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News of Toronto’s G20 aftermath have been absent from the media for a long time; after all, the G20 demonstrations occured five years ago.
Someone famous once said that the wheels of justice turn slowly and the same can be said for justice to prevail after the huge protests in late June 2010.
While much has been made of the more than one thousand people arrested primarily on the weekend of June 26-27, 2010 — the largest mass arrest in Canadian history — much less has occurred in regards of accountability by police and government officials.
One of the infamous moments of the G20 demonstrations was the kettling incident that occurred in the later afternoon of Sunday June 27, 2010.
In the pouring rain — with no escape from the weather since the police had trapped everyone in the kettle taking over the intersection of Queen Street West and Spadina Avenue, just North of the G20 security fence — private individuals and demonstrators alike slowly being arrested and processed and then put on buses to take them to the Eastern Avenue Detention Centre, a real hellhole.
Those who managed to hold out in the pouring rain as free citizens were eventually released without charge by rumoured demand and order of the Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair.
Speaking of that incident, a senior Toronto Police Service (TPS) officer was found guilty on Tuesday August 15, 2015, of ordering that mass arrest.
A police disciplinary hearing ruled that Superintendent Mark Fenton’s “decision to order mass arrests demonstrated a lack of understanding of the right to protest.”
Fenton is so far — and will probably be — the only senior official ever to be charged in the incident.
He is expected to be sentenced in December, 2015. He could face up to dismissal for discreditable conduct.
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*Photo by krystalline kraus
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