Dave Vasey stands outside the Eastern Ave. detention centre after being arrested and placed in a metal cage under the new G20 law giving police greater powers. (June 24, 2010)
Standing outside the Eastern Ave. detention centre, Dave Vasey is trembling.
It is about 9 p.m. and he has just spent the past five hours sitting alone in a wire cage, on a metal bench, with few answers.
Most of the perimeter is boarded up with plywood. A dozen police officers watch from behind a fence while more are bused in and out of the building.
“There was very little information given to me while I was in the cell,” at the temporary staging and detention area set up for the G20 summit, said Vasey, lighting a cigarette with shaky hands.
“No one was talking to me.”
Vasey was arrested Thursday afternoon while exploring the G20 perimeter with his friend, Cameron Fenton. He said they were just “walking around” when they were stopped by police at York St. and Bremner Blvd.
“The officer told me, ‘I am going to have to place you under arrest if you don’t show your identification,’ and I replied ‘I’m not comfortable with that.’”
Vasey said he had been provided with legal information prior to the G20 from the Toronto Community Mobilization Network, an umbrella group supporting thousands of protesters descending on the city.
“But (police) told me there was this bylaw,” he said. “I didn’t know what they were talking about.”
Vasey was held under the Public Works Protection Act and charged with refusing to comply with a request of a peace officer. His bail lawyer, Howard Morton, said that, as far as he knows, Vasey is the first to be arrested under the new regulation.
He is to appear in court July 28.
An environmental activist who has been organizing against the tar sands for the past two years, this isn’t the first time Vasey, 31, has had a run-in with the law. He was the “first one taken in” by police last October when a rowdy group of environmentalists disrupted Question Period in the House of Commons.
Sgt. Doug Pflug, media liaison at the detention centre, said he had no knowledge of Vasey’s situation.
Vasey’s girlfriend, Taylor Flook, had been on the phone with lawyers all day. “I am someone who did say ‘The police are here to protect you. They’re here to look out and make sure nothing happens to you,’“ she said. “But after today I’m very much changed in that opinion. I’m starting to believe some of the things I hear about police intimidation. It makes me feel like we are living in a police state.”
<no shit>
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