More than 1,000 people detained during G20 summit in Toronto can sue police

More than 1,000 people detained during the 2010 G20 summit in Toronto –described as one of the worst violations of civil liberties in Canada’s history – have won the right to move ahead with class-action lawsuits against police.

On Wednesday, Ontario’s top court gave the go-ahead to two lawsuits alleging civil rights abuses during the summit and noted the role legal action could play in forcing police to change their behaviour.

Toronto’s G20 summit made headlines around the world – not as much for the discussions taking place behind the nearly 10 kilometres of fence erected for the summit, but for the dozens of anarchists who broke away from the largely peaceful anti-globalisation demonstrations to torch cars and smash store windows.

Police responded with teargas, pepper spray and force; boxing in people at various locations around the city. More than 1,000 people – including peaceful protesters, bystanders and journalists – were arrested or detained in what became the largest mass arrest in Canada’s history.

Many of them were held at a makeshift detention centre dubbed “Torontonamo Bay” for its deplorable conditions. Within 24 hours, most had been released without charges.

On Wednesday, the court noted that police cannot indiscriminately arrest large groups of people in hopes of catching a few criminals. “There was some basis in fact for finding that the individual officer or officers who are alleged to have given orders for mass detentions and arrests did so without regard to whether all of the individuals detained … were implicated in the criminal activity with which the police were concerned,” the court said.

Hailing the decision as groundbreaking, lawyer Eric Gillespie told reporters after the ruling that the class action could “help protect the basic freedoms of all Canadians”.

Lead plaintiff Sherry Good said she was delighted with the ruling. “Now the police need to make changes and prove to us that this will never happen again,” she said. Good launched the class-action lawsuit in 2010, demanding damages for those who were wrongfully arrested, detained or held by police during the summit.

Tommy Taylor, another plaintiff in the case, was among those sent to the makeshift detention centre. “We were illegally arrested, thrown into overcrowded wire cages, and treated worse than animals in a zoo,” he said on Wednesday. “We want justice to be served. We don’t want this to happen to any other Canadian, ever again.”

The Toronto police services board said nobody was available to comment on the decision.

A similar lawsuit was launched in Washington DC after the arrest of some 700 protesters and bystanders near the World Bank and International Monetary Fund buildings in 2000. One decade later, a federal judge approved a $13.7m (C$17m) settlement for those held in the mass arrest.