For the first time, the Toronto Star can reveal images showing inmates held inside the now notorious temporary G20 detention centre on Eastern Ave.
Housed in an unused film studio, the temporary jail held 885 people during the June 26-27, 2010, weekend when world leaders convened downtown and police officers rounded up more than 1,100 people in the largest mass arrest in Canadian history.
Those detained here say they were subjected to inhumane conditions: overcrowded cells, bathrooms with no doors, strip-searches, little access to water, food or legal counsel. The media was given a tour of the jail, but only after the cells were empty and about to be dismantled.
This image was taken from video footage of the temporary jail, where more than 100 security cameras recorded the 51 bullpens. The video was obtained by the Star after it was entered as evidence in the trial of Michael Puddy, a bricklayer from London, Ont.
There are 28 people in the three-by-six-metre cell, their hands still zip-tied. The porta-potty in the corner has no door.
Puddy stands against the wall, fifth man from the right at the bottom of the photo. But he never should have been there — one year after this image was captured, a judge threw out his charges and ruled Puddy had been placed in this cell “completely without justification.”
In this moment, however, it is 12:25 a.m. June 27, 2010, before the infamous kettling incident that would further swell the ranks of the detained. Puddy still thinks someone will realize the mistake and release him.
He has no idea these are just the early minutes in what would become a two-day detention and 13-month legal nightmare.
“It’s horrible and it never should have happened,” says Puddy, now 33 and speaking from Quadra Island, B.C., where he now lives. “Most of those people you see in the cell were never charged with anything. They spent that entire night and more than a day in those conditions and were never charged with a crime.
“Why did they have to put up with all that? Why did I have to put up with all that?”
Puddy was arrested June 26 at about 11 p.m. He was heading to a concert with his girlfriend when they joined protesters at Queen St. W. and Spadina Ave.
He still does not know who arrested him; nor do the witness officers who testified at his trial. They said they encountered Puddy when he was already zip-tied on the ground and “assumed” he had been arrested for breaching the peace.
Puddy was sporting a mohawk hairstyle and a black t-shirt that said “Police Bastards,” the name of a punk band. Because he is a country boy who works in construction, he also had his pocket knife in a pouch on his belt. He did not realize it could be opened with a flick of the wrist and was therefore classified as a prohibited weapon.
At Puddy’s bail hearing, the Crown attorney argued he should be kept in jail until trial, even though he had a reliable surety and no criminal record. Justice of the Peace Lynn Tivey released him under strict bail conditions but told Puddy he should be ashamed of himself.
“No one comes to Toronto and dresses how you were, carries a weapon and thinks that it is all innocent, because I do not believe it, not for one minute,” she is quoted as saying in the court transcript.
But on Aug. 11, more than a year after Puddy’s arrest, Justice Melvyn Green found him not guilty of possessing a prohibited weapon and ruled that Puddy’s Charter rights had been violated.
“The original arrest of the defendant was completely without justification,” Green said in his ruling. “As such, it represents a grave form of constitutional misconduct.”
Police Chief Bill Blair has acknowledged some of the G20 temporary detention centre’s failings in his review of summit policing. In his report he wrote that poor planning and prisoner bottlenecks caused “serious issues” and overcrowded cells, some that held as many as 30 people at once.
During his time at Eastern Ave., Puddy was strip-searched and held in various cells for 17 hours before being taken to Maplehurst Correctional Centre in Milton. There, he was fed, given a bed and housed in a single cell — a “five-star hotel” compared with the G20 jail, he joked.
A recovering painkiller addict, Puddy was also denied access to his daily methadone dose, despite repeated requests. His withdrawal symptoms eventually became “unbearable,” he said.
“Your body aches, every cell aches,” Puddy said. “I was curled up in a fetal position.”
His lawyer, Adam Goodman, is now applying to have Puddy’s legal costs covered by the Crown. Goodman said his client was wrongfully arrested and had his Charter rights breached — forcing him to also pay the $10,800 it cost to defend himself would be an “affront to justice.”
“As a society, we treat our prisoners with respect, and they were just thrown into these egregious conditions basically on a whim,” Goodman says.
“And the sad thing is, this was a temporary facility. This was set up this way.”
