Disconnect

In response to the Toronto police request to send in their videos and photos about the G20 protests., Victoria Times-Colonist journalist Paul Manley says:

The only footage I have of any violence or criminal activity during the G20 protests is of police perpetrating that violence. The police are welcome to that footage but they won't be able to identify many of the perpetrators because the officers were masked and had their badge numbers hidden.

This isn't, of course, what police had in mind at all -- has anyone seen any sign whatsoever that police care how they acted or who they hurt?
Chet and Alison typify the reaction of many Canadians to the "most wanted" swagger. Chet writes:

what we've seen is an enormous mass arrest . . . which seems to have failed to net its ostensible targets, and which violated the civil rights of hundreds of ordinary citizens. This looks to me like an astonishing failure. Yet, all the top officials are swearing up and down that everything's fine.

The disconnect will continue to increase between what the police and politicians are saying about the G20 "thugs and anarchists" and what we are finding out about the ordinary Canadians who got arrested for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, like the "one-legged anarchist" and the "bubble thug" -- hardly such threats to public safety that they had to be arrested and thrown into cells without phone calls, food or water. Hundreds of Canadians gathered in cities across Canada today to continue the demand a public inquiry, and more stories are being told all the time -- see the Post-G20 Bulletin and G20 Justice.