G20 charge vanishes

[mag check]

TORONTO (CBC) - The lawyer of a man who was told he was charged under what has become known as the "G20 five-metre rule," only to find out later there was no record of the charge ever being filed, says he is still waiting for an explanation.

Dave Vasey, 31, was arrested June 24 near the G20 security fence in Toronto under a new regulation reportedly added to Ontario's Public Works Protection Act one he says he didn't know existed.

Vasey was subsequently detained for five hours in a police detention centre on Eastern Avenue and told he was charged with refusing a request of a peace officer.

As a condition of his release, he was to appear in court in Toronto on Wednesday. But when Vasey got there, his name did not appear on the court docket and there was no document chronicling the charges, said his lawyer Howard Morton.

"There was no explanation. Nobody at that particular court I talked to the provincial prosecutor had any knowledge whatsoever of a charge against Mr. Vasey," Morton told CBC Radio's Metro Morning.

The attorney general has referred the matter to the police. A Toronto police spokeswoman told the Globe and Mail that the matter was related to an administrative issue and that the fact they were G20-related had nothing to do with the charge never being filed.

"I've never seen anything like this with a case that was relatively high-profile. And you would have thought that somebody in the attorney general's office would have been keeping track of it," said Morton.

The temporary regulation that was in effect in the leadup to the summit through to June 28 was lambasted by civil liberty groups.

At first there were reports the new provisions would allow officers the power to stop and search anyone coming within five metres of the G20 fence in downtown Toronto. But when the summit ended, Toronto police Chief Bill Blair confirmed there never was such a five-metre law an account confirmed by the Ministry of Community Safety.

A regulation giving police special temporary powers at and inside the G20 fence but not outside was passed quietly by the Ontario cabinet on June 2 without debate. Its application and the manner of its passage is now being investigated by Ontario's ombudsman.

Vasey plans to sue the Ministry of Community Safety and Toronto police over the matter, Morton said.

[. ._]

Yeah, everyone was not charged or innocent or charges were thrown out, BUT I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts they're in the police computer system as shit-disturbers- even if it was an old lady walking home from the grocery store.

@#$! YOU, BIG BROTHER!



-istp

[Moose47]

Well it has been very hot out lately. Perhaps they just evaporated into thin air!