Police arrested a driver who drove through and around protesters during a blockade-style protest on the Gardiner Expressway.
According to Toronto police, the driver was arrested after a demonstration involving approximately 40 people attempted to shut down the northbound and southbound lanes on Jarvis Street near Lake Shore Boulevard but no charges have been pressed.
A video circulating online shows a driver passing through the blockade, pushing one activist to the ground before continuing to drive away – after being surrounded by protesters attempting to prevent the driver from moving.
“The driver was arrested a short time later, but no charges have been laid at this time,” Shannon Eames, a media relations officer for the service, told True North. “An ambulance was called for the protestors, who refused medical attention and refused to provide a statement to police.”
Police did not answer further questions or confirm the purpose of the protest or the driver’s identity. But from videos of the protest, it appears it was an anti-police demonstration calling for “justice for Tylor Maxie Coore,” an Afro-Indigenous man who was shot by police during a call to service involving a person wielding a knife.
According to other reports, Coore, who suffers from schizophrenia, was shot and remains in the hospital with severe injuries. He was charged with two counts of allegedly assaulting a police officer in connection with the incident.
Lawyer and independent journalist Caryma Sa’d reported that one of the blockaders, the man who can allegedly be seen hitting the vehicle with a flag featuring a black thunderbird with a red background, is a frequenter of the Toronto protest circuit.
Sa’d claims he was the same man spotted wearing a hat that displays an inverted red triangle, a symbol used in Hamas propaganda videos to indicate their Israeli Defence Force targets before shooting at them.
“It is absolutely disgusting that the person arrested is the driver of the car, an innocent person on a highway being blocked by people on a roadway, which is in and of itself illegal,” Lawyer and political commentator Ari Goldkind told True North in an interview. “There should be a lineup of defence lawyers happy to assist the driver of this truck for free, should he (or she) be charged.”
Goldkind thinks the police’s apparent inaction is part of a larger trend with protests on the streets of Toronto and other major Canadian cities.
He said all levels of government and police have submitted to intimidation from protest movements, including by pro-Hamas protests, in a way that would have been unimaginable in the days following a terrorist attack such as the events of Oct. 7 or 9/11.
Goldkind noted the driver in the video is not driving at a high rate of speed and appears to try not to harm the protesters while still trying to escape them as they surround the vehicle.
“Some of these thugs are masked or disguised. What if this is a mother taking two or three kids to daycare or childcare? Are they supposed to sit around and hope for the best that these people are simply there to wash their windshield or wish them good cheer,” he said. “In my view, this is no different than self-defence. What about this car was so special that they had to box in and scare, if not terrorize.”
Goldkind said that if the law is against the driver in this case, then the law ought to be changed.
“I think (the driver) acted prudently, reasonably, and any injuries that would have resulted from that incident are completely self-inflicted on the part of the thugs,” he said.
He noted that some laws aren’t being used against protesters who intimidate and limit the movement of others. The Criminal Code prohibits anyone intent on committing an indictable offence from wearing face masks.
It also states that anyone who “wrongfully and without lawful authority” to compel another person to abstain from doing anything that he or she has a lawful right to do” is guilty of an indictable offence.
Police did not respond to True North’s requests about whether protesters broke any laws by holding vehicles on the road hostage.
