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share your own firsthand reports, witness accounts, photos, videos, etc, with The Toronto Truth Free Media Blog — A media source for the people, by the people.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGp5ieedBHU
Cassandra J; Arrested, Cagemates forced to urinate on floor
Name: Cassandra J
Occupation: Journalism Student
Purpose of Attendance
Protesting international poverty on Sunday
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The story of Elena Smith
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CREMRal4N30
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As recounted by a journalist of the Globe and Mail…
“An officer there had tried to grab my cellphone. Other officers had crowded around. They boisterously mocked the psychiatric patients coming out of the mental-health hospital behind me…..”
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A new resident of toronto, an innocent bystander is detained
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ntcr5E_LE7M
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Andrew S. , Beaten and arrested as an innocent bystander
“The ride was very long – I soon realized we weren’t going to detention center as we were on the highway. We ended up at the police station in Scarborough at which point they released us with no charges and were kicked out into the rain being told that if we stay we’ll be charged with trespassing.”
http://g20stories.wordpress.com/2010/06/30/andrew_s/
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http://backofthebook.ca/2010/07/01/how-i-got-arrested-and-abused-at-the-g20-in-toronto-canada/3476/
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THE TRUE STORY OF THE G20 GUITAR HERO
THE TRUE STORY OF THE G20 GUITAR HERO — GOOGLE G20 TOP HAT
Below is the firsthand account of the individual assaulted in this video. This is a dear friend who endured a shocking ordeal for 32 hours in the illegal dentention camp over the G20 weekend after being assaulted and arrested without cause.
This is his story. I will be posting more as I hear and meet them….
Repost this to everyone you know, become the media and take back your voice!
NOTE:
keep all comments positive, supportive and relative to the content of the posting. This is a human being, your brother and my friend. What’s done is done, there’s no sense in “Told you so’s” because now WE decide what happens next.
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A G20 experience.
Share
Monday, 28 June 2010 at 15:00
**edit I tagged a few people so you might repost to others.
**edit Everybody eventually finds out anyway. I’m brett, don’t feel like rewriting it to fit.
This is an entirely true firsthand account of my friend’s experience with the police at the G20 summit last weekend. It’s not on his facebook because he wants to avoid being known as someone who was arrested. I transcribed and edited this for him. The only thing I’ve changed is the names of the people involved.
Brett had been made curious by his roomate’s description of the protests going on around the events of the G20 summit of nations. Having never actually attended a protest himself and having completed all his errands for the day, Brett figured he would spend a half hour looking around down at the protest zone. He’d been warned that the police arrest practically everyone they can, but seeing as how he wouldn’t stay long he thought that it wouldn’t matter. Brett loaded his keys and cell phone into his pocket and took off on his bike to Queen’s Park.
Having been hungover from the previous evening’s debauchery, Brett didn’t care to stay very long. He parked his bike and locked it up around a tree. Drawn in by the crowd and noise, he took several photos of the protesters. There were several that had been pepper sprayed. Medics tended to some injuries. One girl had a badly broken arm from being clubbed by a riot stick. A young Indian man was bleeding from his nose and face.
Brett noticed that there were about an equal or greater number of police (some bicycle, some undercover, most in riot gear) than there were protesters. This police presence, he thought, mirrored that of the city in general. They were everywhere and from everywhere – some Barrie police and even some from Alberta. He began taking photos of them as well. After some time of phototaking and observation, Brett concluded that they arrested anyone who stood out from the crowd or spoke up. Of course, some of the speakers were rude to the police and boisterous in general. However, in his experience, not a single protester was as extreme as being violent or riotous. Despite the generally peaceful nature of the protesters, the police seemingly arbitrarily employed tear gas on the crowd a number of times.
Feeling the need to calm himself from the excitement and promote a peaceful image in the midst of the chaos, Brett decided he would meditate. He did so far enough back in a sparse crowd from the front line that he needn’t be concerned by arrest attempts. After 5 minutes of sitting on the side of a hill in meditation, he opened his eyes to the sound of sudden movement and an image of being rushed by 5 police in riot gear. He also noticed that being arrested is not very nice and that the police try to hurt you into submission even if you’ve already given up as dead weight. Handcuffed, he was escorted by two very rude undercover police officers to an area set up to process the arrested. One of them punched him in the face for asking why he’d been arrested. His arrest time: 3:30PM Saturday. Waiting in the back of a paddy wagon, others began to filter in. All their stories seemed the same: they had no idea what the hell had hit them, or why. One young man was almost killed by being trampled by two mounted unit. Finally, in the back of the wagon in the solitary confinement cell there appeared a young man by the name of Jake. Jake’s face looked like someone had tried to murder him. His face was bashed up. His nose was badly broken. There was blood covering his face. Both his eyes were bruised. There were cuts down his arms and his shirt was soaked in blood. He claimed that he had no interest in the protest and that he was just trying to escape. He claimed that the police were very cruel and mean to him. He said that they had said that it was funny he was being hurt and that they didn’t care. They laughed in his face, and then two of them kicked him in the face countless times. Handcuffed face down he was also beaten with a riot stick.
The group was loaded into a bus with others after waiting for almost 2 hours. Again, it seemed that everyone had the same story: they had no idea what the hell had hit them, or why. One man who was arrested had only one leg. Everyone got to the point of joking. Escorted by police, they were all driven to the temporary detainment center at the Toronto film studio at 629 Eastern avenue. There, with a few exceptions, everyone’s story was the same: they had no idea what the hell had hit them, or why.
Brett told me that processing takes a very long time. He spent 2 hours waiting to be moved to a cell where he waited another hour to be searched. Expectedly, during a protest situation, the police do not perform formalities like reading rights or proceed to formally arrest anyone. Searches are performed on camera. Then, waiting begins. The suffering, as I am told, is in the waiting. If you are patient, you suffer less. Brett did his best to meditate during these times.
After being searched Brett was kept in a larger cage with a few others for 2 hours. He was very tired at this point. He was then moved to a smaller cage, about 6′x6′ where he waited overnight with 5 others. There is only cold, hard concrete floor. The air was very, very cold. The lights were very, very bright which made sleep difficult in conjunction with the temperature. Females, it seemed, got blankets. The police here were not entirely inhumane. The steel cages seemed to have a lot of money put into them. Brett remembers remarking that despite having spent 1 billion dollars on security, there seemed to be practically nothing spent on people’s well being.
Brett listened to the stories of others. Many people suffered the humiliating, expensive and painful fate of having their teeth kicked in. Cheeks and noses were broken. To the attestion of his anecdotes, many police said totally unnecessarily cruel things to those they arrested (Brett could not recall specifically). Brett was thankful he was so lucky. The police fed the detainees nothing but cheese sandwiches and small cups of water every 4 hours. Overtired, sore, cold, beaten, some verbally abused, thirsty and hungry, and kept in a confined cage for hours upon hours, they waited to be released.
After waiting a total of 16 hours, Brett was allowed to make a phone call to a legal aid. Like most of the others, he was charged with a breach of the peace. After making his phone call, he was sent back where he suffered from the cold and was ignored by officers who refused to answer his question, though a few of them were helpful. He was moved again to a larger cell (this time with a washroom) with everyone in his cell. This became a living hell because of the intolerable level of noise generated by detainees thrashing in their cages. Bolted on the exterior of the cage is sheet metal. When thrashed against by a more than one perturbed detainee on an interior of stiff cage wire, the sound is nicely amplified. Done by practically all the cages except yours, Brett spent most of the time trying to sleep on the concrete with his ears plugged. He was lucky to be in a cage with the quiet ones.
Eventually, the pain of having to endure a concrete floor went numb. The worst thing in his experience was being unable to sleep due to the lights and the noise of yelling, chanting and cage rattling. Brett stopped eating the cheese sandwiches because he was dejected from being ignored and sick of the taste of, “those fucking cheese sandwiches”. He waited into the day where people eventually began to be released. Despite Brett’s recognition that there were a large volume of people being arrested, it was clearly irresponsible in his eyes for the police to not have enough officers assigned to the thing that made everyone suffer so much (even the cops): paperwork. Paperwork takes forever and keeps the police from doing anything. Though it was a slow process, one by one, the detainees were released at intervals that spaced hours. Eventually, Brett and one other brave young man began to lose it. Though they never once disrespected anyone, their persistent attempts to have their files reviewed for release seemed to finally take effect. They were the last two in his cell. Two french protesters were put in and then Brett and his cellmate were taken to the release area. They were released at about 12:30AM Monday morning to a crowd of people with food, jackets, bottled water, and rides home.
Brett was held as a detainee for a total of 32 hours.
Brett was held for 32 hours for meditating peacefully at a peaceful protest.
Brett holds no grudges against the police. He still maintains that “we are all just people”.
I am understating the horrid description of the conditions my friend spent in detainment. You will hear more from others soon I am sure.
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a few personal notes on this post:
The scary redheaded cop and large male meanacingly waving the baton and jumping around gangster style can also been veiwed here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XgEI5dCrE
Assisting in instigating a confrontation in the crowd and then making several arrests, dragging people violently behind the line, as well allowing at least one of the supposed “BLACK BLOCK” members behind that line WITH THEM.
Toronto Truth 