Monday, June 28, 2010

The Education Of Steve Paikin

From his blog:
The police, who normally have excellent support among Toronto's citizens, are facing some appropriately tough questions.

They seem to have overreacted numerous times in dealing with members of the public and journalists. They used too much force in detaining many members of the public, who either were protesting peacefully, or were just passing by at the wrong time.

And yet, they were caught, if you'll forgive the pun, flat-footed and completely unprepared for the goons and thugs that destroyed so much property on Yonge Street on Saturday. Supposedly, that's why we spent $1b on security --- to prevent this from happening.
The more I think about this the darker my mood. I am beginning to think the police were not brought in to "prevent" anything, except inconvenience for the assembled VIPs. Their actions show that the priority was to keep protests away from the fence, not to safeguard the city of Toronto from violence.

In fact, the violence was welcomed by our Prime Minister who used it as a justification for the outrageous cost of the fence security. The fact that downtown Toronto was on fire, was a convenient fact for the PM and meant no more (or possibly less) to him than not getting the last jelly donut in the box. The government of Ontario and the feds will be asked a lot of questions about this fiasco. Let's not let them get away with weak justifications for the unjustifiable.
Recommend this Post

No comments:

Post a Comment