

Harper publicly announced in December 2009 that the G20 summit would be held in Toronto the following June. Blair had been told by the RCMP that the G20 would be coming to Toronto a month earlier. He advised the board and the mayor at that time that this would be the biggest security challenge Toronto had ever faced, and he pledged to come to us when more details were available and before it became public.

Blair told the board about a conversation he had had with the mayor during which Mayor [David] Miller had said, “Chief, I hope this turns out well.” Blair had apparently replied, “Mr. Mayor, you can be assured these things don’t turn out well.” His message to the mayor and the board was blunt and unvarnished. No matter how much you plan, you cannot anticipate every possibility.

Blair had informally signalled to us that he was going to need a lot of money for this summit. He said he needed immediate approval of approximately $14 million from the city to be able to order critical communications equipment.

There was some debate as to whether the convention centre was the best venue, but Harper’s people were adamant that’s where it would be held.

We asked Blair for a briefing on his plans. We did not seek operational details because Blair had told us that he had been given the highest security clearance to accept information, but that he couldn’t share that information even with the board. It would have been easier to secure the Canadian National Exhibition grounds, given that Lake Ontario provided a natural security barrier; plunking the summit down in the middle of the city made security planning much more challenging. Blair mentioned a fence but provided no details about which streets would be blocked. There would be a fence. That’s all. Period. Full stop.

But Adam Vaughan, a city councillor whose ward included the summit site (and who later, like Blair, became a Liberal MP), sent a newsletter to his constituents telling them he had attended a confidential briefing, and he provided them with a map of the area that was to be fenced. How was it that Vaughan knew more about this fence than the Toronto police board? We confronted Blair about what other confidential briefings he had provided to Vaughan.

Blair denied he had provided any briefings and claimed Vaughan had provided his constituents with incorrect information. But I was then approached by Blair’s executive officer, Stu Eley, who said we had a problem because the RCMP wanted to know why the chief was giving confidential briefings — something Blair denied a second time.

We clearly wanted operational details from Blair, but the chief had always maintained that operations were his purview, not the board’s and our legal counsel had backed his position. When we were travelling together in India at the invitation of the Indian government in February 2010, I spoke to Blair about the board’s need to receive more information on a regular basis about the G20 planning. Based on our conversation, I advised board staff about the matters on which the board could ask for a regular update from the chief.

In the weeks following the fiasco on the streets of Canada’s largest city, there were calls for an inquiry from multiple voices. Our board appointed John Morden, a retired Ontario Court of Appeal judge, to independently review the conduct of the police and our board. But when Morden talked to Blair, the chief said he had no recollection of our discussion in India. Morden issued his report in June 2012. In his review he was critical of the board’s role, but police chiefs, police boards and their legal counsels across the province were following the same separation of roles the Toronto board was following.

However, Morden did find that we were kept in the dark about police operational matters related to the G20 and were effectively reduced to bystanders. He acknowledged at the beginning of his report that the board, “in many of its decisions, was applying the former ‘operations’ and ‘policies’ distinction that held sway before the Police Services Act and it is clear that it acted conscientiously in doing so.” Indeed, Blair would later demonstrate, during the carding controversy, how chiefs clung to what Morden called an outdated definition of powers.

Morden had a different interpretation of the powers of the Toronto police board than our lawyers did. “Perhaps in its desire not to be seen as treading on the territory of the chief of police, the board has, wrongly… come to view it was improper to engage in a discussion that involves the board asking questions about, commenting on, or making recommendations concerning operational matters,” Morden wrote.

In responding to Morden on July 19, 2012, I accepted my responsibility as chair and publicly apologized to “innocent people who had their rights abridged, their liberty interfered with and their physical safety jeopardized. This is contrary to everything I have worked to achieve as a member of this board.” I was the only public official to apologize. Neither Harper nor Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty felt the need to acknowledge how their decisions had affected what happened in Toronto that weekend. Nor did the RCMP, which had been in charge of the policing strategy. Blair spoke to me about how the RCMP brass had run for cover, but being a loyal soldier he did not break rank and make public the RCMP’s overall responsibility for what had happened.

When the operational plans were being finalized, we wanted — needed — a regular report to the board; thus, we asked for a monthly update. I’m still not sure that was the right thing to do. But I thought offering confidentiality would give Blair more latitude and allow him to be more forthcoming. My relationship with him was good and there was trust between him and the board.

Things became complicated when Blair told us about the fence and a so-called “five-metre rule.” Blair believed the provincial Public Works Protection Act (PWPA), enacted in 1939, would allow officers to stop and search anyone coming within five metres of the fence. Initially, there had been a request to Ottawa asking for enhanced powers for Toronto police around the fence under the Foreign Missions and International Organizations Act. But Ottawa had inexplicably rejected the request; it was the feds’ event but they didn’t want to be tied directly to its policing. So, on the advice of the Integrated Security Unit, on May 12, 2010, Blair asked the province to make a regulation under the PWPA. He told the board after he had already done this. The board did not ask more questions because we had not seen the letter. We only had the chief’s words, and he made it sound like a routine matter. He painted it strictly as a security move — that people would not be able to approach the security fence because there was a fear that they would try to breach it.

During its own probe of police actions that weekend, the Office of the Independent Police Review Director (OIPRD) reported that Deputy Chief Tony Warr felt the extra authority from the PWPA was needed. Warr was in charge of special operations at the police service, which included intelligence and security functions, and was Toronto’s highest ranking designate to the Integrated Security Unit headed by the RCMP and responsible for planning the operations. As reported by the OIPRD, Blair went along with his request, saying it was probably “not necessary, but it couldn’t hurt.”

The board was under the clear impression that the chief of Toronto police was solely or primarily responsible for security operations during the G20. Blair had not told us about the security hierarchy — the extent of the RCMP and OPP involvement, or where he stood in the planning or operational structure. Therefore, the board assumed the chief had written the letter on May 12 because he was in charge of security. He had actually written the letter at the behest of the inter-services committee chaired by the RCMP. The OIPRD review said the existence of the Public Works Protection Act, created to protect public buildings during the Second World War, its application during the summit and the communication around the move were a “public relations disaster.”

A month before the summit, we told Blair that the public needed assurances from him. He assured us unequivocally and on the public record that all policies of the Toronto police board would be followed. We made it clear to Blair that officers from other forces would need to undergo training to learn our board’s approach to policing. They were to be appointed by me to act as officers in Toronto and the agreement for them to do so was to be between police boards, not police chiefs.

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This was such a cumbersome process that I was deputizing and signing papers up until the day of the G20. But it was important for a couple of reasons. We wanted clarity that the officers were acting under the authority of the Toronto police and operating under Toronto police rules. Our concern was that if any of them were to cause harm to or mistreat a citizen, they could avoid investigation unless they were appointed by Toronto. In this way, Toronto would at least do the initial investigation.

We had faith in Toronto police and the culture of community-based policing we had been working on establishing here. But there was no way to provide proper training to others. The officers, who came from across the country, received a very short classroom orientation, but it wasn’t enough. Because of time constraints, they couldn’t receive the training needed to build them into one integrated functioning team. According to the OIPRD report, the online training did not adequately cover Charter rights, and the in-person training dealt with justifying police actions and preparing for violent battles. It did not tell officers how to deal with peaceful assembly and how it should be facilitated.

I knew where the officers were coming from, but I didn’t realize they were not under Blair’s control. This became clear only when, two days before the summit, Toronto Star columnist Haroon Siddiqui called me requesting help. He was concerned that he wouldn’t be able to get into the Royal York hotel the next morning to interview the president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who had invited him to breakfast. I called Blair, who said he would do what he could, but that he wasn’t in charge of security for the Royal York. I thought it strange that the chief of Toronto police was not in charge of the landmark Royal York.

Similarly, the chief asserted the need for a temporary detention centre and arranged a board tour of it just before the summit to allay any concerns we might have had. The centre’s superintendent told us about the research they had done, how they had come up with the size and layout of the centre, and what they foresaw happening. They had conceptualized a flow-through centre where people would be in and out in a couple of hours. I felt reassured that those who were detained would be treated in a reasonable, humane manner. The superintendent told me they had looked at previous summits and the largest number of people ever arrested was 750 in Copenhagen, so they had built one that would comfortably accommodate up to a thousand.

They also told us that no more than five or six people would be held in each cell. We left with the impression that people would be processed in an efficient way and would have access to legal assistance.

The situation couldn’t have been more different. If we had had an inkling of the mess that would arise, we might have asked more questions. The summit included 20 of the world’s leaders, a number of whom — including the host — were not popular in their home country. There was an understandable worry on the part of the police that something drastic could be attempted by unknown elements. Therefore, the board was willing to accept the high level of security. The five-metre rule, the detention centre, the level of police visibility in the city — people would inevitably be inconvenienced when you put on an event like the G20 in the heart of the city. But Blair assured us there were plans to allow people to flow through the downtown core and minimize inconvenience.

Here’s what actually happened. The Prisoner Processing Centre was a former film studio on Toronto’s Eastern Ave., about five kilometres from the epicentre of the summit and the protests. Contrary to claims that the facility could accommodate up to a thousand detainees, the OIPRD review found that Toronto Police Services had planned for 500. Except they hadn’t been clear whether that meant 500 at one time, or 500 over the course of the weekend. OIPRD interviews with officers who had been in charge (who had received little or no training in the processing of prisoners) revealed they had assumed the cells could hold about 20 people, not five or six.

The processing centre turned out to be a complete failure of planning. Nothing appeared to have been enshrined in writing, the numbers anticipated and the numbers accommodated per cell were arbitrary, and there were no contingency plans for the much larger number of people who were brought to the facility. When mass arrests were ordered on the Saturday evening, the processing centre was given no more than 20 to 30 minutes’ notice before protesters began arriving. Predictably, all hell broke loose.

Young people were held in cells with adult prisoners. There was a lack of privacy in some toilet facilities. Others were denied access to toilets for hours. More importantly, Charter rights, including access to phones and lawyers, were denied. Charter rights limiting the length of detention on minor charges were grossly breached.

According to the OIPRD review, only 33 of 269 prisoners facing criminal charges at the processing centre were given access to a lawyer. Close to 800 people were held on minor, non-criminal breach-of-peace charges and only 32 were given access to duty counsel. While many did not ask to see a lawyer, 513 did, according to the review. Of that number, 448 were denied that basic right or were simply ignored.

Contrary to Canadian law, at least 14 of those charged with breach of peace — and likely many more — were held longer than the 24 hour maximum stipulated for that charge. Sloppy paperwork meant the exact number could not be determined, but the OIPRD found one prisoner was held for 35 hours and another for more than 100 hours. Neither was facing criminal charges.

Many of those who ended up at the processing centre were scooped up at Queen’s Park, part of which had been designated a “free speech” area. Instead, when protesters ended their march and began returning to Queen’s Park around 5 p.m. on Saturday, they were inadvertently walking into a cauldron of anger because of mounting frustration from police, from Blair on down, over the events of the day. There was essentially an order for police to “take back the streets.”

Fenton, one of the senior Toronto police officers responsible for overseeing on-the-ground crowd management, told OIPRD investigators that Blair was “angry and frustrated” at a meeting of the brass, and when Fenton asked why police were not arresting the “terrorists,” Blair turned to him and said, “That is a very good question, Mark.” Fenton then ordered mass arrests.

One protester, during testimony to the OIPRD, described the scene this way: “We turned to attempt escape but we were both jumped on by police. Before they even had us on the ground they were yelling, ‘Stop resisting arrest, stop resisting arrest.’ We were dragged over to the pavement on the west side of the road. They started beating my sides and buttocks.”

Later that year, Blair dealt with the question of the badges in an appearance before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. “I have a rule at the Toronto Police Service. It’s my rule and it’s in accordance with the policy of the Toronto Police Services Board, that our officers will wear their names displayed on their uniforms. It is a rule that they wear it. If an individual officer chose not to wear it, he’s breaking a rule.’’

Break the rule and discipline follows, Blair said.

An estimated 100 Toronto police officers had removed their name badges. It made a mockery of Blair’s commitment that all board policies would be enforced.

What punishment did they receive? They got a day off — voluntary leave.

They went to their commanders and admitted to a breach of policy and got one unpaid day off. Blair felt his punishment of one day was proportionate, even significant. Under the law, the board could not direct him on the punishment, only express our disagreement. We could not tell him to do anything differently. His message to the uniformed officer was clear — the chief has your back. We have seen this time and time again. It is part of police culture.

I felt strongly that the board had to take action. When these third- and fourth-class officers came before the board for reclassification, I withheld their reclassification, essentially their promotion and the pay hike that goes with it, for six months. Of course, because of this, arbitration was brought by the police association. I refused to budge. Ultimately, they lost three months, not six. The officers had to accept they had eroded public confidence and demonstrated that they were not yet ready to be promoted.

Reclassification is usually a routine matter. My refusal to accept that convention in the face of misconduct likely set a precedent.

Yes, in the run-up to the G20, the members of the board put a lot of faith in the Toronto Police Service. When your chief is telling you in unambiguous language that all your policies will be followed, you tend to believe him. When all of the questioning began after the summit about what went wrong, Blair finally said, “I was not even in charge that day and the chair saw me sitting by myself.”

He then explained the integrated command structure and his limited role in it. One day while he was under attack — the Toronto Star had called for his resignation — he confessed to me and fellow board member Hamlin Grange that he wasn’t even a member of the command structure. In fact, it was Warr who was on the planning committee. Grange almost fell off his chair and said to me, “Why the hell didn’t he tell us this before?”

Blair’s personal standing in the eyes of the public took a big hit, and it took a long time to even partially repair the damage. A large number of police officers paid a price for their actions that weekend. A few careers were affected as a result, such as that of Fenton of kettling fame. Fenton was convicted by a police disciplinary tribunal in 2015 of three counts of unnecessary and unlawful use of authority. He was reprimanded and docked 30 days’ vacation. He appealed, and those who were kettled cross-appealed, saying his penalty was too lenient.

The Ontario Civilian Police Commission heard the appeals in April 2017 and in November of that year, the commission upheld his conviction but dismissed a cross-appeal seeking his dismissal from the police service. The commission, in fact, upped his penalty, docking Fenton 60 days’ vacation.

The police board spent more than $1 million on Morden’s review. It lost credibility and received severe criticism, as did I. What the policing of the G20 did to ordinary people who were exercising their democratic right to publicly express disagreement with their government has left a permanent emotional scar on me. Seven years later, the final bill is not yet in.

There has been no shortage of investigations. A large number of police officers faced disciplinary hearings.

What about the federal and provincial governments? To be sure, the provincial government took advice from former Ontario chief justice Roy McMurtry and dismantled the antiquated Public Works Protection Act (PWPA) Beyond it, the provincial government made no effort to reflect on its degree of responsibility for major events taking place in local communities, or whether its laws and directions related to policing and national security need examining.

If the province was derelict in its response, the feds were worse. Harper took no responsibility for his last-minute decision to inflict his project on the heart of the city. And no one examined the legislation under which Harper had acted, in order to ascertain if there are any flaws or weaknesses that should be fixed to prevent a repeat. The Foreign Missions and International Organizations Act is the piece of federal legislation under which major international events hosted by Canada are administered.

Once the prime minister has designated an event under this act, the primary responsibility for security arrangements falls to the RCMP. The act allows Ottawa to enter into arrangements with its provincial counterpart for assistance from provincial and municipal police forces. The act gives the RCMP extensive powers because it has the “primary responsibility” for ensuring security.

What transpired during the G20 ought to have served as a red flag.

The arrangements are between the federal and provincial governments; yet neither order of government has day-to-day jurisdiction over the local police forces. How does the RCMP’s “primary responsibility” for security arrangements align with the local focus on community-based policing, especially in a situation where the sole objective is the security of the event and safety of so-called “internationally protected persons,” and given concerns about terrorism and national security?

We the people of Toronto, had surrendered the control and direction of our police service for those days to another entity, the RCMP, whose “primary responsibilities” do not align with those of the local police paid for by the local community and governed by its representatives. And yet at the federal level no one asked questions afterward — not even the opposition members of Parliament. So, we are no further ahead than we were before the G20.

The implications of making local police forces responsible for national security and anti-terrorism duties are worrisome. How would the resulting securitization and militarization affect methods of local policing, especially in responding to civil dissent in a less just, less fair and less equal socio-political environment? How would it be ensured that the government’s willingness to extend greater surveillance powers to police forces — especially as they relate to areas like cellphone surveillance — would not result in a greater intrusion into ordinary people’s lives? Seven years after that tumultuous weekend, these questions remain unanswered.

Excerpted and adapted from Excessive Force: Toronto’s Fight to Reform City Policing, by Alok Mukherjee with Tim Harper. © 2018. Published by Douglas & McIntyre.

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