The Canadian Press

By Aaron Schulze

ARMCHAIR MAYOR

ROTHENBURGER: Police ‘surge’ against Ottawa protesters shows patience, restraint

Feb 19, 2022 | 6:42 AM

FOR GRIPPING TELEVISION, yesterday’s wall-to-wall coverage of police action against the protesters in Ottawa was hard to match and it will, no doubt, continue today and tomorrow.

Watching it unfold brought mixed feelings of sadness and relief. Sadness because it had come to this; relief at the professional way in which police moved in to start regaining control of the streets in front of Parliament Hill.

We’ve become used to watching riots south of the border in which police use batons, rubber bullets and tear gas against demonstrators, cracking skulls and dragging them off to paddy wagons. That visual of the American way of doing crowd control goes back decades. Who can ever forget or at least, not be familiar with, Kent State in 1970, when the Ohio National Guard used real bullets against students protesting the Vietnam war, fatally shooting four and wounding nine?

More recently, of course, we’ve seen how protests across that country were allowed to get out of control and turn into riots. Almost 1,000 incidents of police brutality during protests were alleged in a five-month period.

The U.S. isn’t unique in using police violence to quell dissent as confrontational protests become common around the world. According to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 230 “significant” anti-government protests — 25 of them related to the pandemic — have been held in 110 countries going back to 2017.

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Three hundred died in South African riots last July due to what was acknowledged as a “police failure.” Dozens have been killed in Sudan. Police brutality in Hong Kong protests is legendary.

We’ve seen none of that in Ottawa so far. Police are putting on a clinic on how to effectively break up a protest as peacefully as possible. Facing difficult conditions due to snow, cold, blockades of heavy equipment, the presence of children and other factors, police moved in with a clear plan.

Patience is key. Forming their lines, they moved toward the protest centre, pausing, then pushing protesters back a few feet, then pausing again. As they met resistance, they grabbed protesters one at a time, pulled them to the back of the line, cuffed them and took them away.

Several protest leaders were among those arrested.

From this inexpert observer’s perspective, it appeared to be a variation of what’s known as the “kettling” tactic, also known as “corralling.” This involves gradually squeezing protesters into an ever-shrinking containment area. In its purest form, protesters are allowed no escape, and anyone caught in the corral, including bystanders, is arrested — the numbers can reach the hundreds.

Kettling has been used in several other illegal protests in Canada, in Toronto and Montreal. In one case, more than 500 were arrested.

The Ottawa example, called a “surge” by police, is different. Those who wish to leave the area peacefully are allowed to do so, while no one outside the corral is allowed in to reinforce the protesters. The result is similar, though — the protest gradually runs out of real estate.

The tactical details of this one are clearly challenging. You need a massive police presence, and all of them must be fed and housed. It’s a 24-hour operation, so they must work in shifts, spelling each other off on the front lines. Tow trucks must be at the ready, with a big compound to store the vehicles they haul away. And there has to be adequate room in which to put those who are arrested.

By the end of the day, several dozen protesters were in custody and at least a couple of dozen transport trucks were seized, with others departing voluntarily through the designated checkpoints.

Rather than aggression, the strategy is based on stamina, and protesters eventually run out of it, as well as food and shelter. In Ottawa, protesters put on a good show of determination yesterday, vowing this and vowing that, waving their flags, honking their horns, and linking arms against the advance of the police, but their defiance is a losing proposition.

It must be said that the truckers, at least up to this writing, have resisted the urge to get violent, aside from a few struggles and lots of cussing as they were being arrested. Late in the day, there was an unfortunate incident in which a senior protester was apparently knocked over by a horse when mounted police moved in after reports that protesters had assaulted officers and tried to grab their weapons.

I can’t say I felt particularly sympathetic to some of them, given the sorts of stunts they’ve pulled during the weeks they’ve been doing their best to mess with democracy. As one woman was being arrested, for example, she berated police because she had children behind the lines and wanted to get back to them. Putting your kids in harm’s way and then trying to use them as a way of avoiding arrest is reprehensible. And illegal.

The plain fact is that these protesters have gone way past their right to dissent and are now breaking the laws of the land. Overall, though, it takes two to engineer a peaceful end to a protest and, from what has transpired since yesterday, this looks like a very Canadian way of doing things.

Mel Rothenburger is a former mayor of Kamloops and a retired newspaper editor. He is a regular contributor to CFJC Today, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a director on the Thompson-Nicola Regional District board. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.

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Editor’s Note: This opinion piece reflects the views of its author, and does not necessarily represent the views of CFJC Today or Pattison Media.