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The real cost to Toronto for the G20 Summit: Sa
By RACHEL SA
The billion-dollar-plus bill for Toronto’s G20 summit is not the only cost of that ugly weekend.
How do we recover the value of trust lost in our police?
Last week, the province’s Special Investigations Unit announced no officers will face charges in connection with civilian injuries sustained during the G20 summit. While the SIU later said it would re-open its investigation into the assault on protestor Adam Nobody, the damage has been done.
The SIU admits there are reasonable grounds to believe some officers used excessive force, but those officers cannot be identified because so many removed their name tags and badges to avoid identification.
Adam Nobody’s arresting officer wrote down a bogus badge number on paperwork. Does that sound like a healthy democracy?
And when a handful of officers who assaulted, humiliated and illegally detained civilians go free, it tarnishes the reputations of the officers who did do their duty during the G20, and who continue to do so every day.
Trust in our police forces is not the only thing left broken in the G20 aftermath. Sadly, many people lost compassion, understanding and the belief all Canadians have a right to freedom and democracy.
During the G20 weekend, a few vandals destroyed private property. But I continue to hear from fellow Canadians who believe that all detainees deserved to have their rights stripped away and to be treated like animals, even if they were merely attending peaceful protests, as the vast majority were.
After I wrote about the experiences of G20 detainee Tommy Taylor, I got a disturbing sense of just how much freedom some of our fellow Canadians are willing to give up.
Taylor, a Toronto theatre producer, was swept up by police along with his fiancee while they observed a peaceful protest. Taylor became one of hundreds held in crammed, filthy cages at the Eastern Avenue detention centre. Hundreds were denied food, water and access to legal counsel. How does this happen in Canada?
But many people still see nothing wrong with it.
One reader suggested that women in detention who were denied sanitary products and taunted by officers deserved what they got. Denying women pads and tampons was “messy,” said the reader, but not life threatening.
It is also humiliating. Do we believe in humiliating detainees who are innocent until proven guilty? Do we believe in stripping rights on a whim? If so, who decides where and when to suspend your rights? Who decides when you can be crammed in a cage?
Some try to downplay what happened on the G20 weekend, saying it was “nothing” compared to what detainees would have endured under a dictatorship.
But this is Canada. Shouldn’t we demand more?
Perhaps this acceptance of abuse is a self-defense mechanism. We like to think people who get hurt must have had it coming, especially if they were hurt by the good guys, the men and women who are supposed to protect us.
That is why we feel grotesquely comforted when we hear a murder victim was “known to police.” Because, if they did something to deserve it, then it cannot happen to us, right?
It would be comforting if everyone who was assaulted, swept up and held during the G20 “deserved it.” It would be comforting to believe they were “asking for it” and this could not happen to regular, law-abiding citizens.
On the other hand, if you believe the rights we have fought for here in Canada should be upheld for all, and if you believe there are men and women in our police forces who violated those rights and must be held accountable, well, that is not very comforting.
Source: http://www.torontosun.com/comment/columnists/rachel_sa/2010/12/03/16421836.html