DiManno: G20 policing black eye isn’t fading away

A photographer took this shot of Dorian Barton being dragged behind police lines by an officer at Queen's Park during the G20 Summit last June.

A photographer took this shot of Dorian Barton being dragged behind police lines by an officer at Queen's Park during the G20 Summit last June.

The one-year anniversary of the G20 Summit policing fiasco will shortly be upon us.

Yet none of the half dozen internal and external inquiries into what went so disastrously wrong last June has been tabled yet. A police board inquiry won’t even start its hearings until next week.

Only a narrow investigation by Ontario ombudsman André Marin that looked at the misapplication of an obscure security enhancement regulation under the Public Works Protection Act has seen the light of day.

And just one from among the many bullying, bushwhacking officers who assaulted peaceful protesters has been charged.

In cop lingo, the clearance rate is dismal.

Unless, of course, the intention was always to clear cops of wrongdoing by burying the G20 autopsies under a heap of paper-chase bureaucracy. But however much Premier Dalton McGuinty and Chief Bill Blair might wish it, this law-and-order shiner isn’t going to fade away.

On Thursday, the Special Investigations Unit announced it has reopened a probe — for the third time — into one specific complaint of alleged police brutality, the beating of Dorian Barton.

SIU director Ian Scott does not score big points for that.

Read on...

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