From the opinion piece in the Ottawa Citizen:
…Peaceful protesters were brutally assaulted by officers, many of whom were in plain clothes or, if in uniform, who removed their name tags to prevent accountability. Hundreds more were unlawfully detained on the streets for hours in mass “kettling†operations, even as heavy rain poured down. At least nine journalists were assaulted, detained and arrested, by the police. It was “fortunate that, in all the confusion, there were no deaths,†Ontario’s police watchdog later wrote in his damning review.
On the second day of the summit, we had just finished attending a community meeting in the Parkdale neighbourhood when we were suddenly surrounded by heavily armed police. Dozens of us were kettled there for two hours as police decided who to arrest.
Almost everyone I later spoke to who escaped getting picked up said they were carded before being released. But not me. When an officer asked what I did for a living, I responded that I worked for government — I was with the Canadian International Development Agency back then. His facial expression quickly turned from one of disdain to shock and bewilderment: protesters weren’t supposed to be federal employees. I didn’t get carded…
Read the full article at the link.
https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/fonseca-ten-years-after-the-g20-mass-arrests-a-moment-for-change