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.

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...

SIU reopens probe into G20 beating

Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit has reopened its investigation into the beating of Dorian Barton during the G20 summit, the police watchdog said this morning.

The decision came after the Toronto Police Service decided Wednesday that it would allow the SIU to interview a Toronto Police Service employee who identified a police officer in a photograph taken during the incident.

Last week, the SIU said it could not lay charges against any police officers, even though photographer Andrew Wallace provided a picture of an unnamed officer who he said he saw strike Barton.

The SIU asked 11 witnesses officers to identify the man seen standing over Barton in the photograph. None of the officers could identify him.

One of those officers was the subject officer’s roommate during the G20, SIU director Ian Scott told the Star. Two others were supervising officers.

Read on...

It seems the only reason these investigations are progressing is because of front page stories in The Star. And the Police Services Board only decided to allow someone to be interviewed last Wednesday? G20 was almost a year ago. Tom

G20 lawsuit to name officers when arrested man sues police

The names of seven “John Doe” officers listed in Dorian Barton’s civil suit against the Toronto Police Services will soon be revealed, his lawyers say.

Barton, a 30-year-old cookie maker, suffered a broken right arm, black eye, swollen limbs and a bruised back when he was arrested near Queen’s Park during the G20 weekend.

The Special Investigations Unit has twice reviewed police actions in his arrest, and twice said it lacked evidence to lay charges — despite photo evidence and damning testimony from a civilian witness.

Now, Barton’s $250,000 civil suit against the Toronto Police Board and seven unidentified cops is his only remaining course of action.

“We’ll name the officers,” said Clayton Ruby, Barton’s lawyer, who expects to receive the information from either the SIU or the Toronto Police Services during pleadings in the civil case.

“They have to give answers, and they’ll give us the names of the officers.”

“It will pay off,” he said, confident in his client’s case. “But that doesn’t fix the problem of public justice.”

Read on...

New rules urged for SIU probes

Officers under investigation in incidents of serious injury or death must not communicate with each other or share a lawyer, former chief justice Patrick LeSage has recommended.

LeSage issued a three-page report Thursday after a 15-month review of relations between police and the Special Investigations Unit, which probes such incidents.

The review was triggered when Ian Scott, director of the civilian watchdog agency, criticized Ontario’s police forces and unions for allowing officers to collude and conceal incriminating evidence in criminal investigations.

Speaking to reporters at Queen’s Park, LeSage said he hoped his review will address concerns that the system is failing.

“I think it will perhaps at least put aside some of the suspicions that I have heard that have occurred in the past,” he said.

Read on...

Toronto police brutality trial ‘acid test’ for Special Investigations Unit

In the past two months, Ontario’s police watchdog has faced off with Toronto’s top cop over brutality allegations at the G20 summit, charged an officer in a shooting death for the first time in 13 years and garnered unprecedented attention.

On Monday, as court proceedings begin against the officer accused of roughing up a man at the G20 – a case certain to be one of the most closely watched in the Special Investigation Unit’s history – the agency will be called on to prove to the public that it is a robust watchdog and to police that it is a dispassionate, impartial investigator.

The SIU’s profile during the G20 was just the latest example of an organization that observers say has found renewed vigour since Ian Scott, a former Crown attorney, took over as director in the fall of 2008. The civilian oversight body had just been the subject of a scathing report by Ombudsman André Marin, himself a former director, who slammed the SIU for backing down in the face of police resistance to investigations and not doing enough to bring public awareness to its cases.

Read on...

DiManno: As new allegations of G20 brutality surface, police raise their shields

By Rosie DiManno

Officer John Doe. Officer John Doe. Officer John Doe. Officer John Doe. Officer John Doe. Officer John Doe. Officer John Doe.

In the absence of actual names, these John Does could be any from among Toronto’s 5,000-plus uniformed police.

And that’s the unfortunate result of anonymity: A shadow of suspicion falling across everybody.

Dorian Barton claims he was viciously attacked by a half dozen cops during the police-initiated melee at the Queen’s Park G20 protests last June. He’s launched a $250,000 civil suit against both the Toronto Police Services Board and the as-yet unnamed officers, referenced in court documents as officers John Doe 1 through 7.

Officer Joe Doe 7 was not party to the alleged assault. This is the individual who later laid the charges — obstructing a peace officer and being involved in an unlawful protest — against Barton, although there appears to be no supporting paperwork. If such documentation existed, there would have to be a name for the arresting officer included. And that paperwork would presumably have led the Special Investigations Unit to identify him.

Read on...

The police are always lamenting the lack of public co-operation at crime scenes. Except when they are the crime scene. Tom

Police officers investigated in G20 brutality case face new allegations

Adrian Morrow

Two Toronto police officers investigated for allegedly roughing up Adam Nobody during last June’s G20 summit are at the centre of a brutality accusation in a separate case.

What’s more, the Special Investigation Unit’s file on the pair, Detective Constable Todd Storey and Detective Constable Luke Watson, may be released in court.

Mr. Nobody was taken to the ground and arrested by several officers at Queen’s Park on the afternoon of June 26. The SIU, the arm’s-length body that investigates – among other things – incidents of violent interaction with police, charged a uniformed officer allegedly involved with assault after witnesses produced videos of the incident.

The 27-year-old alleged he was also beaten a second time by two plainclothes officers, Det. Constables Storey and Watson, behind a police van away from public view. The SIU investigated both men in that incident, but ruled there was no evidence to corroborate Mr. Nobody’s contention and that his injuries – a broken nose and shattered cheekbone – had more likely been caused during his initial arrest.

Read on...

SIU seeks witnesses who saw police beat protester

Ontario's Special Investigations Unit is trying to identify the man with the bicycle in this image from a video of police officers subduing Adam Nobody on June 26, 2010 during the G20 protests in Toronto.

The province’s Special Investigations Unit said Tuesday that it’s looking for two people armed with cameras who witnessed the police beating of G20 protester Adam Nobody.

Images of the two men were captured from a YouTube video shot by web developer John Bridge.

In one frame, the SIU has singled out a young man wearing a bicycle helmet. In the other, another man wearing a baseball cap. Both are walking with bicycles.

The Star has obtained another video that shows the face of a police officer who beats Nobody with what appears to be a baton.

Read on...

A second look at G20 police assault

Rosie Dimanno

I see you, Mr. Policeman.

I see your mustachioed face, the visor so helpfully lifted up.

I see your arm — in short-sleeve uniform shirt — pumping back and forth, brutally beating.

I see the baton in that hand.

And do you, Police Chief Bill Blair, recognize this cop? Was he one of yours, pounding on Adam Nobody that awful day, June 26, 2010, when peaceful G20 protesters were assaulted by some law enforcement thugs at Queen’s Park?

If so, what do you intend to do about it now, sir?

The Toronto Star has come into possession of a new piece of videotape shot by a bystander that afternoon. It is 12 minutes and 20 seconds long — 23 seconds of which capture a vicious cop pile-on, officers pounding on Nobody, a stage designer who changed his name two years ago from Adam Trombetta for the pun value.

Read on....

Follow the link. There is new video of the assault on Adam Nobody. Tom

Blair blasts SIU over findings of ‘probable’ excessive force

Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair is lashing out at the Special Investigations Unit for saying excessive force was probably used by officers in two cases during G20 protests.

The two cases are among six investigated by the police watchdog, which then decided not to pursue charges because the officers in question could not be identified.

At the centre of Blair’s grievances, a YouTube video the SIU used as corroborating evidence of excessive force against a civilian.

Blair said the video had been “tampered with.” He said the tape had been “forensically examined” over the weekend and that it was edited in a way that offered no explanation for why force was used.

Read on...

Crimbrary applied its own forensic analysis to the video above and Crimbrary can confirm that the police officers in the video were edited into the scene by Ray Harryhausen's ghost. For more of Harryhausen's work see here. Tom