Good afternoon, Chair and members of the committee.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to come before you to speak today.
I am the Chief of the Toronto Police Service. The Toronto Police Service was a member of the integrated security team, which has already been articulated to you by Deputy Commissioner Beechey. I won't repeat his explanation about how that operated.
I have come before you today to give you the opportunity to ask me any questions with respect to the operational policing decisions that were made in the city of Toronto over the course of the entire G-8 and G-20 summits events.
During that time, responsibility for policing the city of Toronto was--and it remained--the responsibility of the Toronto Police Service in partnership with members of the integrated security unit. We saw ourselves as possessing three responsibilities.
The first responsibility was public safety: the safety of our citizens and the maintenance of public peace and the rule of law to prevent crime and to protect our citizens.
In addition, we also shared responsibility with our summit partners to protect the summit site, to facilitate the movement of internationally protected persons and other summit participants throughout the city, and to work generally to maintain the safety and the security of that site.
Finally, a very significant responsibility for the Toronto Police Service was the facilitation of lawful, peaceful protest. Over the course of the 10 days of the summit event, there were many protests that took place in Toronto that were lawful and peaceful. We were able to work with the people who had organized those events to maintain a peaceful environment so that people could come forward, express their political dissent, express their opinions, and exercise their democratic rights.
Unfortunately, as the week progressed, and on Friday evening in particular, we saw a greater threat emerging from within those lawful peaceful protests.
Mr. Chair, I have brought some images here today that I think may be of assistance to members of this committee. I know that you have heard testimony about and many references in the media and from others to the black bloc. With your permission, I thought it might be of value to you to see some images of the black bloc as it presented itself in Toronto.