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Fenton was found guilty of two counts of unlawful or unnecessary arrests. One related to the mass arrest of 260 people in front of downtown Toronto's Novotel hotel Saturday, June 26, 2010. It was the first of two times that weekend police would employ a tactic called "kettling" to box citizens in and detain them for an extended period of time.That day, Akhavi and his friend had been protesting a climate change policy; on the Sunday they headed downtown to check out a security fence that had been erected for the conference and on their way back, encountered a group of protesters at Queen St. West and Spadina Ave. They stopped."Maybe 20 minutes later we were… boxed in," said Akhavi. Police formed a barrier around the intersection, preventing anyone inside, including peaceful protesters, journalists, and bystanders, from leaving.
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As a major incident commander during the G20 weekend, Fenton was responsible for policing in the downtown core.Though he testified that he wouldn't change his actions, his lawyer issued an apology following Tuesday's judgment."He deeply regrets that some of those decisions led to the arrest of people who were not involved in the violence and that some people were held in the rain for hours," it said. "He would like to personally apologize to all those innocent parties that were negatively affected."
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The G20 was originally meant to be held in Huntsville, ON, along with the G8, but that location was deemed to be too small, and was moved to Toronto."We never saw an apology from politicians who made the decision to host the G20 in Toronto," Laura Berger, interim director of public safety for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association told VICE."I think it would have been appropriate after the G20 to hear from federal leadership what happened on that weekend. A tremendous number of innocent Canadians were arrested and detained."
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Toronto was in a police state during the weekend of the G20 summit. Though their memories are unpleasant, some of those who lived through it are more disturbed at the thought that this kind of large-scale abuse of power could take hold again."It's distressing for me from a democratic perspective that this is how we police people, this is how we run this place," said Cauchi."This is happening in Ferguson, this is happening everywhere," added Lei. "You have police come in and they don't ask questions, they just take these stances that make it appear that Martial law is actually something that can be done and that isn't the rule of law."Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.