Chief on the defensive

Strange that the Toronto Police After-Action Review of the G20 hit the news Friday, June 24, the same day a gaggle of black-clad protesters turned up at King and Bay to commemorate the G20 and black blocism and denounce corporate capitalism.

After all, the black bloc and “violence we have never seen before” are the stars of the After-Action Review, while thousands of peaceful demonstrators, many of them traumatized by the police response, only get cameos.

No question, the report, which describes the unfolding of events through the filter of the cop imagination, is a captivating read. It’s written like a movie script, with a 21-page timeline full of drama and foreboding. Its purpose is obviously to prove that police were faced with “sustained, serious and widespread criminality and public disorder” and hence ought to be forgiven their civil liberties transgressions.

I can’t tell, reading the blizzard of details, where the deliberate attempt to derail with the extraneous ends and the honest paranoia begins.

For example: Friday, 3 pm: “Major Incident Command Centre (MICC) advised officers that protesters at Allan Gardens were loading backpacks with stones, bricks and fluids.” Bad news, to be sure. But then we get this ambiguous piece of fluff: officers “seized a number of sticks” from buses carrying protesters from Montreal. For placards, ya think?

3:25 pm: “A group of clowns dip handkerchiefs in vinegar.” So? We all carried vinegar-soaked bandanas for tear gas eventualities. Did they think every act of defence was an incipient rampage?

Saturday, 3:04 pm: “A large amount of smoke” appeared at Queen and Spadina. “MICC directed officers to put on gas masks.”

Actually, it was a rather small cloud of smoke, but in the boomerang dynamics of the day, when police donned gas masks, panicked protesters reached for their bandanas. And so it went.

The section on Sunday’s kettling is titillating mostly for what it doesn’t say. We learn that Toronto police won’t use this tactic again, but we now discover there was an operational conflict on the spot. The MICC, a creature of the Integrated Security Unit, directed at 5:47 pm “that the crowd be boxed in on all four sides.”

But from 6:01 on, field commanders were offering “alternative courses of action,” including opening up an exit, but were overruled by the MICC. Look for the next wave of revelations to focus on the tense relationship between Chief Bill Blair and reps from the OPP and RCMP.

The odd thing about reading all this is the hallucinogenic way it’s possible to see two frames at once: from the street Friday afternoon, the temporary boxing in of protesters at Elm and University was inexplicable; from the vantage point of nervous officers fed a 5:10 report that black blocers were mixing “unknown liquids or chemicals in plastic bags and jars producing black smoke” things obviously looked different. At 5:42, the report says, those in black were “arming themselves with bricks and rocks,” which explains the mysterious disappearance of the friendly cop bike squad and its replacement  by the helmets-and-shields crew.

But where is the sense of proportion in all this? The smash-up brigade was an infinitesimal fraction of a mass protest that should get a medal for patience, good humour and peaceableness.

And that’s what sucks about this review: it’s a pumped-up excuse for the fact that officers lost both their heads and their perspective. Yes, Bill Blair in a fit of seeming transparency is baring some of the operational details. But there is no mea culpa, no meditation on guaranteeing citizen rights in the midst of a security op, no apology on mass detentions or illegal searches.

It’s a document of entrenchment, not one of rapprochement. We’re not on a healing journey, folks.

But there’s no point in a black bloc whitewash either; besides the cruiser-torching and window-smashing, the report has blocers heaving rocks at police (so much for “It’s only property damage”), mixing up molotovs and deftly disappearing and reappearing in small strategic groups all over the downtown, signs of activists on a manic mission.

I was thinking of this last Friday in the business district, talking to folks at the Black Block Party, an attempt – or maybe not – at irony.

They were friendly and articulate, wearing black to mourn the loss of rights, dis black business suits – and highlight black bloc tactics. One said it felt right to be at King and Bay because one of the police cars had been set ablaze here.

Such a misplaced commemoration. Even if you believe only a smattering of the police report, there’s still a political pathology at the grassroots. But then again, there’s one at 40 College, too. Which one is likely to be cured first?

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Source: Now