Arrested And Jailed In Toronto – A G20 Protestor’s Firsthand Account

(Niagara At Large recently posted a story on the arrest and detainment of Thorold, Ontario resident John Pruyn during the G20 summit in Toronto. The account of his arrest, which involved  pulling off  his artificial leg by police dressed in riot gear, can be found by  clicking on www.niagaraatlarge.coom. The following post is a personal account shared with Niagara At Large by Pruyn’s daughter Sarah, who was also arrested and detained by police.)

By Sarah Pruyn

After the People First March (on June 26) my father and I walked back to Queen’s Park to look for my mother whom we had become separated from during the afternoon.  It was about quarter to six pm. Riot police were surrounding all roadways leading into the park, but we managed to find an unguarded pathway in through the University of Toronto campus.

Sarah Pruyn along a lake in Quebec during better times.

As we looked for my mother, a line of riot police began to walk towards us, ordering my father and I, along with hundreds of other protestors, to move as they did. My father refused to move, as we were on public property and had the right to be there. The police began to push him and still he would not move. At this time I noticed that officers about five meters away to my left were shooting tear gas cartridges from riot guns to force protestors to get out of their way. Eventually my father did back from the police line. The  line had advanced a few meters and stopped.

After this, my father and I decided to sit down with a group of protestors on University Avenue. Two activists, male and and in their early 20s, were sitting beside us. They offered us water and we discussed why police were pushing protestors off of Queen’s Park despite it being public property. As there were pockets of tear gas around us, I wetted my bandana with apple cider vinegar and held it to my face.

Before sitting for more than five minutes we were suddenly assaulted. The line of riot cops pressed forward while shooting more tear gas and officers from behind the riot line ran towards where we were. They slammed into us and hit us.

“These four,” one of them shouted to other police around him. We were surrounded by officers on the front, left and right (and) activists who had been behind us started to retreat. Someone ordered my father to stand. He could not do this with ease as he is an above-the-knee amputee and has an artificial left leg. Police kicked and bashed my father as my left arm was grabbed and twisted behind my back. The two activists who had offered us water attempted to help my father stand while repeatedly telling the police that my father only had one leg. The police did not listen and began to hit us more violently.

As I yelled for them to let my father stand, the officer holding my arm wrapped his right hand around a fistful of my hair and began to drag me away. He brought me on the other side of the riot line as a chunk of my hair was pulled out. I hollered to my father that everything would be fine. After a couple moments of being forced along I managed to stand upright and walk with the officer.

We stopped once we arrived at a paddy wagon. The officer put zip-ties around my wrists and asked me for identification. Knowing that he would find it anyway, I told him to look at my driver’s license in my wallet. The backpack I was wearing was removed and searched. The officer began to complete a form on me and told me that I had been arrested for “obstruction of justice.”

My possessions were put into bags, my zip-ties were removed and replaced with handcuffs and I was locked into the paddy wagon. I’m not sure how long I was in the there for. During this time I could see officers in plain clothes, dressed as protestors, running back and forth across the riot lines. They were assisting in arrests of protesters. After about 20 minutes another arrestee joined me in my cell of the van.

Ten minutes after that we were taken from the paddy wagon, leg cuffed and told to walk onto a police bus. My father was put on the same bus as I was. His glasses, prosthetic leg and walking sticks had been taken from him and he had to hop onto the bus with his hands cuffed. The police did not help him to his seat. From the window of the bus, I saw a group of officers kicking male people of colour who were lying in submission on the ground.

After waiting a little while longer, we were driven to the G20 Detention Centre on Eastern Avenue. We were forced to exit the bus one at a time. As I descended the stairs of the vehicle an officer smiled at me and said that I shouldn’t forget to tip the driver.

Immediately upon exiting the bus I was told to kneel on a chair that was against a wall. My leg cuffs and handcuffs were removed, and a different pair of handcuffs were put on my wrists. I was brought to a cell with about eight other women near the back of an enormous studio room the bus had pulled into. It was the first of five cells I would walk into during my twenty-seven hour stay in jail.

Before an hour was up I was removed from the cell to be processed. This took about an  hour and involved my picture being taken, my shoes being removed, two more searches and a meeting with a sergeant. I was reminded twice during this process that everything I said or did was being videotaped. When I met the sergeant there were two other officers present. The sergeant asked me questions such as “Why were you arrested?” “Why were you protesting?” and “Who were you with?” I said that I would not answer these questions without speaking with a lawyer first. However, I did answer some questions such as “what is your address and phone number?” since they already had these things from going through my identification.

The sergeants told me that I was arrested for “breach of peace”. I don’t know what happened to my “obstruction of justice” charge.

“What does ‘breach of peace’ mean?” I asked.

“That you disrupted the general harmony of Toronto.”

After processing was complete I was deposited in a cell in the detainment zone. On my way there someone told me that I would be able to make a phone call. It was around 10:00 pm. The cell was cold, about 16 degrees. There was only one other person in my cell with me, a female. She told me to ask for a sweatshirt from the police, which I did. A few minutes later they gave me a green sweatshirt that would help a little as the temperature in detainment dipped throughout the night, probably down to 13 degrees. As more and more detainees came in and requested sweaters and other clothing, the cops soon ran low on supplies. Within eight hours, they ran out completely. Prisoners were freezing.

I was escorted to a phone booth and permitted to make a phone call to the TCMN (Toronto Community Mobilization Network) legal support line at about 11. I was lucky that I got to make this phone call; several prisoners were in jail for more than 24 hours and never got to make a call or speak to duty council. Others, such as my father, were never charged with anything. Worst of all, some, such as my cellmate with a bloody forehead, never received medical attention till after a day had gone by. When we asked the police why we were being mistreated so, some said that it was because we were criminals, and others claimed it was due to organization problems.

At 1 am, I was moved to another cell, about six feet by ten feet in size. Unlike my last cell, this one had not port-o-potty. Whenever we had to go to the bathroom, an officer would take us to a cell with bathroom equipment. Throughout the night, more women were added to the cell. By the late morning, there were ten of us in the cell. At around 2 p.m., I was told that I could make another phone call. This was strange to me, since, as alluded to before, some prisoners had been there longer than me and not permitted to make any phone call at all. I called the TCMN legal support line again. No one picked up.  Later, I found out that many TCMN volunteer lawyers had been arrested. Still later I found out from incoming prisoners that the TCMN convergence centre had been raided and shut down by police. 

No longer having a link to the outside, I requested to speak to duty council, which I was permitted to do. I am still bewildered as to why I got to see duty council while other prisoners did not. Poor bureaucratic organization? Were they playing “good cop” with me? Did they want things to seem chaotic so they could have an excuse for being negligent of the prisoners’ needs?

When prisoners asked for food or water, they told us that they would “have some shortly.”  But it usually took from an hour to two hours. Some were in jail for eight to 10 hours before getting any water at all. Arbitrarily, about four times during the time period I was there, we were offered processed cheese on two slices of white bread with butter. Since I am lactose intolerant and allergic to yeast I could not eat the sandwiches. At 6 p.m. Sunday I begged an officer for something that I could eat. About an hour later, he brought me to a cell out of sight of the other prisoners and gave me an apple and some orange juice. Despite my anger at being mistreated I was grateful for the food.

Since other detainees and myself had been in custody for more than 24 hours, we asked cops walking by our cells why we were not being released. Some officers ignored us. Others  told us “we are just too overworked to have time to release you.” Some said “I don’t know. I just do what I’m ordered.” Others claimed  “we are going to, very soon” and still others swore that “there are protestors outside and they are dangerous. We can’t let you go until they go”.

At around 4 p.m., I along with the others in my cell were moved to a slightly larger cell.  Three or four others were also placed in this cell. At about 8 p.m., some officers took a girl from my cell and I was taken to a tiny cage in a separate room from the detainment cells we’d been in for so long. Here, an officer told us that we were being released and charges against us were bring dropped, but that there were certain conditions to our release, such as we would not take place in any more G20 protests in Toronto. Our belongings were returned to us.

We asked if we could have a copy of original charges and our release conditions. We were ignored. They took another picture of each of us. Before we even had time to put our shoes on, we were shoved out a door into the pouring rain.

(Click on Niagara At Large at www.niagaraatlarge.com for more news and commentary on matters of interest and concern to residents in our greater binational Niagara region.)