I picked up my copy of Helpless yesterday at the no-longer-accurately named World’s Biggest Bookstore in downtown Toronto. It appeared to be the only copy, and was well-hidden in a corner of the Canadian Political Science section, on the next-to-bottom shelf, partly hidden by other books. I’m sure that’s just a co-incidence.
The third in the series of excerpts being run by the National Post. This is a question from Detective Sergeant Roger Geysons, who was president of number 3 branch of the Ontario Provincial Police Association:
“Are OPP members allowed on DCE? Can you provide to our members written direction?”
OPP deputy chief Chris Lewis answered.
“We’ll address that,” he said. “This is actually news to me that this was still an issue. There is obviously a communication issue.”
Then Lewis delivered a bombshell: “Short of somebody having a kid kidnapped and running onto the DCE, we’re not going to go onto that property. It’s just a recipe for disaster, and it will set things back there.”
Lewis also confirmed that the Aboriginal Relations Team (ART) was still calling the shots — which meant, to those in the know, that the occupiers were still running the show.
“There may be times that we have to go on there,” Lewis said, “but at the same time, we’ll do it and negotiate that through ART [to] the leaders in the First Nations community.”
He also said that the OPP would respond to calls — meaning emergencies — on the Sixth and Seventh lines, but general patrols would not take place in that area because “they [Six Nations] can’t control all the people in their community . . . So it’s a commonsense issue, and certainly, we’re not saying we will never go on there, but we really have to be very selective of when we do and how we go about it.”
