Shelley Carroll: Anarchist fetishist or useful idiot?
On March 21, 2010, a group of city councillors gathered for an in-camera meeting to discuss the city’s plan to build a temporary police holding facility during the G20. City councillors Shelley Carroll and Adam Vaughan were reported as deciding that a single location would be a better solution. Vaughan was influenced by conversations with activists who attended the 2001 riot at the Quebec City Summit of the Americas saying “They didn’t know there was a detention centre, they didn’t know where it was located, they didn’t know how to get lawyers and support to that detention centre, and a whole series of issues around that.”
It was reported that when the Black Bloc anarchists started to smash up downtown Toronto that Shelly Carroll responded tweeting “Protest can’t stop consumerism at Yonge and Bloor, Off to Queen and Beav to watch Ghana Game!”. It was a strange response to criminals who were embarrassing Toronto on the world stage, and curiously devoid of criticism. The makeshift jail Shelley Carroll helped to create overflowed with prisoners- some arrested for entirely valid reasons, and 100’s of others using legally unsound mass arrest and kettling tactics. Surprisingly, 36 city councillors voted to commend the police for their behaviour.
Carroll and then Mayor David Miller “made the motion more palatable” by adding a clause calling for an investigation into the police. Carroll said it didn’t take too long after this incident to realize she made a mistake voting for the commendation- having risked emboldening rogue policemen. But Carroll’s call for a police investigation only addressed half of the problem. If Toronto is going to be successful avoiding a G20 replay during the Pan-Am Games, the city must also understand who the instigators were. Disturbingly, there’s no better place to start this investigation than Shelley Carroll’s city funded payroll.
