acquittal of OPS constable Daniel Montsion<\/a> in the death of Abrirahman Abdi. <\/p>\n\n\n\nBut, unlike many people, Black people I know weren\u2019t surprised at the OPS response. On the contrary, we saw the OPS acting exactly as expected. That\u2019s because the OPS, like all police forces in Canada, has always had one mandate: protect the powerful – or at least don\u2019t get in their way. And the thousands of mostly white convoy protesters, and the organizers with their millions in the bank, were the powerful.\u00a0The young Black and Indigenous protesters who blocked the Ottawa intersection in November 2020 weren\u2019t. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, despite knowing that the young protesters had a meeting arranged with city councillors and Ottawa Police Service Board members at noon Saturday, that would end the protest, the Ottawa police moved in around 3am Saturday morning and forcibly removed the protesters, arresting and charging 12 of them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Those charges hung over their heads for a year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
When asked why the OPS appeared to handle the two events very differently, Chief Sloly said the two situations were different, and that he didn\u2019t see a connection with the scale, size and nature of what police faced with the convoy protest. So, the Chief was basically saying, \u201cYou can\u2019t compare the two events because the convoy protest was way bigger.\u201d However, saying the convoy was bigger is<\/em> a comparison so the Chief contradicted himself in the same sentence. But, more importantly, we can<\/em> compare and what we\u2019re all seeing is that the double standard couldn\u2019t be more blatant. Clearly, the OPS believes some people have more right to protest than others.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAll the OPS could have really said about the Nov. 2020 demonstration is that it posed multiple potential<\/em> safety issues because no one actually said that demo made them feel unsafe. However, there were many reports of people saying the convoy demo made them feel<\/em> unsafe or actually<\/em> unsafe.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe convoy blocked Joline Mallet\u2019s 4-yr-old son Liam from getting to his brain cancer treatments. Downtown residents\u2019 homes were vandalized for having Pride flags. Journalists, unhoused people and small business owners were harassed by protesters, some of whom carried confederate flags. Protesters parked, danced and urinated on the War Memorial and kept residents up by blowing their horns well into the night. And the convoy caused businesses in the downtown core, vaccination clinics and an elementary school to close. The Ottawa Coalition to End Violence Against Women said members of the protest were overtly threatening and intimidating women, people from marginalized communities, and those working in precarious low-paid employment. They said they heard accounts of young women being followed, almost run over, and threatened with rape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When challenged about the poor police response, the OPS said they considered it a success because there were no riots, injuries, or deaths. This bears repeating: their measure of success wasn\u2019t whether women got harassed, or unhoused people got beat up or whether people were too afraid to leave their house to go to work. As long as there were no riots it was all good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In defence of the police, Diane Deans, who both chairs the police Board and is running for Mayor, said we must trust in the police service and their \u201cgreater experience with risk and threat assessments and that they make decisions based on the information they have in the moment, with public safety clearly in the centre.” Simply avoiding riots isn\u2019t centreing public safety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The OPS response to the convoy backs up calls to defund and eventually abolish the OPS. This is because the main question people ask about abolishing the police is, \u201cWhat about the murderers? What about the rapists? Who are we going to call for then?\u201d Well, up until last week, people could have asked, \u201cWhat if thousands of angry protesters occupy downtown Ottawa and harass people for a week? Who are we going to call then?\u201d Well, now it\u2019s crystal clear who people shouldn\u2019t<\/em> call: the Ottawa police.<\/p>\n\n\n\nEnough is enough. It\u2019s time to start the process of abolishing all Canadian police forces by defunding them and starting real community conversations about what systems we can create to truly make us all safer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As I watched people attack the U.S. Capitol last January 6, I, like many Canadians, asked myself: could anything like that happen here? Well, this past week, we got our answer when we watched thousands of anti-vaccine mandate demonstrators occupy downtown Ottawa for a week – while the Ottawa police did almost nothing to stop […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[166,165,58],"tags":[37,167,64],"class_list":["post-1345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-covid","category-demos","category-police","tag-covid19","tag-demos","tag-police"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/box5353.temp.domains\/~dabizblo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/box5353.temp.domains\/~dabizblo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/box5353.temp.domains\/~dabizblo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/box5353.temp.domains\/~dabizblo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/box5353.temp.domains\/~dabizblo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1345"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/box5353.temp.domains\/~dabizblo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1355,"href":"http:\/\/box5353.temp.domains\/~dabizblo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1345\/revisions\/1355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/box5353.temp.domains\/~dabizblo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/box5353.temp.domains\/~dabizblo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/box5353.temp.domains\/~dabizblo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}