Mayoral Race
• Hume: This is one Tory with a happy ending [ Toronto Star ]
• Mayoral candidate with a golden ego [ Toronto Star ]
• Can Rocco Rossi rock ’em? [ Toronto Sun ]
City Building
• Volunteers build playground in 6 hours [ Toronto Star ]
• Voh Hahn: Road to a fabulous Bloor is paved with problems, but worth it [ Toronto Star ]
• Toronto’s first green hostel to open next month [ Globe & Mail ]
TTC
• TTC invites public comment on new facility [ Toronto Star ]
• Scenes from the Eglinton LRT [ Globe & Mail ]
• Urban Scrawl: Toronto needs more transit, not new tolls [ National Post ]
Other News
• Automated kiosks for library books? [ Toronto Star ]
• Summit protesters weigh legal options [ Toronto Star ]
• Toronto without real-estate woes is a city that hardly knows itself [ Globe & Mail ]
• Bike mentoring program in high gear [ Toronto Sun ]
7 comments
Re: National Post
Not a bad article, ESPECIALLY for the Post, however the author didn’t consider the option of simply driving to a transit station and parking there. Faster than driving all the way downtown, creates less congestion, and would net to be cheaper – especially if tolls were in place.
Also, no links to the $45 million lawsuit against the police? Personally I would add an extra zero or two to that figure…
“Also, no links to the $45 million lawsuit against the police? Personally I would add an extra zero or two to that figure…”
That’s about $45,000 per person falsely arrested, which seems like a fair number.
Even if they win, attitudes won’t likely change because the money won’t be coming from the people responsible, but from government revenues. What is needed is for criminal and police act changes to be laid against those who made the decisions and followed the illegal orders.
Stintz talking about sidewalk widening on Eglinton (in Lorinc’s Globe article)?? My goodness.
By the way, a minor correction — the 400- to 500-metre LRT stop spacing refers to above-ground alignments. The underground section is roughly double that (I believe the average is somewhere around 800 to 1,000 metres).
I agree with Darwin. A large civil suit is the only option for those who felt wronged by the police during the G20, but it’s a bad option for 2 reasons. First, it does nothing to prevent future episodes of the type of excesses alleged in the suit nor (as Darwin points out) does it hold anyone criminally responsible. In fact, it might be a colossal shortcoming of the Charter that it doesn’t have provisions for taking the State to task criminally for infringing on the rights of its citizens.
Second, the optics of suing for cash will do nothing to ingratiate the plaintiffs with the general public. And ultimately, it’s the general public who need to be convinced that a wrong-doing occurred at all.
77% of Torontonians thought the police did a good job and if the goal of a suit is to help reinforce our core freedoms, you need to convince the people that those rights are in jeopardy. I don’t think that’s been done and I’m fairly certain suing the Police for millions of dollars isn’t going to do it either.
“77% of Torontonians thought the police did a good job and if the goal of a suit is to help reinforce our core freedoms, you need to convince the people that those rights are in jeopardy. I don’t think that’s been done and I’m fairly certain suing the Police for millions of dollars isn’t going to do it either.”
If the suit goes to trial, a lot of information could come out that would change people’s minds. Such a trial would cover many of the same things an inquiry would.
If things follow the Miami model, and they have so far, the police will try and settle out of court. If I where a plaintiff, I would insist on a trial, even if it meant getting a smaller settlement.
It would be more likely than not TPS that ends up settling, so the Feds would once again be screwing Toronto taxpayers.
As for $45,000 per protester, I doubt that will be the amount when this guy got $5k.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/07/23/supreme-court-pie023.html
OK, suppose the plaintiff win the case, and the taxpayers are on the hook to pay the $45m. Which side do you think most people will blame? The police? Not likely.
I am not sure about what is a fair number for the damage. We are in such a litigious society that any damage number can seem fair. But for many people, $45000 is what they can for a whole-year’s hard work. If spending 24 hours in a cell brings back that much, I am pretty sure it is very attractive to many many people.
So if this really is not about money, but about civil rights, then by all means sue the police , but sue for a token amount of money, and insist on going to trial. It will go much better with general public, as people’s attention will be on the police wrongdoing itself, not on the eye-catching dollar figure. It will expose the same amount of information.
Sigh, of course the legal fee will be astronomical by itself, after all, we have arrived at a litigious society and there is no turning back.