Toronto Police Const. Babak Andalib-Goortani is back in the news with the announcement that he is now charged with assaulting not one, but two, protesters during the G20 summit.
It would be a mistake, though, to think this means the authorities have got to the bottom of all that went wrong on Toronto’s streets that weekend last June. Andalib-Goortani stands alone in having been charged, but the weight of all the allegations of police brutality do not rest on his shoulders. There were others: we have all seen the videos and photographs.
Police Chief Bill Blair, the Special Investigations Unit (SIU), and other authorities must work harder and faster to resolve the cases of protesters and bystanders who say they were assaulted by police. It has already been eight months. The actions of a few rogue officers — so long as they remain anonymous — unfairly malign all cops.
And what of all the other players in the G20 fiasco — Blair, his counterparts from the OPP and RCMP, and political decision makers in Ottawa and at Queen’s Park — who created such high tensions on our streets in the first place? They, too, must be held to account.
Collectively, they turned downtown Toronto into an armed camp. Laws were secretly changed; the public was misinformed about broadened police powers; unconstitutional searches occurred across the city; and excessive force was used to disperse peaceful protesters. Ultimately, more than 1,000 people — the vast majority of whom committed no crime — were held in overcrowded steel cages.
Little surprise that one York Regional Police officer was captured on videotape telling a protester that “this ain’t Canada right now.”
Andalib-Goortani will face his charges in court. But it will take a broad public inquiry, not the various mini-reviews already underway, to address the troubled chain of events that led to that day.
