Ottawa police were fomenting “a kind of insurrection” against their leader, Peter Sloly, in the midst of the Freedom Convoy crisis, a city councilor revealed Wednesday before the public inquiry into emergency measures.
“Chief Sloly said to me, ‘there’s an infighting within the police,'” testified Diane Deans, who served as chair of the Ottawa Police Services Board during most of the occupation. Freedom convoy this winter.
Conflicts between police officers reportedly resulted in the cancellation of a major operation in which 400 police officers were mobilized to dismantle a segment of the convoy near Parliament Hill.
The municipal politician notably told the lawyers of the Rouleau commission on the state of emergency behind closed doors that the first black chief of police in Ottawa faced racism in the ranks of the police, and that the latter was seen as “an outsider” since he had recently arrived from Toronto for this position.
Ms Deans went on to describe at the public hearings on Wednesday a series of foreign incidents which she said demonstrate “there was sort of an insurrection going on”. She used the word “insurrection” twice during her testimony.
In particular, she mentioned a conflict that Deputy Chief Trish Ferguson had with other police officers, which resulted in her being sent on leave for a few days in the midst of the Freedom Convoy crisis. The incident commander also had to be replaced several times, Deans said. “Obviously there were other problems within the Ottawa police. »
Protesters driving trucks formed a “Freedom Convoy” that blocked streets in downtown Ottawa for three weeks in January and February. The event led to the first invocation in the federal government’s 30-year history of the Emergencies Act.
Ottawa police have been blamed on multiple fronts, first for letting the trucks pull up in front of parliament, but also for signs of sympathy from officers on the ground towards the protesters’ causes. A survey of To have to demonstrated that the tolerant attitude of the police was, at least initially, interpreted by the demonstrators as proof of the legality of their actions.
Diane Deans stepped down as chair of the Police Services Board, the employer of Ottawa police officers, on Feb. 16, the day after Chief Sloly resigned and two days after federal emergency measures were invoked.
Favorable to the ex-chief, she notably described to Judge Rouleau on Wednesday how Peter Sloly himself suggested that he could offer his resignation, in exchange for an amount of money, a week earlier. The ex-police chief has previously said his department has a plan to end the occupation that does not require emergency measures, but more police.