A senior police officer charged with unlawful arrest for conduct during the G20 protests told a police tribunal on Monday that protesters who broke shop windows and threw projectiles were “terrorists.”

Under cross-examination, Supt. David (Mark) Fenton stood by his conviction that the Black Bloc tactics of G20 protesters in 2010 amounted to terrorism, as defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary and the Criminal Code of Canada.

“They were engaged, in my view, in terrorism,” he said.

Questioned by prosecutor Brendan van Niejenhuis, Fenton described the stark moral calculus he used in ordering police actions that led to hundreds of people being “kettled” and arrested in downtown Toronto that weekend.

The hearing also suggested a police leadership that was often insulated from the actions of rank-and-file officers as the law enforcement crackdown unfolded. At one point during the protests, Fenton turned off the live television news feed at police headquarters to save screen space, he testified.

Fenton is the most senior officer being charged under the Police Services Act for his role in G20 policing. He has pleaded not guilty to five charges of unlawful arrest and discreditable conduct related to two major instances of kettling, a police tactic that involves boxing in a group of people.

The first kettle took place along the Esplanade on Saturday, June 26, and the second at Queen St. W. and Spadina Ave. on June 27 during a heavy rainfall.

Those mass detentions of protesters and bystanders were the culmination of a strange, high-stakes day for Fenton, the tribunal heard.

He woke up at 2 p.m. on June 26 after completing a night shift that morning and staying in a Bay St. hotel. While waiting for a colleague to join him for coffee in a nearby Tim Hortons at 4 p.m., Fenton called police headquarters for an update on the protests. He was told that “there were groups of folks around the city, smashing things, burning things,” he said.

Just an hour before, the first reports of fire began emerging from the Queen St. W. and Spadina Ave. area. By 4 p.m., the Eaton Centre had declared a lockdown as protesters smashed windows on Yonge St.

Still off duty, Fenton walked to Queen’s Park to observe the unrest.

“It was a riot I was witnessing,” he told the tribunal. “It was uncomfortable to be there, it was unsafe to be there.”

At police headquarters just past 5 p.m., Fenton met with Blair about the situation, and asked the chief why there hadn’t been more arrests.

“Mark, that's a very good question,” Blair replied, according to Fenton.

For the next several hours, Fenton directed police movements from the Major Incident Command Centre (MICC), an operational hub set up at 40 College St. for the G20.

Faced with “marauding protesters,” and “widespread violence” – including several flaming police cruisers – Fenton instructed section chiefs to “prepare themselves for mass arrests, if necessary.”

Meanwhile, he conducted a kind of remote chess match between his armoured crowd control units and the disparate groups of protesters spread out around the downtown core.

Throughout the evening, Fenton received a “running tally” of injured officers, he said.

Finally, around 10 p.m. riot police managed to box in over 250 protesters outside the Novotel hotel on the Esplanade.

Fenton told the tribunal he issued orders for his officers to use discretion in who they arrested inside the kettle, though van Niejenhuis challenged that claim, noting that Fenton’s statement to the Office of the Independent Police Review Director (OIPRD) did not mention orders about discretion.

Fenton said that he learned about officers apparently disobeying his orders “in large part” through evidence presented at the hearings. CP24’s coverage of the protests played briefly at the MICC before Fenton ordered it turned off to save valuable screens in the decision-making hub, he said.

He also claims to have imposed a media blackout on himself after that weekend.

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

“In the days following the G20 I stopped reading the paper and stopped watching the news,” he said.

Cross-examination continues this week.