We are writing this statement as residents of 311 George Street, a collective house situated in Toronto's downtown east. Over the past several years that we have lived here, we have witnessed widespread police harassment of the area's homeless population and have had a number of minor altercations with particularly obnoxious police officers from 51 Division. During the past month, we have noticed increased levels of surveillance and police intimidation tactics directed towards us and other residents of the street.
We believe this increase to be linked to the ongoing efforts to gentrify the neighbourhood, which has accelerated with the City Council's recent approval to redevelop the Seaton House men's shelter. The redevelopment, along with the tentative approval for a massive condominium project on the corner of George and Dundas, is part of a grand "George Street Revitalization Plan," championed by so-called progressive councillors and development speculators alike. George Street North is one of the few remaining obstacles to completely gentrifying a broad section of the district around Allen Gardens.
We have always viewed this talk of redevelopment for what it is: a combination of violence and attrition that aims to erode our neighbourhood and erase its residents.
Early Morning, August 4th, George St.
Just after 1:00 am, one of our housemates noticed a large brown van parked in front of Seaton House. Inside the van were two uniformed police officers and two other men, presumably undercover police. She witnessed the police shove several people off the street and into the van. This is, sadly, common on George Street, especially in the summer. There are frequent busts and arrests, often by undercover cops working in unmarked cars.
After returning home, several of our housemates noticed a police cruiser shining a spotlight into our backyard from the alley behind our house. Again, this is not that unusual so we didn't pay too much mind. After one of our other housemates had left to go to the store, a second cruiser pulled up in front of our house. The street was entirely empty, which is unheard of for a weekend night during the summer, and now multiple police cruisers were positioned around our house. Something was definitely going down. We assumed that the police might be looking for someone in one of the abandoned houses down the street. Then we received word that our comrade had been detained walking back from the store.
This individual, who we'll call Adam, was searched despite his verbal protests, cuffed and put in the back of a cruiser. Across the street, a black SUV with four undercover officers quickly backed up down the street, out of view of those within the house. Adam noted that the uniformed cops appeared to be taking direction from these officers, who a resident of the street later claimed are members of the Toronto Anti-Drug Taskforce. Of the four undercovers, three were male and one was female. The undercover agent who seemed to be in charge was a tall South-East Asian man with a shaved head, roughly 40 years old and wearing a grey track suit.
When asked for information about the house and its residents, Adam responded that he wasn't saying anything without a lawyer present and that if he wasn't under arrest he wanted to speak with counsel immediately. He was told that he would be able to do so "once it was safe" and that the police were responding to a weapons call from "an anonymous source." This was the second time in as many weeks that police had been called to our house for the same bogus reason. On the first occasion, Adam had spoken with the two responding officers, who left without incident. This time they appeared to be taking it much more seriously.
As Adam was being unsuccessfully questioned in the back of a cruiser, those of us inside the house were beginning to freak out a bit. We still had no idea what this was about and were scrambling to get word out to our support networks, sort out legal details, and generally process what was going on outside our gate.
Around this time, two other comrades, "Monica" and "Amanda", both of whom are minors, were walking down the street toward our house, returning after an evening out. As they attempted to enter the gate, the police shouted at them to stop. Adam yelled at them from the back of the cruiser to let the other folks in the house know that he'd been detained. But before they could get inside, Monica and Amanda were grabbed and led away from the house towards the cruiser.
After witnessing this, our housemates "Greg" and “Sarah” came outside to see what was happening. As the rest of us watched from a second story window, we saw a police officer -- assault rifle at the ready -- get out of a second police cruiser and approach the gate, accompanied by a second armed officer. Greg approached the cops and demanded to know what was going on. He was asked to step off the property, which he refused to do. He was also asked to allow the armed officers entry to our house, which he also refused, requesting to see a warrant. The officer with the assault rifle said they didn't need a warrant, that this was an emergency situation and that he could easily jump our fence at any time.
The cops then changed tactics, and told Greg that they just wanted to talk to him for a minute. Greg took a small step over the threshold of the gate to get a better look at Monica and Amanda, and was immediately detained. He made a point of yelling loudly that he was being arrested, had no idea why and that he did not consent to a search. He was detained in the second cruiser with two officers, one of whom was the one with the rifle, the other taking video of the house with a hand-held camcorder. The officers demanded that Sarah also leave the property, which she refused and returned into the house.
At this point, the remaining roommates gathered inside an upstairs bedroom. Sometime in the interim, a third police cruiser had pulled up in front of our house. We were uncertain as to what to do. If we left the house, we felt we faced certain arrest. If we stayed, we were playing a prolonged waiting game with armed cops who said they didn't need a warrant to come into our house. In the absence of any better options, we waited.
We soon got a phone call from Amanda. She and Monica had been released -- it seems the police were looking for "five males". They were asked a lot of questions about our house: who lived there, what they did for a living, etc., but stayed silent and were ultimately released without charge. Barred from entering the house, they were forced to leave in a cab at their own expense. Their phone call made us both more nervous and somewhat relieved: it meant that they didn't intend to mass arrest the whole house, which was good, but it also meant they were looking for specific people, for reasons that were entirely lost on us. We waited some more; a lot of nervous, tired silence followed.
Meanwhile, from the back of a cruiser Adam watched one of the officers pull up a reinforcement requisition application on the dashboard computer. After seeing the cop select an option that read "suspect armed with a firearm", Adam calmly informed the police officer that none of the people inside the house were armed, and to say so was needlessly escalating the situation. The cop responded with some remark about the need for prioritizing officer safety. He then left the car to speak with his commanding officer, who was furious to hear that Adam was reading off the screen. A female officer hurriedly leaned into the cruiser and switched the monitor to a screen-saver. In the other cruiser, Greg was also reading off the computer screen, where he noticed a line on the incident report indicating that the police had "intelligence" that five males in the house had rifles stashed under their beds. This was, of course, not true, but would explain why the cops were looking for "five males".
About 20 minutes later, Adam was informed that the "anonymous source" had also told the cops that there were explosives in the house, and that this was why they were taking such extraordinary precautions. At this point he was uncuffed, handed his phone and allowed to contact his lawyer. As it was nearly 3 AM at this point, Adam simply left a voice-mail explaining the situation and that the cops' claims were bullshit, but that his lawyer might be needed for a bail appearance on Tuesday (court would be closed on Monday for the Civic Holiday). The officer in charge then asked Adam to take them through the house to prove that there weren't any weapons or explosives inside. Adam refused, and suggested they get a warrant. He was told that they didn't need a warrant, and that the ETF (Emergency Task Force; Toronto's SWAT team) was on its way.
Soon thereafter another cop came to ask Adam if he needed anything. Adam asked him what the charge was for calling in a fake bomb threat. The cop looked a bit taken aback, and responded that it was often difficult to prove malicious intent in these types of situations. He then left, and the officer in charge came back with Adam's phone.
Almost 70 minutes after Adam was first detained, those of us inside the house were surprised to see his phone number come up on our call display. We put him on speaker and huddled around the phone. Adam explained that the police were telling him to call us and explain the situation. He informed us of the "anonymous tip" and the cop's threat of bringing in the ETF if those in the house didn't come outside. He let us know that the police didn't have a warrant, and so what we wanted to do was entirely up to us. We told him we needed some time to discuss this.
We figured that we were potentially opening ourselves to arrest by leaving the house, but we also could tell by now that, despite the "emergency situation" rhetoric offered by the cops, at no time had they made an effort to enter the house, or even enter the yard; they had only detained Greg after he stepped over the property threshold. After several minutes of discussing our options -- effectively a choice between the rather terrifying prospect of a SWAT team storming our house, or stepping onto the porch into the relative safety of our yard--we decided to come out.
We walked down the stairs slowly, into the dark of the ground floor, where someone had turned off all the lights. As we opened the door to come outside, we were shocked to see Adam and Greg sitting on the porch, smoking a cigarette, with no police cruisers in sight. Soon after Adam's phone call to us, both of them had been hastily released. It had been just under 90 minutes since it had all began. We went inside and stayed awake for another few more hours, collectively discussing what had happened and trying to make some sense of it. As dawn approached, we retreated to our bedrooms for a few hours of deep, troubled sleep.
Police Intimidation Is a Continuing Reality
At this point, we would like to extend our gratitude to everybody who immediately came to our aid at 2:00 am on a Saturday night. Within minutes of Adam being detained, we had lawyers ready, people to assist with pet care in the event we were mass arrested, and friends spreading the word via social media. On that last front, however, we must respectfully urge some caution and restraint. Several of the messages floating around Twitter and Facebook contained incorrect information (since repeated by a particular right-wing blogger eager to gloat over our supposed arrests) that may have contributed to the spread of confusion and panic. Given the hectic nature of the situation as it was unfolding, this is, of course, understandable, but still ultimately counter-productive. In the future, by all means, support your friends and comrades as best you can in the heat of the moment, but please be careful about what is shared via social media. It can spread rumor and is often used to gather intelligence by police services. Try to exercise your support in other ways and, if you must use social media, stick only to verified facts or public statements released by the affected parties.
And, to those who would try and intimidate us, whether cops or snitches or their respective bosses, you will have to do better. We held together, had each other's backs and have ultimately emerged stronger for it. In a stressful and bewildering situation, we acted in a principled manner, consistent with our values and we saw effective, practical demonstrations of solidarity from the many friends and comrades who rushed to our aid. We've been lucky in many regards: armed police raids are a lived reality for many marginalized people and communities in the GTA (by way of example, see the recent Project Traveller raids) and, for many of us, this was our first direct experience with such heavy-handed police tactics.
However, we do not consider experiences such as ours isolated incidents or simple mistakes; witness the recent police raid in London, ON, supposedly over a single piece of graffiti, but transparently a police attempt to gather information on known activists. We fully expect to hear more stories, similar to ours, as months and years go by and community responses to austerity and repression intensify. Incidents like the attempted raid on our house are merely another indication that there is a fight looming over Toronto's downtown east end, a fight between landlords, developers, the City and their police on one side and the people who live and struggle in the neighbourhood on the other.
A little less than a year ago, after our close friends and comrades next door lost their collective house to a suspicious fire, we wrote that "we have ceased fighting for our ideas and begun fighting for our lives". Faced with assault weapons and surveillance cameras, those words are just as true today. We don't know what to expect next, aside from the certainty that this fight is far from over and that, more than ever, we are ready for its continuance. Between all the fear and anxiety an experience like this produces, there is a kind of comfort in knowing we have the bastards' attention.
Solidarity against police intimidation,
Some Residents of George Street
*names have been changed
