“I thought I was going to die,” Adam Melanson says about his Dec. 2023 arrest. Multiple officers pinned him to the ground, punched him repeatedly, and one used the banned “knee-on-neck” restraint. A year later, his charges of assaulting and obstructing a police officer were fully withdrawn after coming to an agreement with crown prosecutors. This is part of a larger pattern, argues Dalia Awwad.
I will be speaking about Adam’s arrest in the context of the broader Palestine movement in Toronto and how this was not an isolated incident but part of broader police trends and tactics employed against pro-Palestine protesters for over a year now, in an attempt to suppress dissent.
Since the beginning of Israel’s genocide, it appears the Toronto Police Service’s (TPS) role has been to criminalize, vilify, surveil, and brutalize the masses showing up in solidarity with Palestine. The harm the state is trying to inflict through TPS is multifaceted, physically through beatings, psychologically through surveillance and harassment, and materially through doxxing and criminalization.
Adam’s arrest was a moment when community members in attendance managed to document the brutality of TPS and their use of the knee-on-the-neck restraint. TPS went on to lie to the media and stated that they did no such thing despite the video evidence circulating. This would not be the first or last time they used this tactic against protesters. In January the knee-to-the-neck restraint was employed again against a different pro-Palestine protester at Avenue Road, according to the arrestee and witnesses.
Sadly, Adam’s assault is the tip of the iceberg of police violence, harassment and intimidation that we have experienced over the last year. (more...)
100 Arrests. Another dropped charge. What this tells us about policing the Palestine movement
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