Loathsome worm that I am, I have spent the past year regularly criticizing the police for their mass suspension of our Charter rights during last June's G20 Summit in Toronto. I saw them as a force gone wild, intoxicated by their own power, emboldened by a police chief (Bill Blair) who withheld from the public that the 5-meter fence rule was a fiction, and abetted by a Premier (Dalton McGuinty), who waited until the Summit had left town to tell the public the truth about the non-existent law.
How wrong I was. In a story carried in the Toronto Star, which has done a consistently fine job in tracking the entire debacle, the real truth has been revealed. The mass arrests were not only defensible, but necessary:
Toronto police maintain, however, they are justified, to preserve the peace, in temporarily holding people they believe are about to engage in criminal activity.
So there you have. In addition to possessing legendary crime-fighting prowess, their secret weapon has been revealed: a highly attuned psychic ability enabling them to see beyond any semblance of innocence into the true hearts of darkness lurking in the over 1000 protesters arrested.
But then again, we do have that rather pesky fact that almost all of the charges were subsequently dropped.
Perhaps a bit more practice is called for, boys and girls in blue?
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