It's easy to be skeptical when a police force investigates itself, especially when the investigation gives short shrift to the very events that fuelled public mistrust in the first place. And so while the Toronto Police Service's "After-Action Review" of policing at the 2010 G20 summit contains good ideas to avert future riots, it leaves some key questions - the "whys" of some of its conduct - unanswered. Answering each of them, beyond just asserting that the police were overwhelmed, is key to restoring public trust.
The report claims it "takes a hard look at what happened," on June 25 to 27, 2010, in Toronto. However, allegations of excessive use of force by some officers against protesters at Queen's Park (the designated protest site, infiltrated on the Saturday by violent protesters), for which one officer, Glenn Weddell, has now been charged, get barely a look. From the report:
"At 5:17 p.m., pepper spray was deployed at Queen's Park." Blanket arrest orders, first given at 6:57 p.m., followed. At 8:24 p.m., "arrests were being made as necessary and possible." It's as though those events triggered no allegations against police whatsoever.
Later, the report notes that other bodies are looking into police misconduct. But that's not good enough. The report appears to perpetuate an apparent culture of silence within the service, exemplified by the 108 officers who were disciplined for removing their name tags during the G20 - incidents for which there is, again, no explanation or further remedy suggested. Nor does the report explain why it took six months for the service to form a team to investigate these issues, or how the decision was taken to use the "breach of peace" justification for arrest on a massive scale.
The report has advice that the public should welcome. A commitment to end "kettling," or surrounding a crowd with no means of escape, will restore some trust. So will a further promised review of how to deal with the practitioners of "Black Bloc" tactics, who took over the streets with such violent abandon last year. But again, the report is insufficiently self-critical. For instance, why didn't intelligence pick up on the Black Bloc threat to begin with?
Yes, the Toronto Police Service was dealt a bad hand. And the rhetoric of critics has been grossly exaggerated: The service's failings, on the street and in the report, while troubling, do not justify the resignation of Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair. But those failings need to be explained more fully than has been done to date.