Ombudsman slams G8, G20 policing

[sandinista]

Let's see where this leads, hopefully protesting will become legal again in canaduh. Doubt it.

Ombudsman slams G8, G20 policing

By Michel Comte (AFP) – 31 minutes ago

OTTAWA — Ontario's ombudsman on Tuesday slammed the Canadian province for quietly enacting a war-time policing law to secure G8 and G20 summits in Toronto earlier this year.

"For the citizens of Toronto, the days up to and including the weekend of the G8 (and) G20 will live in infamy as a time period where martial law set in the city of Toronto, leading to the most massive compromise of civil liberties in Canadian history," Ombudsman Andre Marin told a press conference.

"And we can never let that happen again," he added.

Marin's investigation into alleged police abuses revealed that the government had enacted a rule effectively bringing parts of downtown Toronto rimming the conference site under marshal law, without informing the public.

The Public Works Protection Act was enacted in 1939 to protect roads, dams and government buildings from attacks by wartime enemies.

Marin said it was wrong to use it to secure a meeting of the world's leading economies.

More than 900 people were detained during two days of clashes at the summit, including some peaceful protestors, journalists and passers-by swept up in the largest mass-arrest in Canadian history.

Toronto's police chief said at the time that the city had "never seen this level of wanton criminality."

But civil rights groups claimed summit security was "disproportionate, arbitrary and excessive," and the police response to pockets of criminal activity "unconstitutional."

Marin noted: "Responsible protesters and civil rights groups who took the trouble to educate themselves about their rights prior to the G20 had no way of knowing they were literally walking into a trap."

"They were literally caught in the act, an act of public entrapment," he told reporters.

Canada spent one billion dollars to secure the summit, hoping to avoid the kind of serious street battles that marred recent global forums.

Thousands of police reinforcements backed by riot officers on horseback and spotter helicopters were drafted into the city center, much of which was sealed off behind concrete and steel barriers.

Ontario's Minister of Community Safety and Correctional Services Jim Bradley responded in writing to Marin, saying in a letter the Ontario government "could have and should have handled the enactment of the regulation better."

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