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"Catch & Release"
by Nathan Adler
7/16/2010 12:11:00 PM
Jail experience harrowing
by Skylar Radojkovic, Owen Sound Sun Times
7/13/2010
Bad News at Bancroft Avenue
by Dylan C. Robertson
7/13/2010
Arrested And Jailed In Toronto – A G20 Protestor’s Firsthand Account
by Sarah Pruyn
7/7/2010
Of my illegal detention (with 899 others) and the G20 protests
by Ben Powless, Organizer, Defenders of the Land
7/5/2010
Independent Journalist, Daniel Adam MacIsaac
by Ali Mustafa
7/5/2010
Ashamed
by Tracey Cox
7/3/2010
"The story of my unjust arrest" - Lacy MacAuley
by Lacy MacAuley
7/1/2010 10:32:00 PM
Without provocation, they attacked our peaceful protest”
by Adrian Naylor
7/1/2010
One woman held by police 'didn't even know what the G20 was'
by Alison Hendersen
7/1/2010
“They were going to release us until this one cop came and saw that we had the legal number written on our arms. She then said that we were elegible for arrest.”
by Anonymous
7/1/2010
“several police officers lining the west side of the street had removed their names and badge numbers”
by Anonymous
7/1/2010
“they were detaining me until I told them where I was staying in Toronto”
by Anonymous
7/1/2010
“They demanded identification and searches of bags and persons, without cause, and under the threat of physical violence, detention and legal action”
by Anonymous
7/1/2010
“I was beat roughly 20 times with batons”
by Anonymous
7/1/2010
“blood poured out of his head, down his face and on to my friends jacket, dripping on my pants”
by Bethany Horne
7/1/2010
Queen & John Eyewitness Report
by Emily B.
7/1/2010
untitled
by James
7/1/2010
“I cannot stress this enough: it was a completely peaceful protest. People were being arrested in a brutal, violent, and seemingly random way.”
by Johanna Lewis
7/1/2010
“I was there as a monitor for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. . . like many others, I was never given an opportunity to remove myself from the intersection”
by Julia Croome
7/1/2010
“It is important to note the horrid conditions in the jail. The cells, which were over-glorified dog cages, were often over-crowded.”
by Maximilian Pacheco
7/1/2010
“I have been having nightmares”
by Natasha Borris
7/1/2010
“At no time during the detention was anyone in my cage allowed to speak with a lawyer”
by Philip Boyle
7/1/2010
“police said they had the right to conduct these searches”
by Robert Bertuzzi
7/1/2010
what happened last night at queen and spadina g20
by Rodrigo Bravo
7/1/2010
Violence on Toronto streets for G20
by Ryan Bolton
7/1/2010
“Five officers grabbed me, hit me repeatedly with batons and fists, threw me to the concrete, crushed knees into my cheek bone, back and thighs, dragged me on the pavement and put handcuffs on me”.
by Seamus Wolfe
7/1/2010
“I couldn’t sleep last night. I took the day off work, I’m so upset”
by Sherry B. Good
7/1/2010
“I saw many injured detainees with arms in slings and faces bruised and swollen being led quickly with their ankles chained”
by Taiva Tegler
7/1/2010
“In a matter of seconds, without warning, we were trapped. Our questions were met with blank stares, our panic with more pushing, complaints with arrest”
by Terra Dafoe
7/1/2010
“we were staging a peaceful protest when riot police surrounded us on all sides and would not let us leave”
by Trevor Grant
7/1/2010
Of a million G20 stories in this taken city, this was mine
If anything, there was less black being worn on Queen than usual
by Tabatha Southey
7/1/2010
Personal Experience
by Greg Stones
7/1/2010
'Unlawful Assembly'
by Syl Grady
7/1/2010
untitled
by Karen Nickel
7/1/2010
untitled
by Anonymous
7/1/2010
Mourning Canadian democracy
by Roberta McQuade
7/1/2010
untitled
by Kiel Widmeyer
7/1/2010
In His Own Words (Interview Transcript)
by Jesse Rosenfeld
7/1/2010
untitled
by Neil Stanton
7/1/2010
Singer Marc Mysterio caught in Toronto riots during video shoot
by Marc Mysterio
7/1/2010
Thorold, Ontario Amputee Has His Artificial Leg Ripped Off By Police And Is Slammed In Makeshift Cell During G20 Summit – At Least One Ontario MPP Calls The Whole Episode “Shocking”
by John Pruyn
7/1/2010
How I Got Arrested and Abused at the G20 in Toronto, Canada
by Tommy Taylor
note: photos/videos are not included in this but all text is original. To read this story with images, please click on 'Source' above
7/1/2010
Man and family being picked up from work brutality attacked by police
by Anonymous
7/1/2010
and this time, it won't be me.
by A Canadian Serviceman
7/1/2010
Fear and mayhem in Toronto
by Lawrence McCurry
7/1/2010
My Experience
by Jesse Miller
7/1/2010
Inside Torontanamo
by Matt Shultz
7/1/2010
Beaten by police before being arrested
by Andrew Stakhov
7/1/2010
Don't breathe or I'll kill you
by Facebook User: Drew Ferguson
7/1/2010
“I was held for 21 hours for peacefully protesting.”
by Marc Gleeson
6/30/2010
Thugs take over Queen's Park
by Matthew Webb
6/29/2010 10:08:00 AM
How I Ended Up In A G20 Jail
by Michael Talbot
6/29/2010
Union Station Washroom
by Andrei Poliakov
6/28/2010 5:30:00 PM
I was just harassed by Toronto Police
by Mike Brock, Western Standard
6/28/2010
Sonia's Story
by Sonia Zawitkowski
6/27/2010
Luke's Story
by Luke Keeler
6/27/2010
Someone call 911!
by Eda Martinovic
6/27/2010
Selwyn arrested at G20 protest
by Selwyn Firth, Mayoral Candidate
6/27/2010
Civil Rights, Interrupted: A G20 Arrest
by Mark Donald
6/26/2010
My Story - Help ID This Criminal!
by Wyndham Bettencourt-McCarthy
6/26/2010
Pre-G20 Atrocities
by Sean Salvati
6/23/2010
Eye Witness Accounts
"Catch & Release"
by: Nathan Adler
The night of Saturday, June 26th, I was walking home to my friend’s house, from the Go bus station down at Union Station, Downtown Toronto. I had left my friend Kurt Pabst (also from Orangeville) at the Go Bus Station to catch a bus back to Hamilton, where he is currently living and going to school. I was walking because there was no TTC service Downtown, no subway, no street-car or bus service, and their weren’t even any taxi’s on the streets. So I walked.
I wasn’t too concerned, because everywhere I had gone that weekend, there had been cops and protesters, and people walking the streets. I wasn’t really a protester, more of a Protestor Tourist, who couldn’t help but see what was happening on the streets of downtown Toronto. A lot of my friends live downtown, and there was no TTC service, so anyone who had to get anywhere was walking. I saw a lot of smashed windows and lot of people walking around, and thousands of Police Officers, but not a lot “violent protesters”. There was almost an equal number of protestors and police officers, and the sheer numbers of police in Riot-Geer, seemed out of all proportion to the mostly tame protestors I saw, singing songs, chanting slogans, and flashing peace signs.
On our way to visit my friend Emily McClung, we found a police car that had been vandalized, sitting in the middle of the road, and couldn’t figure out why it had been abandoned there, and left to the mercy of the protestors. It was almost as if they were inviting trouble. The City of Toronto had long since banned anyone from parking on the streets in, preparation of up-coming G20 summit, in order to prevent such vandalism.
Further down the road we ran into a wall of Cops barricading the road, asking us to “Leave The Area”, we turned back to find a different route, only to find another wall of Cops in Full Riot-Geer advancing towards us while smashing their shields. People began to get scared, panic, and then get angry. “Where are we supposed to go?” they screamed, the cops had caught mostly curious onlookers in their net, and these people didn’t want any trouble, until the police pointed and directed the crowd to a small exit route they had left open.
“What’s with the scare tactic’s?” we wondered, “Why block the road, then box us in”? It was almost as if the Police were hoping some Protestor would be dumb enough to be antagonized into a Direct Confrontation, and then were disappointed when no one wanted to start anything, and so they let us go. None of the Curious On-lookers wanted a confrontation with police in full Riot-Gear. So we escaped the net and continued on our way.
Earlier we had been having lunch in a restaurant, when we had seen a group of 30-35 Black-Clad Protestors running away from this area, so were not surprised to see all the smashed windows. The news was currently reporting on the destructive “Black Block” on the television, and the restaurant was mostly empty, with only a few soccer fans sitting in the back watching the game. What we couldn’t figure out was why they hadn’t been arrested, when there were at least 200 police officers in Full Riot-Geer standing at every intersection we crossed. How had they gotten away? They stood-out from the crowd, of regular protesters and passerby’s, cause of the fact that they were dressed all in black.
So walking home from the Go Station down at Union, I headed East along the Esplanade and encountered a group of protestors outside the Novatel Hotel, I wasn’t concerned because there had been protestors everywhere all day, and none of them were rowdy or wearing black, so I decided I would continue going in the direction I wanted to go. This was around 10:00PM. Unfortunately I hit a road-block in the form of three rows of Cops in Full Riot-Gear blocking the way. In response, the Protestors sat down, flashed the peace sign at the cops, and began singing “Give Peace A Chance”. In response, the Riot-Geared Police Officers marched forward smashing their shields, the Protestors quickly got up and backed away when they realized they weren’t going to stop just because their were people in the way. People started to leave, going away from the police, when from around the corner their came three rows of Cops in Full-Riot gear smashing their shields and marching forward, sandwiching the protestors between two walls of cops, with the Novatel hotel on one side, and a row of buildings on the other. People had nowhere to go, and this time there was no avenue of escape. Everything became very quiet, the protestors were scared, and did not want a confrontation, so they became silent, waiting to see what the cops would do. If they had been allowed to leave the area, they would have left, and if there were any warnings given by the police, I didn’t hear them.
The Police in Riot Gear began snatching people from the edges of the crowd, three Riot-Gears lunging out and grabbing someone, and then dragging them away. Everyone began squishing together in the middle to get away, but there was nowhere to go, and the people in the middle were getting crushed. A few girls started crying because they were scared, the Police kept marching forward, forcing the crowd closer and closer together, and snatching people from the edges of the crowd. A Cop yelled out: “You are all under Arrest. You will All be arrested. Please be patient”.
Things settled down, and it took the next Five Hours for the cops to arrest everyone, what seemed to me to be about 900 or so people who had been on the street, some people getting bored or impatient and volunteering themselves to get arrested because they were tired of waiting. I was one of the last ones to get arrested around 1:30 or 2:00AM. Officer Jones put plastic handcuff’s on me, searched me, took away all my possessions and put them into a plastic bag, asked me questions as he filled out a form, took my photograph, put metal hand-cuffs on me, and escorted me to a paddy-wagon with one other protestor. They drove us to a make-shift prison on Eastern Avenue, and left us in the paddy-wagon for several hours. I had to go pee really bad by this time, because it had been hours without access to a bathroom, and one of guys on the other side of the divider in the paddy wagon was having a panic attack. When he begged an officer to be let out, saying he was claustrophobic and hadn’t taken his meds, the officer responded by taunting him and saying, “if you can’t handle it now wait until we get you into a cell, it’s going to be ten times worse”.
Eventually they let us out, replaced the metal handcuffs with plastic ones, and escorted me to a cell with about 28 other guys. Luckily this cell had a port-a-potty in one corner (no door, or toilet paper), but some cells didn’t have a toilet, and some were more crowded, with as much as 40 people in one cell. There was enough room to sit down when some people were standing, cement floor painted fluorescent green for Green-Screening technique. Bright fluorescent lights like a convenience store, cold air conditioning making even those wearing jackets feel cold, and the constant sound of people singing, chanting, hurling insults at the cops, yelling to friends in far off cells, or smashing the sheet metal walls between the cells to make a clashing sound like thunder. It was impossible to sleep. One cop smirked at us every time he walked past our cell, he seemed to get a kick out of us being in jail. Someone asked an officer for water, he said “No” with out even turning his head to look at us. After several hours of escalating demands for water, which became louder and louder until almost every prisoner in the building was chanting “Water! Water! Water!” they finally came around to hand out Dixie-sized Styrofoam cups of water, and people settled down.
Later they came around with sandwiches, small hamburger buns with soy cheese. The Kids (mostly university aged young people) in the cell occupied themselves with a long rambling philosophical discussion on the nature of reality, the universe, civilization, and society. A few people, who seemed to be chosen at random, were selected to be “processed” for release over the first few hours. There was no clock, and when they came around with more bread and water, we knew it was morning. No one else was released for “processing” until around 2:30pm the next day. I was chosen second, they patted me down again, escorted me to an office, informed me that I was being charged with “Breach of the Peace”, and asked me if I had been “Protesting all day, yesterday”, and if I was a member of the “Black Block”. “No, I wasn’t even protesting”, I said, “I was just walking home”, and “and my shirt is blue, not black”. They took away my belt, shoes and glasses and escorted me to another holding cell, “Catch and release” they said. I waited for another half-an-hour in the holding cell, and at around 4:30 they decided to release me.
“Stand on the marks on the floor”, they told me, but I didn’t have my glasses on and couldn’t see where the marks were. They grabbed me roughly and started dragging me because I wasn’t moving fast enough, so I yelled: “I don’t have my fucking glasses on! You took them away! I can’t see the marks”.
They photographed me again, and led me all disheveled, holding my pants from falling down, outside by the arm and to a turn-style, with hundreds or so cops staring at me from either side, and a large crowd of people standing outside with cameras and video camera’s, cheering and clapping each time a prisoner was released. I made a direct bee-line out of the center of attention, and walked the three blocks to my friends house, where I had been heading before I was arrested and detained for 18 hours.
I was too scared to join the protest going on outside, because I was afraid I would get arrested again. Even though I wanted too. I had a shower, and then I went to a bar to have a hamburger and a beer. It was an exhausting experience, and I lost all respect I had for Police Officers.