The debate over whether or not we ought to have a police commission is based on perception. My perception is that since the ’60s there has been a fundamental change in police attitude toward dissent.

I have been a political and community activist for over 40 years, and I was arrested and beaten by police in 1970 during a demonstration at the ‘Festival Express’ rock concert. Criminal charges could have been laid, and I could have spent some time in jail. During the ’60s and early ’70s, police viewed dissenters as a threat to law and order, and they reacted with force and intolerance.

That attitude changed slightly from the mid-’70s to the ’90s. During that time, incidents of police misconduct were exposed, as were agent provocateurs who infiltrated radical groups and instigated violence against people and property. This forced the police to change their methods.

What I have noticed since 9/11 is another fundamental change in police attitude toward dissent. It seems to me that when President George W. Bush declared the War on Terrorism‚ police forces here and in the U.S. interpreted it as a ‘war on dissent.’

While Canadian and American citizens understood the War on Terrorism as a war on violent terrorists, police saw it as motivation to crush any group protesting anything before it could become a terrorist organization.

While police used to intimidate protest groups through criminal charges, they now have a new weapon — they charge people under the provincial Highway Traffic Act, essentially giving a ticket.

How does this intimidate people? Well, if you don’t feel you should pay the ticket and want to fight it in court, be prepared to take time off work, pay up to $3,000 for legal representation and have yourself publically identified.

Now that’s psychological intimidation. For someone who might have attended a demonstration for the first time and was ticketed, this would most certainly deter him or her from participating in any more.

Was the Highway Traffic Act created to deter demonstrations? Of course not. It was created to provide road safety to all citizens. Nevertheless, the police have decided to interpret the Highway Traffic Act as constitutionally protecting cars from pedestrians and cyclists, even though roadways are publicly owned space. If we took their interpretation to its logical conclusion, then the city would be required to provide sidewalks and bicycle paths everywhere throughout the city.

Now tell me, where are the sidewalks in suburbia? And where are there designated bicycle paths, except in parks?

It is this change of attitude that requires an open and transparent police commission independent from the police and the legal system. The police service needs to be accountable to some body other than itself, rather than the present model of referring police complaints to the Law Enforcement Review Agency, which meets behind closed doors, investigates only about three per cent of complaints and takes up to 18 months to make decisions.

Now that’s unacceptable!

Nick Ternette is a community and political activist, freelance writer and broadcaster.