Q: So what kind of demonstration warrants a sniper (see photo here) on the roof of police HQ?
A: The 15th Annual International Day Against Police Brutality!
I’m assuming that would be Jean-Paul Sartre’s answer.
I’m adding that to my rabble.ca editor Cathryn Atkinson’s comment: “It’s like they never left,” referencing the heavy police presence during Toronto’s G20 Summit.
For myself, I have seen what I thought were snipers upon the Toronto Police headquarters roof during past demonstrations, but with the march on the streets below numbering less than 30 people, I’m trying to rationalize the reason why there were three police to every one demonstrator, plus flanks of riot police, plus at least two (six each) mounted units, plus an unknown number of undercover police officers either in the march or walking alongside the crowd — along with said sniper? Overkill much?
Activists started gathering in front of the new 51 Division building at Front Street and Parliament Street. While some were wearing black, none were ‘bloc’ed up.’ Names of those killed after encounters by the police were read and stories told about their lives and deaths, including that of Otto Vass.
Organized by the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) and several community groups, including No One Is Illegal — Toronto, Jane-Finch Action Against Poverty, Barrio Nuevo, the Toronto Drug Users Union and the Community Solidarity Network, Toronto’s march was in coordination with the 15th Annual International Day Against Police Brutality.
According to the OCAP press release, “Despite the trillions of dollars stolen, embezzled and extorted by banks and finance companies that led to this recession, the police are not in the habit of kicking down doors on Bay St. But they are kicking down doors, ticketing, arresting, beating and killing people in poor communities.”
“The Toronto Star recently revealed that of the 3,400 investigations the Special Investigations Unit has conducted into the Toronto Police in its 20-year history, only 95 have resulted in charges, only 16 of those in convictions, and only 3 of those officers actually went to jail.”
Geatan Heroux — spokesperson for OCAP who has worked in the Toronto east end for the past 20 years as a community organizer — motioned while speaking to the line of police officers who guarded 51 Division.
In response to the upcoming austerity measures to be imposed by the government, he said of his community, “How are we going to deal with this, what, with this [motions to the police and the new 51 Division building], this is the response to poverty? This is what we are going to get?”
Referencing the rally he said, “How are they going to deal with 100 people, what are they going to do when there are 10,000 people, 20,000 people, whether they are union people, anti-poverty people, how are they going to deal with a demonstration like that?”
Also speaking at the rally was Anna Willats, a professor at George Brown College and winner of NOW’s Activist of the Year in 2006.
She noted, “Police violence looks like … the women who at York University that had the Toronto Police officer tell women that if they didn’t dress like sluts, they wouldn’t be sexually assaulted or raped.”
“Police violence looks like … the neglect of Aboriginal women across the country, missing and murdered, and the refusal to investigate those crimes.”
After the speakers, the group gathered at 51 Division split into two groups, with roughly 30-40 people choosing to take to streets in an impromptu march through Toronto’s Downtown core.
My little Sartre heart was amused at the sight of the 3 to 1 police to activist presence as the march made its way into the downtown core, chanting “fuck the police” surrounded by police. It was in front of police headquarters that the police sniper was photographed.
Perhaps I am making light of the demonstration and the presence of the sniper, but it is only to point out the sheer, ridiculous overkill at the hands of the police. I’m also in my head calculating how much overtime those officers might have been making and how many great, community-building ways the money could have been used instead.
In a city with a police force still obviously spooked by the events of the G20, you would have assumed that the 30 young-ish activists surrounded by a mob of police officers must be hardened criminals or terrorists, but they were only citizens of Toronto acting upon their democratic right to organize and demonstrate in Canada/Turtle Island.
I ask myself regarding last night’s scene of obvious police overkill, is this what democracy will look like in Toronto post-G20?
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