G20 : Caught in the Act

An interview with Andre Marin, Ontario Ombudsman and author of the G20 report "Caught in the Act", sheds a little light on the blackout surrounding who was responsible for ordering kettling at the G20 a year ago.

Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair, as we have previously heard, had not heard of the term kettling before he saw it taking place before his very eyes on TV at the G20. A whole year later he still claims not to know who ordered it.

Paul Jay reads from Marin's report :

"The former RCMP official who was in charge of ISU security at the time advised us that by June 24, which is, what, two days before, the Toronto Police Services representative on the ISU steering committee had left the ISU building, and that by noon on Saturday, June 26, when all hell's breaking loose, communications between the ISU and the Toronto Police had broken down. By 4 p.m., the Toronto Police Services had completely gone off the ISU radar.

These guys had months to prepare, like, an unlimited budget, like, a billion dollar budget, and it seems like what they told you is that the communication had broken so down that the RCMP had no control over the events that were going on in Toronto."

And where was Blair during all this? At the Intercontinental Hotel meeting President Obama.
Now that's what I call an alibi.

According to Marin, the ISU responsibilities were divided up between: "the RCMP responsible for security within the fence; the Toronto Police responsible for the security outside the fence."

On CBC's As It Happens last night, Blair made this statement about his relationship to the RCMP-led Integrated Security Unit :

"Quite frankly I was not involved in much of the planning. I was aware of some of the things that were being planned, I was being briefed, but I was not the Operational Commander, I was not on the Unified Command Team or in the steering committee."

Well that's handy, isn't it?
Blair's in charge of the streets but is not inside the ISU command loop.
Then while he's off receiving his thank-you-masked-mans from Obama, someone uses the power vacuum at ISU to suck people at Queen and Spadina up as extras in a police crowd control exercise under martial law.

Blair declined to appear before Marin's investigation and does not support the idea of a public inquiry.
One year later, although the Toronto Police have pledged not to use illegal kettling again, the extraordinary powers of the "Queens breach" and the Public Works Protection Act remain in effect.
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Extra reading : When police stick to phony script : the Miami Model from Catherine Porter in the Star
h/t Nadine Lumley in comments
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Chief Blair had never heard of kettling before he saw it done at G20

Yes, you read that right.

I'm sitting here right now on the anniversary of the G20 listening to Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair tell Carol Off on CBC's As It Happens that he had never even heard of kettling before he saw it being done at the G20 on TV .
He had to look it up the next day, he explained, where he learned it was a police tactic used in the UK - unlike here, he went on, where we don't box people in without giving them an egress.

So where was he, asked Carol Orff, between 5:30 and 8:30 when the order was given at 5:30 to kettle some 300 peaceful people in the rain for hours and then charge them all with conspiracy?
Well he was over at the Intercontinental Hotel - "by invitation" - meeting President Obama, who shook his hand and personally thanked him for the great job he had done on security. When he left the hotel it was raining, he said, and it was after that he saw the kettling on TV and made the call to shut it down, saying it was all over.
Off asked him who gave the kettling order; he said he didn't know.

Unbelievable.
So if Bill Blair was just a figurehead with no idea what commands were given on the ground and still doesn't know, who gave the order?
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[Edited to add the hotel name and times given by Off]
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