Today’s topics: Unions in Wisconsin, being tough on crime, Libya, G20 inquiries, money for wedding gifts … and more
Ontario Ombudsman André Marin received 167 complaints related the G20 during his investigation into the summit weekend - and another 88 after he released a report stating a provincial regulation giving police added powers over the weekend was possibly unconstitutional and illegal.
They ran the gamut from concerns over use of force, arrests and detentions, police incivility, the film studio-turned detention centre on Eastern Avenue and the "kettling" of hundreds of people on the corner of Spadina Avenue and Queen Street West.
The complaints came not only from people who had experienced alleged misconduct first-hand - they also came from family members, MPPs, university professors and doctors concerned about their injured patients.
Mr. Marin released the numbers in a report he's sending to the Office of the Independent Police Review Director, the province's arm's-length police watchdog, which is conducting a review of policing over the G20 weekend last June.
Of the 255 complaints Mr. Marin's office received prior to his releasing his report, 112 related to policing over the G20 weekend, and the majority touched on more than one issue. Forty-one dealt with detentions and searches, 42 with arrests, 22 with excessive use of force and 19 cited problems with detention centres. Twenty complaints raised issues with the police's use of "kettling" procedures.
While Mr. Marin's office referred complaints to the OIPRD or the RCMP's complaints commissioner, he expressed concern some people didn't plan to file their complaints there out of a lack of faith in the bodies' ability to conduct unbiased investigations - or because they feared retribution.
"One complainant told our office that he did not think that the OIPRD was independent, and so would not likely be filing a complaint with that office; and another suggested that he had no faith in the OIPRD process believing that that agency was dismissing a number of cases which would otherwise have merit in light of its sudden increase in caseload," Mr. Marin's report read.
"One complainant whom we referred to the OIPRD advised us that he did not want to complain to that office about being arbitrarily arrested and held in a cell for 26 hours because the police had taken down all of his personal information and he was concerned that he might be affected by any complaint to the Director's office."