Nearly 100 speakers address board amid tension
Police chief defends weekend removal of protesters from downtown camp
Nearly 100 public delegations were scheduled to address the police board after a weekend of tensions between demonstrators and police and amid ongoing calls to defund Ottawa police.
The board was scheduled to approve the 2021 draft budget at its Monday meeting, which began with board members questioning why Ottawa police, in the middle of the night, moved in to remove protesters advocating for Black and Indigenous lives who had blocked a downtown intersection, just hours before they were scheduled to meet.
Chief Peter Sloly defended the service's response at Laurier Avenue and Nicholas Street on Saturday morning, which he said was dictated entirely by public safety.
The protest began on Thursday afternoon with demonstrators commandeering the intersection. It continued until 3:30 a.m. on Saturday when police moved in to dismantle the camp.
Anyone protesting in the city has a right to freedom of expression but police need to balance that charter right with public safety issues, he said. “The team that managed the response to the demonstration … was able to do so without any use of force, without any injuries to the community, the demonstrators or the service members.”
Sloly said police had a “relentless focus on everyone's safety.”
Police only became aware of the demonstration late Thursday afternoon when calls started coming into police about the blockade and received no forewarning from demonstrators, Sloly said.
“I think we all know that Nicholas and Laurier is one of the most important, one of the largest, one of the busiest and one of the most complex intersections in the city. It is vital for first responders … to be able to move between the different parts of the downtown core using that transition point,” Sloly said.
“The public safety issues were immediately clear,” Sloly said. “We saw contact between pedestrians, vehicles, demonstrators, leading to increased tension and confrontations.” One such incident captured on video and circulated on social media shows a silver sedan pushing through the intersection as people mounted on top of the vehicle to stop it from going forward.
Sloly said the first-responding officers worked to make sure protesters and other road users were safe. He said risks were increasing as demonstrators remained in position. Repeated efforts were made to relocate demonstrators to a less dangerous location, Sloly said, and police continued to make warnings.
Sloly said that organizers were not willing to move, while at the same time were making calls on social media to increase their numbers.
Police learned late Friday that meetings were planned for Saturday. “These may have been important advancements in terms of the demonstrators' concerns,” Sloly said, but they did not deal with the ongoing public safety concerns police had. Police had to move in and clear the site, he said.
While organizers called the move a “betrayal” that occurred in the “dead of night,” Sloly said the time was chosen to “lessen the impact on the entire city.”
It took police more than an hour to clear the area and “most people chose to leave.” Others, Sloly said, were arrested because they refused to leave. Any delays in their release, which too saw ongoing demonstration outside of police headquarters, came because they refused to identify themselves, Sloly said.
Chair Coun. Diane Deans told the board meeting that in scheduling a meeting with demonstrators she hoped they would see how genuine the board was in their commitment to hear their voices.
Coun. Rawlson King told his fellow board members that Saturday's actions further eroded community trust in the service. Member Daljit Nirman, too, questioned how police could justify their actions.
The board continued to hear public thoughts on the proposed 2021 budget. Nearly 200 public delegations (some have been repeat speakers) have been made to the board since this summer asking to move money from the service or reform the force. Deans was clear to speakers even before they began Monday that she will not support that call to cut or freeze the budget.
“I do believe that is a future possibility, but I cannot support you in that request in this time,” Deans said. “The work that we want to take on requires funding and we want (to get it) right.”
Indeed, board member Robert Swaita called it a “transitional budget for better things to come.”
Coun. Carol-Anne Meehan told delegations that the board is committed to change but that “change is going to take a lot of time.”
Astor Li, who works at a criminal defence law firm in the city, told the board she witnesses first-hand the trauma and violence the system inflicts on people.
“Well-trained police are still going to be arresting people for mostly low-level offences and the burden will continue to fall primarily on communities of colour because that is how the system is designed to operate,” Li said. “Even the best apples surveil, arrest and detain millions of people every year whose primary crime is they are poor or homeless or have a disability.”
Robin Browne, from advocacy group 613/819 Black Hub, had previously offered conditional support for the draft budget but said he has since changed his mind and wants the $13.2-million budget increase to go instead to public health.
Browne cited the removal of peaceful protesters on Saturday morning as one of the reasons, calling it “an act of bad faith.”
Browne also said that Black community groups find it difficult to support additional funding for more neighbourhood resource teams, which the service says will improve community relations. “Removing, arresting and charging peaceful protesters supports the many Black community voices that say NRTs are just lipstick on the pig of the OPS's real aim — the continued criminalization of poverty and dissent.”
The board had not yet voted on the proposed budget by press time.