Juno News - Convoy lawyer cross-examines OPP Strategic Command Leader

00:00:00.960 good morning mr commissioner good morning superintendent abrams and good morning my

00:00:05.520 friends my name is vatsheba vandenberg and i am council representing freedom corp and protesters

00:00:12.160 thank you for your service superintendent and for your forthwith testimony so far

00:00:18.240 i have a few questions for you this morning you mentioned yesterday in your testimony that the plt

00:00:24.400 use a snatch and grab method correct they do not use that method um i believe in my testimony

00:00:32.640 yesterday i indicated that um major critical incident commander superintendent patterson

00:00:38.720 wanted to do snatch and grabs and wanted plt assistance with that and that actually was one

00:00:46.320 of my main concerns because our plt units are not used in that fashion ever so actually it's

00:00:52.960 the opposite of your suggestion so you can confirm that the method of snatch and grab was not used

00:01:00.240 between february 6 and 10th of 2002 to 2022 rather oh no i can't confirm that those operations would

00:01:08.000 have been done by autobot police service if they did them my purpose in communicating to superintendent

00:01:14.320 patterson was if him and his service wished to do that there would be no opp support in doing so they

00:01:22.320 may have occurred but if they did occur they would have been done by the autobot police service without

00:01:27.360 opp member participation i want to speak with you about what snatch and grab means you agree that it

00:01:36.800 means police officers lined up in a horizontal line and in their riot gear right that's not how i see it

00:01:44.800 snatch and grab is not a it's not a policing term to be honest that i'm familiar with as far as a technique

00:01:50.960 that we're taught or instructed on when i heard um superintendent patterson explain that he didn't

00:01:57.840 explain it in great detail i pictured in my mind it was um trying to locate certain individual persons

00:02:06.400 who may have a reasonable grounds to be arrested and essentially when they're located grab them off the

00:02:15.280 street wherever they're located and arrest them under those authorities that's how i viewed what snatch and grab was

00:02:21.280 i did not view it as a group activity it was more an individual activity you would agree though that

00:02:28.880 it does involve grabbing protesters is that correct well i mean the individual person may be a protester

00:02:37.760 themselves but i just uh i pictured an operation where officers are going out looking for one particular

00:02:44.720 person for persons on a list but not uh the persons aren't together in a group

00:02:49.920 and when if an opportunity arose it would affect an arrest of that singular person

00:02:57.600 thank you was this method to the best of your knowledge used after the emergencies act was invoked

00:03:03.840 i i can't uh i can't speak to that because i wasn't uh connected with the auto police operations at that

00:03:11.200 level you mentioned in your testimony yesterday that you only found out about the creation of the red

00:03:18.400 zone on february 17th is that correct i think that's correct through um media um that was uh posted on

00:03:29.200 ottawa police twitter and some media releases that were released by ottawa police or they spoke about

00:03:33.680 the formation of this red zone is it true that you also found out on the same date of february 17th

00:03:40.640 that there would be 900 officers reporting at 6 a.m the following morning friday morning february

00:03:46.080 so yeah yes but if i could expand on that answer a little bit to add some context to it so the

00:03:55.680 evening um so your the date was february 19th or any case in the evening of the february 17th that you

00:04:03.920 found out that at 6 a.m the next morning on february 18th that there'd be 900 i believe the 17th was a

00:04:08.800 thursday am i correct the 17th was a thursday that's correct so the next date was a planned large public

00:04:14.480 order unit deployment which was the first time we would have seen a large number of public orient

00:04:19.760 members on the street and my people's role that people i was in control of would be to be at traffic

00:04:26.080 points to help contain and control any ground that public order units were able to clear and late that

00:04:34.160 evening i believe it was around 10 o'clock uh 50 rcmp members attended our opp command post indicated

00:04:40.320 that they were reporting to our location starting the next morning along with ottawa police and it

00:04:45.680 was concerning to me only because i was already deploying close to five to six hundred of my own

00:04:50.640 members and if we added ottawa police and rcmp that would be 900 members and we would not physically

00:04:56.800 be able to get that many members onto the street in time to support the operation that was planned for

00:05:02.560 the next day so was it in your professional opinion that there was insufficient time to properly brief

00:05:10.400 these 900 police officers prior to them being deployed on the ground there would not have been

00:05:16.320 sufficient time to brief them and get them on the ground so that's why that evening as a team i

00:05:20.800 gathered my incident commander ottawa police service um supervisors were on our command post helping us with

00:05:28.000 telecommunications and i gathered them in a group and we all said we have to solve this problem um

00:05:34.960 because we're literally hours away from a major operation so uh collaboratively and together we all

00:05:41.200 agreed on a solution so that we did not have to deal with that issue the next morning and we were able

00:05:46.560 to get officers deployed in a reasonable amount of time was the name of this major operation operation

00:05:51.440 takedown i was never aware of what the public order unit operation name was i just knew that there was

00:05:57.680 a public public order operation happening the next morning but i wasn't familiar with the name of it

00:06:05.280 as per the ontario police services act regulations 926 all police officers including public order unit

00:06:11.760 members performing active active duty shall have an up-to-date use of force qualification within the

00:06:16.480 last 12 months is that correct i believe that applies to all serving police officers in the process

00:06:21.600 material so it would apply to public orient members as well would you be able to confirm that all

00:06:27.360 officers including those 900 received those that had had that qualification before they were deployed

00:06:33.920 i would not be able to confirm that because i i don't have that information and i if i could qualify

00:06:39.120 on my answer there is a provision that allows uh so the social general's office to provide an extension

00:06:45.840 to that 12 months whether it be due to an emergency um the best example i can give you in this case

00:06:51.840 when uh the public order uh process started uh we had a large influx of opp members come to the city of

00:07:00.400 ottawa i had an additional almost over 400 officers come to the city to be able to get the many members to

00:07:06.960 the city we had to do some logistical operations within an organization and one of those was to cancel block

00:07:14.000 training which is annual training for our members on use of force and firearm requalification so in doing so

00:07:20.880 some of those members may have gone outside the 12 months we needed to seek approval to allow them

00:07:25.760 to maybe be beyond the 12-month period but that is allowed within the police service act with proper

00:07:30.880 authorities was your role after the emergencies act was invoked at er logistics and planning the item

00:07:38.880 i'm sorry after it was a vote what was my role yeah was it was it um logistics and planning

00:07:45.360 no my role was as strategic commander so i oversaw a team of um of officers that were led by an incident

00:07:53.280 commander who their job was to organize the logistics of finding out where ottawa police needed us because

00:08:02.160 we were a support agency to the ottawa police and then my instant commander and his team would provide

00:08:08.160 all the police with support that they needed under with me with frontline officers the public order unit

00:08:14.320 command and what they needed for public order unit was separate from myself and i didn't have

00:08:18.960 direction or control over our public unit members and you were reporting to chief superintendent carson

00:08:25.520 party is that correct yes you considered him your commander i did were you involved in the planning

00:08:33.520 phase for the operation the major operation only for i believe i said yesterday only for about 48 hours

00:08:40.320 just in the initial stages when the integrated planning team got started and we had our initial meetings

00:08:45.520 on on the 8th and the 9th and that was the only time i had direct contact with the members of that

00:08:51.360 planning team and i i reverted back to my role of managing our rlpp members in our deployments in

00:08:57.360 support of the ottawa police with regard to the boots on the ground were plt supporting pou's

00:09:02.880 i was not aware of of what plt was doing i know plt eventually uh had a seat in the ncrcc with our

00:09:13.520 critical incident commander so there was always i believe it was a plt sergeant that sat beside

00:09:18.000 our critical incident commander um but i'm not aware exactly what they were doing in the field

00:09:23.280 because that would not have been reported to me and yesterday you mentioned that opp and ops

00:09:29.440 plt's had an integration problem and communications issues is that right that's what was reported to

00:09:35.200 me correct and also with the pou's um i i can't say that i heard of a lack of integration within our

00:09:43.280 public order units that wasn't reported to me do you agree with me that after the invocation of the

00:09:49.280 emergencies act that these integration problems and communications problems uh continued and did not

00:09:55.120 improve within the plt teams there was still there were still issues um i would have calls with

00:10:02.000 inspector bodin and he would say some days they were making poor progress and other days they still

00:10:08.640 lacked um an ability to understand what the plan was because until the integrated planning team came

00:10:14.720 up with a plan there was still no plan so they still struggled to determine what their purpose was

00:10:21.280 were they truly integrated team between the auto police service plt team and the opp plt team there

00:10:26.960 were still those issues yes okay and that in fact that the problems worsened after the influx of 900

00:10:35.600 additional officers on the ground on friday morning the 18th february i don't know if they any worsened

00:10:43.120 i think they may they maintained and became they were similar but i don't know that they became any worse

00:10:50.320 um would you agree with me that due to the lack of integration and communication problems that that

00:10:58.800 would lead to a problem ultimately in decision making throughout the major operations certainly

00:11:06.560 the information that plt is able to provide and tell us about conversations we're having with convoy

00:11:12.480 organizers and exit plans or what the intent of the organizers are is very important in forming

00:11:18.560 operational plans of how we're going to approach a protest so being unable to get that information

00:11:24.960 has an impact yes in a negative way and when i mentioned major operation i mean after the invocation

00:11:30.480 of the emergencies act so i consider it one giant operation and and the lack of communication had impacts

00:11:39.760 all along from invocation period prior to and during if it didn't improve after the invocation of the

00:11:48.480 emergencies act would you agree that it got worse i can't say it got worse it just seemed to be a

00:11:55.920 similar theme throughout my time as strategic commander as i i continue to hear the lack of communication the

00:12:03.200 lack of integration that was a common theme it didn't seem to increase um through one day or the other

00:12:09.040 whether again prior to february 14th or after it seemed to be a similar theme throughout and the

00:12:15.440 final phase after this major operation after the invocation of the emergencies act was called the

00:12:20.800 maintenance phase is that correct i recall that uh name being used it just it was a phrase meant to

00:12:28.640 maintain and hold ground that public order unit members were able to clear streets intersections those

00:12:35.440 types of things do you agree that every officer who draws their firearm in the present of public

00:12:40.880 and uses weapons or improvised weapon other than a firearm on another person or uses physical force on

00:12:47.600 a person that results in an injury to that person requiring medical attention shall complete a use of force

00:12:54.800 report prior to the end of duty i can only speak to the opp there is abuse of force reporting requirement

00:13:02.240 um i apologize i'm not certain on the timelines of when it shall be done whether it's at the end of

00:13:08.000 their shift or within a certain number of days i'd have to review the legislation so unfortunately i can't

00:13:14.560 give you the exact answer on that but um i tried to follow all what you were speaking about but from whatever

00:13:22.560 um heard you say it seems to check all the boxes that are related to our members when they have to fill out use

00:13:29.360 of force reports um and all the occasions you mentioned from what i recall hearing fit those

00:13:35.920 needs to have a use of force report from submitted timelines aside were any of those use of force

00:13:42.880 reports completed after the major operations after the invocation of the emergencies act i'm not aware

00:13:52.800 yesterday you mentioned that you listened and you watched chief superintendent rather superintendent

00:13:58.080 morris's testimony yesterday is that correct you mentioned that yesterday in your testimony i've

00:14:03.040 seen parts of his testimony yes yes and do you agree with it i i don't disagree with many of the

00:14:10.960 things that superintendent morris said it was his testimony and it was consistent with um our

00:14:17.040 organizational values and and his public um provincial intelligence bureau mandates thank you those are all

00:14:25.200 my questions and thank you again for your service thank you thank you

Juno News - October 21, 2022

Convoy lawyer cross-examines OPP Strategic Command Leader

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