Pressure for an independent probe of Toronto’s traumatic G20 weekend is ratcheting up, with calls from international human rights groups, opposition parties in Ottawa and a Facebook group that has grown to more than 18,000 members.

NDP Leader Jack Layton on Tuesday called for the Commons public safety committee to be “seized with this matter and require an accountability report on both the spending side and on the operations side” of the billion-dollar-plus meeting of world leaders.

Liberal and Bloc Québécois MPs on the committee told the Star’s Richard J. Brennan they support the call, making hearings likely.

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association released a preliminary report that said “police conduct during the G20 summit was at times disproportionate, arbitrary and excessive,” and a full public inquiry is needed to find out why.

Amnesty International Canada also demanded the provincial or federal government hold an inquiry, saying that, even before the mass arrests were triggered by a violent rampage downtown, “protesters were faced with high fences, new weaponry, massive surveillance, and the intimidating impact of the overwhelming police presence.”

Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair tried to quell the growing uproar by announcing that an internal task force will examine “all aspects” of summit policing by the municipal forces, OPP and RCMP in the G20 Integrated Security Unit.

The report, which has no deadline, will be submitted to the Toronto Police Services board comprised of city councillors and public representatives.

Police also displayed items seized during raids, including a machete, bike helmets, body armour and gas masks during the morning news conference.

“They came to attack our city. They came to attack the summit. They came to commit crimes and to victimize people in the city,” Blair said, calling the items proof of a “criminal conspiracy” by radical elements.

But the promise of a police force investigating itself, along with assurances there is a complaint mechanism for those who feel ill-treated by police, seemed unlikely to defuse anger after a weekend that saw riot police use tear gas and rubber bullets on protesters — incidents documented in thousands of photos and videos making the rounds.

Many appear on the Facebook group Canadians Demanding a Public Inquiry into Toronto G20.

The group grew by almost 1,000 members an hour Tuesday afternoon. It calls for a probe into “consultation with the City of Toronto and its citizens, security buildup, the fence, the treatment of Toronto’s homeless, mass damage, no relief fund for shop owners, innocent people and journalists detained, detainee conditions and much more.”

Rebecca Harrison-White, one of the group’s administrators, said people are eager for “an unbiased independent source that will expose all the facts of what happened over the weekend.”

“Somehow this went wrong, and by figuring out how it went wrong, we can prevent it from happening again,” said Harrison-White, a federal Green party candidate in Whitby-Oshawa who says riot police charged her and others for no reason Saturday near Queen’s Park. Federal Green Leader Elizabeth May is also demanding an inquiry.

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association, which sent out 50 human rights monitors to make first-hand observations of policing, alleged serious abuses at a news conference.

“Detained people were not allowed to speak to a lawyer or to their families,” said general counsel Nathalie Des Rosiers. “Arbitrary searches occurred in countless locations across the city, in many instances several kilometres from the G20 summit site. Peaceful protests were violently dispersed and force was used.”

Mark Holland, the Liberal party’s safety and national security critic, said Public Safety Minister Vic Toews should appear before another Commons committee, national security, to explain “how they messed this up so badly.

“This was a disaster on just about every level,” the Ajax-Pickering MP told a news conference. “Even after spending a billion dollars they couldn’t even protect store owners along Queen St. and other parts of the city so we are going to need answers for that.”

Dimitri Soudas, a spokesperson for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, said there is no need for an inquiry.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

“The bottom line is that the police officers ultimately did their job,” he told the Star.

“Damage by these hooligans could have been a hundred fold . . . So police actually did their job. They diverted people from causing any further damage compared to what they intended to do and what they did.”

With files from Tanya Talaga, Joanna Smith, Jesse McLean and Brett Popplewell