G20 Black Bloc protester deserves 15 months in jail: Crown
TORONTO – An American Black Bloc protester who swarmed a police cruiser and trashed several stores in the G20 summit riots should be locked up for 12 to 15 months, a Crown attorney urged Tuesday.
Richard Dean Morano admitted he was one of the protesters donning dark disguises and black clothing who engaged in a reign of terror and devastation on June 26, 2010, in downtown Toronto.
Toronto Police Staff-Sgt. Graham Queen “was forced to stop his marked police cruiser” near Spadina Ave. and Queen St. W. “because of the violence perpetrated on him and his vehicle,” Crown attorney Liz Nadeau said. She implored the court to imprison Morano for up to 15 months for his five acts of public mischief and one count of mischief endangering the life of employees at a Yonge St. clothing outlet, where the shattered windows threatened the terrified staff.
Queen “was trapped in his police vehicle” as protesters shattered the windows, spraying shards of glass at him, while he was struck in the back of the head with a blunt object, Nadeau said in reading an agreed statement of facts.
Queen narrowly avoided serious injury, but both his vehicle and another cruiser “were eventually damaged beyond repair and set on fire,” she said.
Morano didn’t know there was an officer inside the car when he threw a rock at it, court heard.
He then smashed the windows of two Yonge St. retail stores and the Tim Hortons and Starbucks coffee shops at Yonge and College Sts., court heard.
Nadeau asked Justice Marvin Zuker to impose a 12- to 15-month term while Morano’s lawyer Scott Bergman argued his remorseful client deserved only three to six months.
Zuker will deliver his sentence on Feb. 3.
“The G20 summit was, in many ways, a sorry chapter in the history of this city” because of the unprecedented number of people arrested and the first use of tear gas, Zuker said.
If these vandals had committed these offences a century or two ago, the judge noted, “these people would have been hung for sedition.”
Zuker accepted the accused’s eloquent, heartfelt apology to the citizens of Toronto in which Morano acknowledged his actions “tarnished” the city’s previously stellar reputation and expressed shame for his conduct.
Morano, who had no prior brushes with the law in the U.S. or in Canada, was arrested in his small ski resort town of Lackawaxen, Pa.
The 23-year-old ski resort and restaurant employee consented to his extradition last year and was free on bail.
Source: http://www.torontosun.com/2014/01/14/g20-black-bloc-protester-deserves-15-months-in-jail-crown