2012-01-13
A woman identified by the crown as a key player in organizing the G20 protests will be sentenced in a Toronto court on Friday morning.
Amanda Hiscocks, 37, pleaded guilty in November to counselling to obstruct police and counselling to commit mischief.
Ms. Hiscocks was among 17 people who were charged with conspiracy after undercover police officers infiltrated activist groups in Southern Ontario as they planned protests for the G8 and G20 summits.
She was arrested early in the morning on June 26, 2010, hours before a Toronto protest turned into a riot, with black-clad protesters smashing windows and burning police cars.
In a plea deal negotiated last fall, 11 of the 17 activists had all charges against them dropped, and the rest pleaded guilty to lesser charges. Four of those convicted have already been sentenced and a fifth, Alex Hundert, will appear in court on Friday morning but expects to delay his sentencing until June.
According to agreed statements of fact read in court in November, protest organizers admitted to creating a list of targets for demonstrations and discussing ways to “de-arrest” people by grabbing them away from police.
Under the terms of the plea deal, Ms. Hiscocks expects to be sentenced to 16 months and Mr. Hundert expects to face 13½ months.
A long-time activist, Ms. Hiscocks is based in Guelph, Ont., where she works at the University of Guelph’s Ontario Public Interest Research Group as a volunteer and programming co-ordinator. The non-profit is allowing her to take a leave of absence while she is in jail, she said.
Ms. Hiscocks was living in a house with other activists when she met Constable Brenda Carey, then working undercover as “Brenda Dougherty”.
The officer told activists that she had recently fled an abusive relationship and had moved to the city for a fresh start. She spent months building trust in the community, mainly by cooking and serving food on the street with a local anti-poverty group.
“My opinion of her was that she was just like a person who was getting kind of a second lease on life, doing all these things she wanted to do but hadn’t done yet,” Ms. Hiscocks later said.
Eventually, Constable Carey joined the “action committee” of the Toronto Community Mobilization Network, along with Ms. Hiscocks and Mr. Hundert. She also moved into Ms. Hiscocks’ home after another roommate left.
A second officer, Constable Bindo Showan, was spying on a group of activists in Kitchener, Ont., during the same time period.
Speaking to a reporter before her sentencing, Ms. Hiscocks said she’s disappointed the officers were able to infiltrate activist groups successfully, but she doesn’t regret any of the actions she took that led to her arrest.
“I would do it again in a second,” she said. “I think I would just do it better next time.”