BLACK-clad demonstrators broke off from a crowd of peaceful protesters at the World Summit, torching a police cruiser in the financial district and smashing windows with baseball bats and hammers.
Police with shields and clubs earlier pushed back another small group of demonstrators who tried to head south toward the security fence surrounding the perimeter of the Group of Twenty global economic summit site. Some demonstrators hurled bottles at police.
“This isn’t our Toronto and my response is anger,” Toronto Mayor David Miller told CP24 television. “Every Torontonian should be outraged by this.”
The roving band of protesters in black balaclavas broke shop windows for blocks with baseball bats and hammers. They also broke windows at police headquarters.
They dumped some of their black clothes and changed as they rampaged through Toronto’s downtown core.
Police spokeswoman Jillian Van Acker said officers employed tear gas a short distance from police headquarters, but police later corrected that and said they didn’t.
Police in riot gear and riding bikes formed a blockade, keeping protesters from the security fence a few blocks south of the march route. Police closed a stretch of Toronto’s subway system along the protest route and the largest shopping mall downtown closed after the protest took a turn for the worse.
Scores of police cars headed to Toronto to reinforce security there after the smaller Group of Eight summit ended in Huntsville, Ontario. The vandalism in Toronto’s downtown core occurred just blocks from where President Barack Obama and other world leaders are meeting and staying.
Saturday’s protest march, sponsored by labour unions and dubbed family friendly, was the largest demonstration planned during the weekend summits. Its organisers had hoped to draw a crowd of 10,000, but only about half that number turned out on what was a rainy day.
Hundreds of protesters moved through Toronto’s streets on Friday, but police in riot gear blocked them from getting near the summit security zone downtown.
Ontario’s provincial government quietly passed a regulation earlier this month allowing police to arrest anyone who refuses to show identification or submit to searches if they come within five metres of the security fence.
Toronto’s downtown core resembles a fortress, with a big steel and concrete fence erected along several blocks to protect the summit site.
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