Weekend gatherings planned in Toronto,
Six gatherings planned for Friday, Saturday, expected to be peaceful
JIM RANKIN AND DAVID RIDER
More protests and gatherings are expected in Toronto in the wake of the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the death of Regis Korchinski-Paquet in the presence of Toronto police.
According to police, three events are scheduled in Toronto Friday with three more planned for Saturday.
On Friday, a rally is set to begin at Yonge and Bloor Streets at 12:30 p.m., followed by another at 4 p.m. at Yonge-Dundas Square. A candlelight vigil is also scheduled to begin at 6 p.m. at Nathan Phillips Square.
Police are expecting several protests to merge Saturday afternoon, including one staged to begin at Trinity-Bellwoods Park, police spokesperson Meaghan Gray said.
An online notice for the Trinity-Bellwoods rally calls for a “peaceful protest against the deaths of unarmed Black people at the hands of police officers.” At a Thursday-afternoon news conference, Toronto police chief Mark Saunders stressed to reporters that protests have been peaceful to date.
Asked how he felt in this moment, as a police chief and a Black man, Saunders said: “I understand it.”
“Anti-Black racism — it’s not words, it’s reality,” he said, adding it’s important to talk about the history of racism.
“The incremental change is why people are so angry right now,” Saunders said. “There has to be bigger change”
Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit is investigating the
May 27 death of Korchinski-Paquet, an Afro-Indigenous woman who fell her 24th-floor balcony while police were inside her family’s apartment.
Her family had called police for help in what the SIU has referred to as a domestic situation and the family says was a mental health crisis. Knia Singh, a lawyer and the family’s spokesperson, said KorchinskiPaquet’s relatives need to know how a call for help resulted in the 29-year-old’s death.
After the family cancelled a Wednesday interview with the SIU, the watchdog called on Toronto police to fight leaks to the media.
By law, police cannot discuss details of an incident under investigation by the SIU, the civilian agency tasked with investigating police incidents that result in serious injury and death, or involve allegations of sexual assault against an officer.
On Wednesday, Gray said the service takes the unauthorized release of information seriously and is conducting an internal investigation.
According to the SIU, Toronto police officers were inside the family apartment when they “observed a woman on the balcony” and a “short time later, the woman fell from the balcony to the ground floor.”
Korchinski-Paquet’s death came two days after Floyd, 46, died while being handcuffed and restrained by four Minneapolis police officers, all of whom are now facing criminal charges.
A massive, peaceful march protesting the Floyd and Korchinski-Paquet cases was held in Toronto last Saturday.
In a virtual town hall on Thursday night with deputy mayor Michael Thompson, Mayor John Tory addressed the “anguish and hurt and emotional fatigue … that we have seen in response to events taking place both in the United States and in Canada with regards to anti-Black racism and anti-Indigenous racism.
“I’m proud of the way Toronto responded to this last Saturday,” said Tory, referring to that day’s peaceful demonstration “because what we had was a typically made-in-Toronto response that affirmed our values and affirmed that we know we have a problem.
“Anti-Black racism is still a reality in this city as much as some people will pretend that we’re doing so much better than the United States that we can be self-righteous about this. We can’t. It’s a reality here.” Thompson, who is a City councillor, said Thursday he is “deeply concerned” Korchinski-Paquet’s death.
“At a time when deep racial tension dominates the news media, did Miss Korchinski-Paquet race play a role in this terrible outcome? Were the attending officers adequately trained and equipped to handle someone with mental health issues? The answers we need to bring public closure to the racially and emotionally charged incident has not been made public by the SIU or the police.”