MONTREAL – McGill University’s security and administration officials have taken a lot of heat for the deployment of riot police on campus during a protest last month, but a report investigating the incident says neither security nor administration called in the riot squad.
The report by Daniel Jutras, dean of law, says the operation by the riot police was their own initiative and was conducted “without any request for assistance by McGill Security or McGill authorities with regard to the demonstration on campus.”
It also says McGill must quickly address a potentially dangerous situation that has arisen as “some security personnel may now feel reluctant to intervene or call for external assistance in explosive situations.”
The report, made public on Thursday, was commissioned shortly after riot police wielded riot shields and pepper spray at McGill on Nov. 10 after a large protest against tuition fee hikes ended with an occupation of the university’s administration building.
The controversial presence of the riot police prompted many in the university community to say there were problems with governance at McGill.
While the detailed chronology of events in the report were welcomed, some in the McGill community said the recommendations – which focused on reviewing security processes, emergency management and defining the scope of the rights of free expression and peaceful assembly – fell short of giving the community the closure it was seeking.
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“The presence of the riot police that day will continue to be contentious,” said Joel Pedneault, vice-president of external affairs for the Student Society of McGill University.
“There is a feeling McGill didn’t do enough to attenuate the riot squad’s deployment and this report doesn’t clear the air.”
Farid Attar, president of the Association of McGill University Support Employees, said the report “will not be the catharsis the community needs.”
Jutras was specifically given a mandate not to lay blame, and for very good reason, McGill principal Heather Munroe-Blum said on Thursday: “You need to leave people free to come forward and make representations without fear of blame or charges being laid.”
But Munroe-Blum refused to comment on the report’s recommendations despite having called reporters to a 2:15 p.m. scrum to discuss it, giving reporters just minutes to look over the 51-page report, which was released at 1:30 p.m.
The report goes into great detail on the events of Nov. 10, saying that after students forced their way into secure offices, one staff member pressed a panic button that called for immediate security intervention.
The call to police was made at about 4:12 p.m. Jutras said that was the only call to police made by any official at McGill that day.
With students gathering outside the administration building, at 4:50 p.m. a group of 10 to 15 police on bicycles entered the campus through the Milton Gates. Some accounts said they were hitting protesters with their front wheels, but Jutras was skeptical that was really the case.
In any case, Jutras believes that was the trigger for the arrival of the riot police. Not only does he say McGill never called the riot squad, but he says that when police asked whether McGill wanted the occupiers evacuated they were told that McGill security was trying to resolve the situation.
He did acknowledge that the arrival of riot police constituted a safety risk on campus and noted that the university must develop a distinct protocol for dealing with civic protest on campus.
In an interview, Jutras said while some students and staff criticized his investigation as not being truly independent, he did his best “to approach it with a spirit of impartiality.”
Now, he said, it is up to the McGill community to do some “soul-searching. The ball is in the hands of everyone on campus.”
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