The past couple of weeks have been chock full of bad press for the Toronto Police (TPS). First there was the independent report conducted by former Supreme Court judge Frank Iacobucci that suggested, in the wake of Sammy Yatim’s killing, Toronto cops start wearing body-worn cameras, while also beefing up their taser supply, so that police can hopefully resist the urge to fire their guns into “people in crisis.”
Then, shortly after, news broke that police chief Bill Blair did not have his contract renewed by the police services board. Many credit the board’s choice of not renewing Blair’s contract to two major scandals: one, his inconclusive surveillance of the city’s crack smoking mayor, and two, TPS’s handling of the G20 protests in Toronto. Blair spun the G20 as best as he could, given that he waspersonally open to discussing it in public (after, of course, refusing to provide an apology) and willing to pursue disciplinary action against his most aggressive officers. But the lasting scars of the TPS’s illegal, mass arrests have not fully healed.
As revealed by a new, independent documentary called What World Do You Live In?–and as first reported by sometimes VICE Canada contributor Rachel Browne for Maclean’s in late July–surveillance footage of the temporary detention centre erected by the Toronto Police to house the G20 detainees “confirms security cameras were filming the rooms where people were strip-searched.”
An exclusive video clip given to VICE by the director of What World Do You Live In? Rebecca Garrett, and its producer Doug Johnson Hatlem (a well-known street preacher and advocate for the homeless), provides a quick glimpse of what it was like in the detention centre.
This footage was obtained by a freedom of information request, and because of the particulars of the request, the filmmakers only have surveillance footage that shows Gabriel Jacobs–the paraplegic man who crosses the frame in an electric wheelchair.