richardec

He has no sense of smell anymore. Therefore it's not his problem. ;)

Me too. Internets, what have you done to my comprehension?

I was unfortunately not involved in the G20 summit.>

It was proven, in subsequent internal investigations, that the police did not act appropriately at all in the G20 summit mass arrest and internment of 1,000 bystanders who were in fact not protesting at all. They completely and deliberately misinterpreted the directives laid out in the 5 meter rule.

Men, women and children, who were minding their own business, in their own neighborhood, well away from the violent protests, were rounded up in the night without warning or provocation, denied their rights, their phone call, and in true 'kristallnacht' style, placed in a gulag without basic sanitation. They were fed cheese sandwiches which were tossed, unwrapped, onto the damp floor of their makeshift cells.

Police officers removed their IDs and badges and refused to identify themselves. Gangs of roving officers without name tags and badges beat up unarmed civilians, who offered no resistance. A man was deprived of his prosthetic leg and told to hop. A TTC streetcar driver was pulled from his route while adjusting his power coupler. Senior citizen tourists were arrested emerging from a restaurant. Homeless people, who were not protesting and had no knowledge of the protests or the summit itself, were pulled from their park benches. Children as young as 14 were locked in cells with adults and offered no access to child protective services or their parents.

Some of the police guarding the internment sites were unprepared for the grim duty they were being handed and were seen crying and apologizing to their internment victims.

Some victims were deprived of their shoes, and when finally released, into the rain the next night, were not offered so much as a bus token or a phone call.

Police weren’t dealing with a spontaneous riot situation — they were creating it, with gunpoint rousting of sleeping occupants inside the Graduate Students’ Union building at the University of Toronto, hauling off peaceful bystanders by the hundreds, and ignoring a well-established Charter of rights that cover peaceful assembly.

Gerry McNeilly, head of the Office of the Independent Police Review Director (OIPRD) confirmed that of the 356 G20 complaints his office investigated, 107 were substantiated. Ninety-six of those were serious enough to warrant a police hearing.

All the police could say about their actions, at the time, was, "So what? A few people were inconvenienced."

Is this the summit activity you felt unfortunate to miss?

Do you stand behind the officers who took part in these actions?

Had you been included, would you have done the same?

I'm reading stories of recent arrests of Nazi war criminals. Mostly senile and decrepit. Some people say there's no point bothering anymore. I say if you can make them take their last breath behind bars, do it. What do you say?