Fresh off a legal victory forcing the Office of the Independent Police Review Director to hear his long-standing G20 complaint, Jason Wall was optimistic he would at last get answers about his arrest that notorious weekend.

“I hope the OIPRD will now finally do their jobs and conduct a full investigation,” he said last December, following an Ontario Court of Appeal decision that settled a dispute between Wall and the civilian police watchdog, which was refusing to investigate his complaint.

But Wall’s victory was short-lived. The Star has learned OIPRD director Gerry McNeilly swiftly rejected Wall’s complaint against former Toronto police chief Bill Blair and other high-ranking officers over an order stating that anyone wearing a bandana could be arrested.

“I have determined that it is not in the public interest to send this complaint for investigation,” McNeilly wrote in a letter to Wall earlier this year.

The decision marks the end of a years-long attempt to determine who in G20 upper command issued an order that citizens could be arrested for wearing a bandana.

Wall’s complaint alleged that Blair had given the order and had lied to the public about not being directly involved in operational decisions made during the G20.

“Now we’ll never know,” said Clayton Ruby, Wall’s lawyer.

“There was going to be no investigation, and that seemed to be predetermined.”

Rosemary Parker, spokesperson for the OIPRD, said the watchdog acted in accordance with the court decision.

The court ruled McNeilly is required to provide sufficient reasons to explain the basis for his decision and he has done that, she said in a statement.

“In fact, the Director has always provided reasons for screening matters out, but pursuant to this ruling, the OIPRD now provides more detailed reasons for all matters that are to be screened out and not investigated,” she said.

On June 27, 2010, while walking home from his girlfriend’s house, Wall was arrested on Yonge St. and charged with wearing a disguise with intent. He had been wearing a bandana around his neck while heading to a church service, and he was detained at the Eastern Ave. prisoner processing centre for 28 hours.

Wall complained to the OIPRD about his arrest, resulting in a probe that found his arrest was “unlawful” and “unnecessary.” Two Toronto police officers were charged under the Police Service Act; one of them, Const. Vincent Wong, was later found guilty of misconduct. He has appealed the decision.

The investigation revealed the officers had been following an order stating that anyone seen wearing a bandana, mask or gas mask could be arrested. The revelation prompted Wall to file a second complaint to the watchdog in December 2012, this time alleging Blair had given the directive to arrest anyone wearing bandanas, and that the order was illegal.

But McNeilly said he would not investigate the complaint because too much time had passed since the alleged wrongdoing.

Wall and Ruby took that decision to court, launching a legal odyssey where first a divisional court and then the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled the police watchdog should hear the complaint.

But McNeilly ultimately found the public interest would not be served by another probe of G20 events, citing among his reasons that the summit had already been examined by “a number of independent bodies,” including a report by retired judge John Morden and his own probe, Policing the Right to Protest.

McNeilly said his investigations into other complaints had already determined Blair did not give the order to arrest those wearing bandanas.

The independent police review director also said the order concerning the bandanas “must be examined in light of the series of incidents that occurred on June 26, 2010.”

“These incidents included serious acts of vandalism to the city streets and included a police officer being assaulted in his vehicle, and the vehicle being subsequently set on fire… Police officers were assaulted, property was destroyed and the persons using Black Bloc tactics to escape criminal liability were, by and large, successful in doing so.”

McNeilly said it must be considered that the G20 took place on a warm summer weekend, and that persons would not normally be wearing balaclavas or other face coverings in such weather.

In light of these reasons, “I do not interpret the order ‘anyone wearing masks, balaclavas or bandanas or otherwise covering their faces was arrestable’ to be an illegal order, as it did not require police officers to arrest regardless of whether legal grounds existed.”

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“The order was not, as stated by Mr. Wall in his complaint, to simply arrest everyone wearing a bandana,” McNeilly wrote.

Wall said he is frustrated that the Ontario Court of Appeal decision did not compel the OIPRD to probe more deeply into the chain of command and the source of the bandana order.

“After pursuing this for nearly five years on behalf of the Canadian public, I’m disappointed that no one has been held accountable for ordering unlawful mass arrests. What is the OIPRD trying to hide from us?”

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