AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL: "CRIMINALIZATION OF HOMELESS PEOPLE VIOLATE THE CONSTITUTIONAL LAW OF CANADA AND HUMAN RIGHTS NORMS" As expected Toronto will host the Pan American Games, and will attract hundreds of thousands of tourists from the continent and from around the world, to watch the sports events. Toronto the largest city in Canada is characterized of the other municipalities, because has the largest rate of poverty and number of people who are homeless in Canada. Provincial and Municipal politicians with the help of the Metropolitan Police; have prepared a plan for the cleansing of the city and their surrounding areas, especially aimed for homeless people and other individuals who are living in poverty. Every passing day are disappearing from the public view, from the streets and parks of Toronto, "homeless people" human beings who were victims of the criminal policies of the government and private institutions. The question is; the provincial government and politicians from the city of Toronto, where are warehousing to the homeless people? Homeless people are treated according to domestic laws and international treaties? Or When the Pan American games end the homeless people will return to live and beg on the streets, parks, or under the bridges of Toronto!
Toronto police say Pan Ams won’t be G20 all over again
Board promises better coordinated, more locally run security for Pan Am Games
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Const. Craig Brister is standing in front of a
small crowd of business owners in the St. Lawrence Centre on Toronto’s
Esplanade, assuring them that the Pan Am Games will not be another G20
when it comes to policing.
“As soon as we start talking about all these
extra officers that will be in town and all this extra security, people
immediately get this idea of G20 in their mind,” says Brister, an
officer seconded from 32 Division to serve as the Toronto Police
Service’s business and community liaison for the Games.
“This is a sporting event,” he says. “This is
family, front row. That’s the big thing we’re trying to push. But at the
same time there needs to be a security component.”
That means a heightened police presence around
venues, not only to secure them but to enforce no-standing zones and
street closings.
Related: The 40 countries coming to Toronto
It also means there will be police sweeps, beginning June 26{+ }in
areas such as the Pan Am Athletes Village, the 14-hectare fenced-in
area in the Canary District — which is next door to the Distillery
District, one of the Games’ three festival sites.
Brister says he hates the term “police sweeps,” and it shouldn’t be misinterpreted.
“Officers are getting trained to do security
checks,” says Brister. “They tour the venues when we take possession of
them. They also tour them during the Games. What they’re looking for is
the obvious — security problems, gaps in the security, safety issues —
anything that’s going to affect game play or spectator safety.”
But the heightened security won’t mean a repeat of G20, agrees police board chair Alok Mukherjee.
The 2010 summit was marred by overzealous
policing by multiple forces, including arbitrary searches of people
carrying backpacks or wearing bandanas. A report by the Office of the Independent Police Review Director said many officers “ignored the basic rights citizens have under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”
Earlier this year, the Ontario Court of Appeal said that officers from York Region Police breached the Charter rights of a group of G20 demonstrators who were forced to submit to a search before they were allowed near the security fence.