Redroom Studios
Senior Member
^^^ oh please... what a weak and misguided claim. you are grasping at straws now! I'm not sure whether to laugh of cry over your hysterical claims...
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G-20 Summit in Toronto
- Thread starter TO City of Light
- Start date
Coltaine79
Active Member
If he's blinded by ideology, then you're blinded by supposition, assumption and political bias. 3 vs. his 1. You lose. Time to check in with headquarters and get your new talking points.
Coltaine79
Active Member
Here's a quote from the article:
Kids, it's okay to lie when the G20 is in town!
And here's a quote from TheStar article on this:
Fun stuff, guess this thread won't be dying anytime soon. And apologists like js97 and Redroom Studios won't stop posting anytime soon.
Peepers
Banned
This is not a "misguided claim" this is an ADMISSION by Chief Blair himself that he decieved the public. Maybe you don't mind being lied to by a public official but this kind of thing pisses me off as I am sure it does most people.
A public official who admits to deceiving the public he is sworn to serve can no longer keep his job. We cannot have any confidence in this man and he has to go and soon!
Redroom Studios
Senior Member
yes, i read those articles. the point is that its all completely irrelevant! if Blair had said that the sky is green he would still have been saying something false but it had nothing to do with what went down on the weekend. This 5m thing with the fence was a complete red herring from the beginning. Anyone could have seen that. If large groups had gotten anywhere near the fence they wouldnt have been politely asked for their ID... likely you would have seen massive tear gas and perhaps a show of automatic weapons. As it turns out nobody even got to within a block of the fence. Are you telling me that if that so called 5 metre rule had been debunked earlier that the black clad thugs would have felt more confidence in trying to approach the fence? Your logic eludes me...
and I am not an apologist. I am very socially progressive. I would love to see the end of Harper as PM. I just have very little tolerance for ignorant behaviour... and misguided claims for heads to roll.
and I am not an apologist. I am very socially progressive. I would love to see the end of Harper as PM. I just have very little tolerance for ignorant behaviour... and misguided claims for heads to roll.
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AGTO
Banned
Yes, you are.
So do we, hence you being called on your BS.
christiesplits
Senior Member
I agree that it is quite troubling. I wonder what role this "legislation" played in directing people away from the fence, under the assumption that they would be arrested for coming to close to the line, and into the poorly supervised Yonge and Queen West retail strips where all the mayhem occurred.
Redroom Studios
Senior Member
hilarious... people would have been arrested anyway for coming close to the fence, if not worse after the violence had gone down. If anyone was put off by this clearly unneeded 'legislation' than all I can do is laugh. If we are to believe the claims above that this rule deterred people away from the fence and from even more violent confrontation I'd say thats a good thing. Keep in mind that such basic and indisputed laws against carrying concealed weapons and vandalism had no effect of deterrence...
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AGTO
Banned
Now that's laughable....since you have the inside track on everything G20...why don't you tell us all about why and how people could be arrested for coming close to a fence?
Mo-tage
Active Member
I would say it had no role, the militant protestors would have gone to the fence and risked arrest if they'd been able to.
I think all it really did was make people who live in the area nervous.
The police brass blew it on both Saturday and Sunday, on Saturday it was clear all they cared about was keeping protestors away from the G20, all the lines of riot police were blocking any access south of queen st, while leaving the rest of the city open. Even the rear of the protest parade was left unprotected, which allowed the black bloc to retreat back down queen and cause chaos, while the lines of riot police watched and guarded the access routes south of Queen. They were so focused on protecting the fence they didn't leave enough forces to take care of the rest of the city, and we all know the result. To give the police brass some credit, I'm guessing they thought that the black bloc would spend all day trying to get to the fence, and didn't expect them to roam north on yonge. But they should have been much more active in chasing down the criminal element as soon as they started breaking the law, instead of maintaining the vast majority of their forces in lines of riot police.
By Sunday it was clear they'd been embarrassed and had blown it, and so they resorted to much more extreme measures and blew it again. Arresting and detaining a few hundred people, using the previous days events as justification, but of course going to far. They realized that the big mistake they made on Saturday at Queen and Spadina was allowing the protestors access to the city by only focusing on protecting the G20, so they did the opposite and blocked any access out of the intersection. It's almost comical to see how the mistake on Saturday led to the huge overeaction on Sunday.
Edit: On a side note, wow did McDonald's ever get a lot of free advertising.
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Redroom Studios
Senior Member
because at that point they would have been providing a clear threat to the security of the fence. As others are complaining - people doing "absolutely nothing" were arrested elsewhere around the city. All that it takes is for police to issue an instruction to move out of an area and if people disobey they are open to arrest, if only to be detained for a brief period. However if groups had aggressivley approached the fence and physical contact ensued that would have also been another more clear cut reason for arrest.
In any event I am satisfied with the way things went down. You are not and so you feel the need to scapegoat any and all in positions of authority so that you may gain satisfaction as well. I have stated my opinion many times and I find it ridiculous to consider that this red herring 5m rule whether stated accurately or not is any reason to justify the dismissal of the chief of police.
insertrealname
Active Member
I wonder too, having seen the hooligans proceeding up Yonge below Queen, marching as a well-defined "en bloc" group--ripe for the picking, so to speak, and surrounded by relatively few other people once they left Queen/Adelaide and turned north.
I think it's probably some combination of a) the hooligans moved really quickly after they trashed things around Queen/Spadina, b) the police may have been aware of the movement tactics that might be used, but simply did not have the officers in place along Adelaide and other east/west streets giving the commanders sufficient immediate updates (perhaps they were depending too much on remotely controlled CCTV cameras) to make expeditious arrangements to intercept the hooligans (after all, there must have been at least 30mins between their exit from the Queen/Spadina area, to their arrival at Yonge/Adelaide), c) the whole command structure was centralized and inflexible, and d) officer numbers and transport capacity might have been lacking in the S. Yonge area, or perhaps, if adequate to bring several hundred officers into the area, not optimally pre-positioned to cordon off groups of people rapidly. (And that's to say nothing about the public relations disaster if they cordon off too many bystanders--that must also have played some role in any decision, if there was an explicit one, not to intervene.)
But what do I know about policing under any circumstances, let alone those that prevailed on Saturday? Nothing! As others here have remarked, there is an extraordinary randomness in the behaviour of crowds, policing actions are always going to be at the extremes of such behaviour, and we can be all happy that (with the exception of some police cars), these hooligans did not decide to celebrate a "Molotov Cocktail Happy Hour" .
Maybe TPS should have out-sourced the anti-hooligan component of their mandate to the French or German specilized anti-riot police squads--they have more experience with this kind of thing.
Peepers
Banned
More shocking details are emerging about the deplorable conditions inside the detention centre. Known terrorists detained at Gitmo receive better treatment:
http://www.thelinknewspaper.ca/articles/2698
http://www.thelinknewspaper.ca/articles/2698
AGTO
Banned
Standing within 5 M of a fence is only a threat to security in your weird little world where everyone is scared of their shadow.
It must be getting difficult for you to continually apologise ...especially when faced with hard evidence against your rose coloured opinion of the events.
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gristle
Senior Member
Here's the deal Peepers, I was down by the security fence on Saturday. I went there after I opted to leave the Eaton Centre while its windows were being smashed out by some of the protesters you seem to be so concerned about (you know, the ones who earlier hijacked a legitimate march and then proceeded to endanger the public by burning police cars and breaking store windows - including stores with people inside).
There were, in fact, a whole bunch of protesters right down by the security fence. I was there and I saw them. Among them were four guys wearing face coverings who were being interviewed by "alternative media." No one was arrested, detained or even questioned by police. Most of the other protesters had stopped up on Bay and King so they could shout at bank buildings and eventually break more stuff. That's when the protesters were all moved off.
Let me repeat: there were protesters right down by the security fence on Saturday and none were detained or arrested while there was no violence there. So there is no real issue regarding what the Chief said about the security fence.
Let's also be clear about something else. Bank buildings, shop windows on Yonge, College and Queen and the people who live and work in those areas had nothing remotely to do with the G20 meeting. Streets and businesses that were open to movement were closed off by violent protesters who were way beyond where the security fence was. You also appear to have missed the part where chief was asked about clearing the so-called "free speech" zone at Queen's Park. He answered that the entire city was a free speech zone, and that everyone had the right to express themselves so long as they did so in a responsible manner. Obviously, any person is entitled to freedom of expression, but not when it is carried out in terms of damaging and destroying public property and threatening the public.
I'd like to see you put some effort into condemning the violent protesters. Previous violent actions in other cities are exactly what prompted this show of force. It was the threat of violence on the part of a significant group of idiots who really don't care about others that generated a sizable portion of the security plan. How about condemning them? They are the ones on Saturday afternoon who hijacked a legitimate march, definitely threatened the public, impeded free movement, damaged and destroyed the property of others and terrified a very significant group of people who just wanting to go about their daily affairs in their own city. You seem terribly concerned about police reactions, how about the actions of those who created all the violent havoc? Why are you giving them a pass?