London police kept busier amid 2023 uptick in public protests
London police kept tabs on more protests in 2023 than the previous year, a trend other Canadian police forces are reporting as foreign wars and domestic issues draw people to rallies.
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London police kept tabs on more protests in 2023 than the previous year, a trend other Canadian police forces are reporting as foreign wars and domestic issues draw people to rallies.
London police deployed officers to 28 demonstrations last year, up from 22 the prior year, according to statistics provided to The Free Press.
“As a police service, our main priority is to maintain public safety and one of our mandated core services includes the maintenance of public order,” Insp. Ryan Scrivens said in an emailed statement. “We also understand and respect that every Canadian citizen has the right to protest or demonstrate lawfully.”
The Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police, an organization representing more than 1,200 senior police officers across the province, has heard from police forces of all sizes about dealing with an uptick in protests in recent years, spokesperson Joe Couto said.
“Those pressures are being felt by everybody,” Couto said, noting reoccurring weekly protests are common in large and mid-sized cities.
International events are driving many of these protests that often require police resources to maintain public safety, Couto said.
“Right now, there are very significant world events that are being felt here at home . . . We can anticipate, for the foreseeable future, that there will be a lot of those types of protests,” he said. “I think Canadians need to have a conversation about how do we exercise those rights without infringing on the rights of our fellow citizens.”
London police didn’t provide a breakdown of the statistics – including the cost to keep tabs on the protests or what the gatherings supported – but last year’s demonstration tally received a boost from weekly rallies since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in October.
Pro-Palestinian groups have organized gatherings and marches at sites across London from Victoria Park and Masonville mall to an MP’s office and along busy roads during the past three months.
The demonstrations have been held since Oct. 7 after Hamas, the militant group that controls the Gaza Strip, launched a surprise attack on southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and kidnapping more than 200 others. Israel responded with a full-scale invasion of Gaza that has killed more than 22,000 and displaced the bulk of the roughly two million people living in the densely populated enclave.
The Canadian Palestinian Social Association (CPSA), the group behind most of the recent London demonstrations, has a London-to-Woodstock “highway caravan and banner drop” planned for Sunday at 11 a.m.
“We will continue to protest until this war on Gaza’s children and civilian population is over and the blockade is lifted,” CPSA president Nehal Al Tarhuni said in an emailed response to questions.
The participants in the regular rallies include families from London’s Palestinian community, many of whom have relatives trapped or killed in Gaza, along with many non-Muslims, Al Tarhuni said.
“We would much rather be spending our weekends taking our kids somewhere fun, shopping at the mall, or hanging out with family and friends,” she said. “However, the majority of us feel that our lives have been literally on pause since the beginning of these attacks, as we witness it live on our phones and wait anxiously to hear from our families that they are still alive surviving yet another bomb or another forced evacuation.”
But it was education, not a bloody overseas conflict, that drew the largest police presence to a protest last year in London.
As many as 2,000 demonstrators and counter-protesters gathered on Sept. 20 outside the Thames Valley District school board headquarters on Dundas Street as part of a Canada-wide movement, known as the One Million March 4 Children, opposing children being exposed to information about sexuality and gender identity in the classroom.
Eighty police officers were deployed to keep the peace at the protest, ensuring the two groups stayed on opposite sides of the road and closing nearby streets to vehicle traffic. Nobody was injured or arrested during the protest, a feat that one deputy police chief credited to extensive planning and communicating with demonstrators.
During the past two years, London police also monitored other events, but didn’t include them in the protest count because officers weren’t required to be there.
“Every event, demonstration, parade and protest is unique and our response to monitor and/or attend these events is always intelligence driven,” said Scrivens, head of the patrol support branch.
“Consequently, our resource commitment varies from minimal in nature, if anything at all, to a more significant deployment of resources including specially trained members who are trained as police liaisons and/or public order maintenance.”
The recent rise in protests isn’t just happening in Ontario. In Edmonton, a city with more than twice the population of London, police reported demonstrations have more than tripled in the past five years, reaching an all-time high of 570 last year, though it wasn’t clear if that tally included events that didn’t draw a police presence.
Despite the uptick in London demonstrations, most of last year’s rallies largely have been peaceful with a few exceptions.
On Sept. 14, a small crowd of protesters gathered outside the DoubleTree Hotel on King Street during the federal Liberal party retreat. Police say some demonstrators became aggressive and verbally abusive toward officers, resulting in the arrest of a 46-year-old man and 27-year-old woman, who were charged with assaulting police and causing a disturbance.
One month earlier, three suspects sprayed ketchup on the front door and windows of MP Peter Fragiskatos’s Hyman Street office during a pro-Palestinian march Oct. 22. Tarek Loubani, 42, a London emergency room doctor and activist, is charged with mischief in the case.
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