David Fenton guilty of two of three counts of unnecessary exercise of authority and one of two counts of discreditable conduct. He was exonerated of two different costs.
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The decision was handed down Tuesday.
Hamilton says Fenton is committed to serving the public but has a lack of understanding of the public’s right to protest. Police were “caught flat-footed”.
He added: “This determination to order mass arrests demonstrated a lack of information of the suitable to protest”.
The judge noted that Fenton had an unblemished record and that he took his role as commander during the G20 summit seriously.
Fenton and Hamilton ruled today that the officer is guilty of discreditable conduct and unnecessary exercise of authority.
The fees stemmed from Fenton’s orders to blockade protesters in so-called “kettles” on two separate events.
After a small group of protesters broke some windows and set fire to police cars, Fenton ordered police to surround and arrest hundreds of protesters in a strategy called “kettling.” Fenton ordered officers to “kettle”, or field in, protesters in entrance of the Novotel lodge on the Esplanade, and greater than 260 individuals have been arrested and brought to a makeshift prisoner processing centre.
The second incident occurred the next day when Fenton ordered police to keep several people standing at a downtown intersection for hours despite thunderstorms that left them soaked. “He deeply regrets that some of those decisions led to the arrest of people who were not involved in the violence and that some people were held in the rain for hours”. Fenton’s lawyer said his client was only trying to provide the security the situation appeared to call for and that they did not agree with, but accepted, the results of the hearing. He s as “terrorists”.
“Toronto deteriorated into a sense of lawlessness”, Fenton testified at the hearing in December, saying police had intelligence indicating protesters had planned to come to Toronto to kill or stab police officers. It’s those that Fenton was likely targetting with his tactics.
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But lawyers representing complainants, which include some of those kettled, argued Fenton’s actions displayed a “flagrant and reckless disregard for fundamental Charter rights and freedoms”.
