{"id":10101,"date":"2012-05-23T06:14:48","date_gmt":"2012-05-23T13:14:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=10101"},"modified":"2012-05-23T06:14:48","modified_gmt":"2012-05-23T13:14:48","slug":"police-kettling-puts-protesters-lives-at-risk-is-false-imprisonment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=10101","title":{"rendered":"Police Kettling puts protesters lives at risk – is false imprisonment"},"content":{"rendered":"

The cop who said no to \u2018kettling\u2019<\/strong>
\n23 May, 2012 – Toronto – thestar.com<\/p>\n

Amid the deluge of stories over the past two years recounting G20 police abuses, the efforts of good officers \u2014 those who kept a moral compass firmly pointed under trying circumstances \u2014 have largely gone unheralded.<\/p>\n

The OIPRD has identified at least one: Staff Sgt. Bradley Thompson of the Ontario Provincial Police.<\/p>\n

The 26-year veteran said he was led to believe there would be no kettling at the G20.<\/p>\n

But when Thompson \u2014 a unit commander during the summit \u2014 and his 40-officer team were called to Spadina Ave. and Queen St. W. that notorious Sunday in June 2010, they found hundreds of people boxed inside police lines.<\/p>\n

In a witness statement he gave to the Office of the Independent Police Review Director (OIPRD), Thompson said that as the rain poured down, he observed people of all states of dress who were pale and shaking, appearing \u201csad\u201d and \u201cdumfounded.\u201d<\/p>\n

An OIPRD investigative report into the kettling incident paraphrases Thompson as saying the people inside \u201ccouldn\u2019t believe that the police could be so \u2018inhumane\u2019 to hold them in the intersection and not allow them to use a washroom or get shelter or a coat.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thompson soon saw people he said were in \u201cbad shape\u201d \u2014 among them, two shivering 12-year-old girls. He decided it wasn\u2019t healthy for the girls to stay there, and opted to release them \u201cquietly.\u201d<\/p>\n

The report, along with others released by the police complaint\u2019s watchdog last week, offers, for the first time, on-the-ground accounts from frontline officers. The arm\u2019s-length agency, unlike others probing the G20, has the power to compel officers to speak.<\/p>\n

Because there are ongoing hearings under the Police Services Act, OPP spokeswoman Cathy Bell said Tuesday that Thompson was not able to comment. …more<\/a><\/p>\n

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The cop who said no to \u2018kettling\u2019 23 May, 2012 – Toronto – thestar.com Amid the deluge of stories over the past two years recounting G20 police abuses, the efforts of good officers \u2014 those who kept a moral compass firmly pointed under trying circumstances \u2014 have largely gone unheralded. The OIPRD has identified at more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247],"tags":[3073],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10101"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10101"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10102,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10101\/revisions\/10102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}