There’s no doubt now about the Ottawa police failure with convoy protests

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It’s only a week into the testimony at the inquiry into the use of the Emergencies Act, but already we know with certainty that there was a police failure in handling the convoy protests in the capital – an Ottawa Police Service failure.

You can bet there will be other kinds of failures highlighted in coming weeks of testimony – already the hearings have heard disheartening takes of squabbling officials at several levels.

But the inquiry has established that Ottawa Police misjudged and mishandled the convoy protests from the beginning, and almost till the end.

The Emergencies Act inquiry has revealed infighting and inertia – and it’s only just begun

The Emergencies Act inquiry will judge whether its use was strictly necessary. Public opinion will judge the rest

The initial plan to deal with the so-called Freedom Convoy in the capital was based on a sanguine belief that the protesters would all pack up and go home by the end of the first weekend, even though intelligence reports from the Ontario Provincial Police indicated protesters were going to stay for the long haul.

The city’s police service didn’t really have a serious plan to deal with the large, organized, unyielding group of protesters until Feb. 13. The federal government invoked the Emergencies Act the next day.

There has always been a question of whether police really needed emergency powers, or whether Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government invoked the act to respond to the frustrations over the failure to disperse the protest, and to unblock the capital.

There will be many more weeks of testimony before Justice Paul Rouleau decides if those emergency powers were necessary. But we already know that what came before them was a failure of policing.

Ottawa Police’s starting point was wrong. The service thought the protest would only last a weekend, even though OPP intelligence reports warned it would be a “long-term event,” OPP Superintendent Pat Morris testified on Wednesday at the inquiry. But Ottawa Police’s own threat assessment didn’t mention that, according to evidence presented Thursday. Maybe that’s why its leaders let 18-wheelers block off downtown streets.

The OPP’s lawyer, Christopher Diana, suggested Ottawa Police dusted off a standard plan for dealing with protests, more like a “traffic plan” than a way to deal with an occupation, to serve as its first plan, on Jan. 29. Ottawa Police acting Deputy Chief Patricia Ferguson quibbled with that phrasing a little, but not the key substance: She said there was “definitely a failure to appreciate” what the police would be facing.

There is a subplot at the inquiry about who in Ottawa Police was responsible for which failing, and Deputy Chief Ferguson said then-chief Peter Sloly couldn’t have been expected to wade through detailed intelligence reports himself. Maybe that matters to Ottawa residents, but for the bigger picture at this inquiry, it’s enough to know the force got the paradigm wrong.

After that, Ottawa Police were “floundering,” according to Deputy Chief Ferguson.

Police talks with truckers broke off when public-order units descended on a protest hub without telling the police liaison teams that were trying to negotiate with protesters.

Ottawa Police planned individual operations but didn’t have an overall plan. Mr. Sloly approved a draft “plan” Feb. 9, but it was really just an outline.

In the meantime, Mr. Sloly and Ottawa was calling for a huge secondment of officers from the OPP, RCMP and other forces, but those forces were asking to see a plan for how they would be used. Deputy Chief Ferguson testified that the decision about the number of additional officers should have come from a plan – in other words, plan first. So did the OPP’s head of operations for Eastern Ontario, Superintendent Craig Abrams.

It’s worth noting, too, that there was a mechanism in Ontario law for a police chief to ask for assistance from the OPP in an emergency they couldn’t handle, but Mr. Sloly as chief didn’t make the request. Deputy Chief Ferguson said she believes he didn’t want to give up control.

In the end, police planners from various forces didn’t approve a new plan till Feb. 13. By then, the federal government was gearing up to invoke the Emergencies Act.

The inquiry now has to determine whether its emergency powers were truly needed, or if Ottawa was just responding to pressure to do something, after weeks when the police failed to use its power effectively. But there’s no doubt now that what came before the Emergencies Act was a policing failure.