That he takes “full responsibility” for his police force’s mishandling of the G20, although he makes no apology. That mistakes were made, but in the face of trying circumstances. And, over and over, that he’ll do better. Lessons were learned, etc.
Blair said it all again the Friday before the long weekend, May 18, in a prepared statement read to his civilian overseers on the Police Services Board.
And later to the cameras parked outside that meeting at City Hall, where the latest twist unfolded in the biggest civil liberties failure and mass arrest of innocent protesters in Canadian history.
It turns out charges may now be laid against more than two dozen officers, including as many as four senior officers, in the aftermath of revelations in the Office of the Independent Police Review Director’s (OIPRD) G20 systemic review report released last week.
But because the six-month limitation on those charges has expired under the Police Services Act, which cases will proceed and which won’t has still to be determined.
Better late than never, perhaps. The chief has been quick to defend the conduct of his rank and file during those memorable three days in June 2010. On several occasions, in fact, he has misled the public. Whether that’s been deliberate depends on whom you talk to.
Blair’s defenders, among them former members of the Police Services Board at the time of the G20, Adam Vaughan and board vice-chair Pam McConnell, don’t want the chief’s head on a platter just yet even if they think an apology is warranted.
In their estimation, Blair deserves the benefit of the doubt – at least until Justice John Morden, the man commissioned by the Police Services Board to determine if the policies of the board were carried out during the G20, comes back with his report in four to six weeks’ time. Morden’s findings may shed more light on who ordered what and when.
But Blair’s “I take full responsibility” spiel is hollow, and his characterization of the brutality of his officers as mere “shortcomings” is unacceptable given OIPRD director Gerry McNeilly’s findings.
That document lays out some glaring holes in the G20 command-and-control structure. Suffice it to say, there was a critical communications collapse.
Blair was either a willing accomplice in the “take back the streets” power-tripping of out-of-control supervisers under his direct command or a dupe who delegated responsibility to underlings and has been left holding the bag of doggie poop.
In some ways OIPRD’s report confuses the picture, raising more questions than it answers about police actions.
The name “Julian Fantino,” for example, the OPP’s top dick at the time, shows up nowhere in OIPRD’s 300-page document.
Stunning, since it was OPP officers who were involved in the infamous kettling incident at Queen and Spadina. And the scuttlebutt post- G20 was that a conflict between Blair and Fantino led to the OPP commish’s supposed reluctance to send reinforcements from Huntsville when hell was breaking loose on Yonge Street.
Blair’s name comes up 57 times in OIPRD’s report. But the chief contends he was directly responsible for only one “operational order” throughout the entire G20 weekend – the one to release those boxed in for hours in the pouring rain by riot cops at Queen and Spadina.
The events that led Blair to that call, however, do not paint a picture of a chief totally engaged in the decision-making process.
According to the report, Blair became aware of the standoff at Queen and Spadina while at the Intercontinental Hotel, where he flicked on a TV to find out what was happening on the street shortly after a meeting of dignitaries with the U.S. president.
Blair says summit leaders were leaving and he saw no reason to hold the protesters, so he got on the phone and gave the order to his deputy, Tony Warr, to release them.
But Warr was slow on the uptake. The protesters were still being held when Blair got back to police headquarters and turned on the news again. He said he thought he was watching taped footage. Another call was made to Warr.
The chief said he caught the same scene as he left police headquarters 20 minutes later still, on the TV set at the duty desk. That’s when he says he went up to the Major Incident Command Centre at headquarters. Blair said he pulled Superintendent Mark Fenton and Staff Superintendent Jeff McGuire out of a meeting and told them he wanted the protesters released immediately. They were.
But while Blair contends the kettling incident was the only one he issued a direct order on, he did little, OIRPD’s report suggests, to stop the collective punishment cops were about to mete out after Saturday’s tumultuous events.
OIPRD’s report notes Blair’s attendance at a pivotal meeting that evening at which Warr instructed other senior officers and others in attendance to “take back the streets.”
From that point on, the command structure became “dysfunctional” and “autocratic,” the chief’s commanders accepting little or no input from police supervisors on the street, McNeilly’s report says.
People’s personalities were transformed during the G20, Blair’s included. There’s something predictable about that, and about his toeing of the thin blue line.
A leader is only as good as the information he’s given, and Blair was clearly out of the loop on a number of decisions during the G20, which doesn’t absolve him of responsibility for his officers’ actions. Neither does it speak well of his management ability.
He was uninformed about far too many incidents of the summit weekend, including the mess at Novotel and, earlier on, the use of rubber bullets by cops.
For all the questions left unanswered by the OIPRD report, what can’t be overlooked is what it tells us about Blair’s actions during the G20, among them his office’s quest for special powers to arrest protesters and the now infamous press conference at which weapons that he said were seized from G20 protesters turned out to be no such thing.
Post-G20, during public protests, the massive police presence outside headquarters was the kind of defensive posture one would expect of Fantino.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this for Blair. His appointment as chief was heralded as a coup for progressives.
It’s curious to note that Mayor Rob Ford is suddenly watching Blair’s back, part of the residual cascading machismo flowing from the event, perhaps.
It’s worth remembering that Blair’s selection wasn’t wholly embraced by some in senior ranks who believed that after Fantino, Blair’s predecessor, a change in the culture was necessary, and the best candidate to fill the void would come from outside the organization. That’s something to think about next time.
Original Article
Source: NOW
Author: Enzo Di Matteo
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