Several conservatives have expressed a distinct lack of sympathy for the people arrested and detained by Toronto police and the Integrated Security Unit during the recent G20 Summit. Many conservatives assume that anyone who was hassled or detained by the police were either demonstrators or observers who shouldn’t have been there in the first place.
“It’s their own damn fault. What did they expect would happen?” has been a common refrain.
Part of me thinks this was to be expected. The police are going to be on high alert, and won’t be likely be interested in hearing your point of view or care what your political beliefs are as they’re telling you to move back. The old idiom “if you mess with the bull, you get the horn” seems to apply here.
But as some conservatives found out the hard way, it wasn’t just demonstrators and hippies being hassled and hauled away by the police. There’s no excuse or reason for police to make demands on private citizens walking about in their own city unless they are clearly and flagrantly violating the law.
I’ve tried to find some rhyme or reason for the six-hour Queen Street and Spadina Avenue detainment on the evening of Sunday, June 27, but can find none that are satisfactory. Based on everything I’ve read, the police simply surrounded and boxed in a group of people who ranged from genuine demonstrators to people who were out shopping, commuters trying to get home from work and local residents just going for a walk.
Let me say that again. People who lived at Queen and Spadina and wanted nothing more than to simply leave or enter their own home, were unable to do so because they were being detained by the police and informed they could not leave unless it was in handcuffs.
So did Toronto become a police state? No, that kind of leftie hyperbole is best reserved for real police states like Iran. After all, nobody was beaten, raped, tortured, or murdered by police in Toronto even if they were treated shabbily and threatened with assault.
But the Integrated Security Unit for Toronto did drop the ball on Sunday and the dozens of innocent people and journalists who were wrongly detained shows how easy it can be for an otherwise free society to stomp on basic liberties in the name of “security”.
What, exactly, did the police think they were providing security for at Queen and Spadina anyway? It wasn’t located anywhere near the Metro Convention Centre (where delegates to the G20 Summit met) or the “red zone” (a strip of downtown turf near the Centre where unauthorized people were excluded). Queen and Spadina isn’t even near the “yellow zone” (a slightly less restrictive area).
And while I don’t want to eat vegan chilli, stand barefoot in the park and hold hands with other people while they engage in a spiritual “healing” session, that doesn’t mean I will listen impassively when conservatives report having been unlawfully hassled by the police.
The fact that Toronto police chief Bill Blair has refused to acknowledge even the slightest possibility of police wrong-doing, going as far as lying to the public, only serves to further create a barrier between the people and law enforcement. As we saw with the Robert Dziekanski incident in Vancouver in 2007, the general public emphathizes with police about the difficulties of their job—to a point. That understanding and tolerance ceases when the police begin deliberately lying to protect their own skins.
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/36871124@N04/4738472349/
Mike Brock, cited as a "conservative" in the reference to him in the link "conservatives report", is not a conservative, but a libertarian.
But that shouldn't distract from the main argument, which is a very good one.
When I think of the G20, I'm reminded of the torched police cars, I'm reminded of all the business that were vandalized, I'm reminded of the people running away in terror, I'm reminded of the people waving banners saying, "Capitalism is a disease," with pictures of Mao, (a Communist), I'm reminded of the writing on the walls saying, "Bomb the banks," I'm reminded of all those civilized people carrying knives, bats, bricks, guns.... Yeah, I wonder why the police acted the way they did?
Funny, I just read a poll in our little town of Chilliwack newspaper. 76% of those that voted said, the police did NOT overreact to the protesters in Toronto. Why is it so high? Because the protesters were nothing but anarchists.
If people's individual liberties were unreasonably infringed or violated than it is right for them to bring it up through dialogue, discussion, letters to the editor, complaints to the OPP and to their civic, provincial and federal elected officials and if necessary the courts.
If we want to maintain our traditions of liberty, we must encourage others to take reasonable and legitimate actions to protect those rights.
So if those expecting law and order in society are automatically conservatives, then by the same logic all the others support chaos. It is interesting to find the insistence of pigeonholing people, which always makes the wrong conclusion.
While there seems to be no end to all the posts about alleged victims (unless proved that is what they are) there is an absence of posts indicating concern for the real victims: the owners of property thrashed and destroyed. The knee-jerk reaction of automatically placing the sole blame on the police does not hold up to any scrutiny. I have serious doubts that all these alleged victims were blameless just as I have serious doubts that all the police officers behaved and acted properly, which is why I shall wait for the courts to decide. I say the courts and not the politicians, because I would like to see the truth come to light. Making political hay out of the issue is just too tempting for politicians which results in the truth and facts getting buried deeper.
In ending I would like to know why the police did not move in to arrest the rioters immediately once the violence began instead of allowing things to escalate. This question needs to be put to the police chief rather than the rank and file.