TORONTO – The city of Toronto spent months drawing up plans to evict some two dozen people from a homeless encampment in a popular park last summer, creating dossiers on the people who live there and involving hundreds of city workers in the process, reveal internal documents.
The details are contained in thousands of pages obtained by activists through freedom of information laws.
City documents, shared with The Canadian Press, reveal the scale of the Trinity Bellwoods Park cleanup effort, an operation that took place last June and ultimately turned violent.
Homeless encampments began popping up in Toronto in March 2020 as hundreds fled shelters in fear of contracting COVID-19. Some neighbors said they felt safer outdoors and sought the community feeling that the camps generate.
At the end of 2020, there were more than 50 camps in Toronto, documents show. The city had won a court battle that upheld an ordinance banning camping in Toronto parks and began to focus on cracking down on what it called “big four” campgrounds, including Trinity Bellwoods.
As of December 2020, documents indicate that the city was making efforts to negotiate with camp residents and their supporters, hoping to form a “camp discussion table.”
Chris Brillinger, CEO of Family Services Toronto, acted as a volunteer mediator between the two parties and wrote to city staff on December 29, 2020.
“A full-time facilitator/mediator is needed for a period of two to three months to move this forward,” he wrote. “The community needs help to organize. It is largely made up of frontline staff and volunteers who are exhausted, physically and emotionally.”
Tracey Cook, deputy city manager, responded within an hour.
“Certainly there is one thing that I see right away that we all have in common… City staff are emotionally and physically drained as well.”
In early January 2021, bureaucrats began formulating plans to clear the four big camps.
On January 7, 2021, Mayor John Tory’s chief of staff emailed Cook, saying that she and her colleague “look forward to meeting with you in the next couple of weeks to discuss the encampments and specifically our plan to spring. The mayor has begun to ask…”
On Jan. 22, Cook emailed the mayor’s office and the city manager with a PowerPoint presentation called “Camp Work: Proposed Next Steps.”
He noted that the city planned to work in “parallel buckets,” engaging with camp residents and their supporters while also planning to clean up parks in April.
“We are all worried about camping when spring comes,” the presentation said. “We have identified the highest priority parks based on risk and impact, and we need to create a plan and timeline for how we will act on these parks.”
Talks between the city and homeless advocates broke down in February when the city announced it had filed an injunction against Khaleel Seivwright, a carpenter who made “little shelters” for the homeless. The defenders felt betrayed, the emails show.
Meanwhile, the plan to clear the camps was gradually being put into motion.
City documents show that staff planned to post trespass notices at campsites that would be enforced within 72 hours.
“We are working on the idea of providing smoother communication to the people in the camp and following up with a legal post after we have moved several inside voluntarily,” Dan Breault, city leader in the camp archive, wrote. to the mayor’s chief of staff on March 2, 2021.
The city also had information on each resident of the camp in a confidential document titled “Trinity Bellwoods Analysis.”
One resident of the camp was deemed to be “more prone to climbing”, with the file noting that he is “always on site and has a huge mess around the camp that he claims to make art with”.
Another resident was said to be “non-confrontational and likely to leave when told,” while the file says a different individual “will not respond well if rushed, however will leave the site if told to leave.” timely manner.”
Several others were considered violent, the city said, and would pose risks to staff.
A note in the operating plan said that an individual “frequently escalates verbally toward city staff; He walks carrying a cane (long stick); and he has told numerous city employees that he knows karate and that he is ‘not afraid to use it.'” That individual, the city said, “speaks very strongly about the ‘war’ against the city.”
In a statement this week, spokesman Brad Ross said the city maintains documented records of camp residents “to ensure they offer the appropriate services that meet their unique needs along with access to indoor space.”
The city also compiled aerial maps of all the tents in the park, each identified by a number and related to each resident.
AJ Withers, co-founder of FactCheckToronto.ca, the homeless advocacy group that was involved in sharing the documents with The Canadian Press, said the files indicate the city had been negotiating with homeless people in bad faith.
“The mass evictions that they planned at Trinity Bellwoods were really set up to fail,” Withers said in an interview.
“They had this program of mass surveillance of the residents of Trinity Bellwoods Park that makes it very clear that they knew people would respond badly if they were rushed… They set up a powder keg and, predictably, it blew up.”
The city finally cracked down on Trinity Bellwoods in June, weeks after a botched cleanup operation at Lamport Stadium Park, where a large crowd turned out to support camp residents in a standoff with police.
On June 22, 2021, staff showed up early in the morning at Trinity Bellwoods with over 100 hired security guards and fencing was erected around two camping areas. Residents, many of whom said they were living with mental health and substance abuse disorders, were told they had two hours to pack and accept a hotel offer or leave. Some were in crisis that day.
Several clashes eventually broke out between police and homeless people and their supporters. A battle broke out over a fence that supporters tried to tear down as police struggled to keep it up. Another skirmish broke out when police fired pepper spray, accidentally hitting several security guards, according to the documents.
The riot squad arrived near the end of the day, once most of the crowd had dispersed, and cleared the park.
Ross said the fence was erected to protect city workers and said protesters prevented staff from doing their jobs. Those protesters were warned, he said, and when they didn’t leave, the city called Toronto police to clear the area.
The city, Ross said, has taken “extraordinary steps to help the homeless” and is trying to strike a balance between the homeless and the community.
“The city’s response to the encampments takes into account the health and well-being of those living outside and the needs of the community at large,” he said. “The city cannot force people to come in and take advantage of the many services the city offers, but living in an encampment in a city park is unhealthy and illegal.”
This report from The Canadian Press was first published on May 1, 2022.
–with files from Paola Loriggio and Chris Young
Reference-www.cp24.com