By Cameron French
TORONTO (Reuters) - After a rare weekend of violence in a city that likes to trumpet its civility, Toronto licked its wounds on Monday as rights groups questioned police tactics in securing the G20 summit and the mayor blasted the decision to hold the summit in the city's core.
As security fences were dismantled and downtown businesses picked up the pieces after vandalism and looting, Toronto police were still processing some of the more than 900 people they arrested over the weekend.
The count may not include people detained, and then released elsewhere before being charged. The number could rise as police tally figures from several arrests made late on Sunday during a five-hour standoff with protesters.
Critics such as Amnesty International and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association took issue with those arrests.
Amnesty called for a review of the security measures put in place for the G20, and for the associated G8 summit, which took place a day earlier in the summer resort town of Huntsville, about two hours' drive north of Toronto.
In a front-page editorial, the Toronto Star, Canada's biggest circulation daily newspaper, called the summit security plan, and the reaction to it, "a brutal spectacle that failed a city and its people".
"They took our city to hold a meeting and bullied us out of the core, damaging the commerce of thousands of merchants and inconveniencing the entire population. Then, they failed to protect our property," the Star said.
Canada budgeted C$1 billion (638.98 million pounds) for security. It brought in hundreds of police from outside the city and erected a 10-foot (3-metre) steel fence around a large section of the city core to protect Group of 20 leaders such as U.S. President Barack Obama and Prime Minister David Cameron as they met just metres away from, but out of sight of, the protests.
STOREFRONTS SMASHED
The pricey security measures were in anticipation of violent protests similar to those that have become common at meetings of global leaders since the "Battle of Seattle" trade talks in 1999.
In Toronto, the violence started when masked "black bloc" protesters separated themselves from a larger peaceful march on Saturday, smashing storefronts and setting a number of police cars alight. Police were at times unable to keep pace with the fast-moving crowd, officials admitted.
Additional but smaller protests on Sunday met a stiffer response from police, who cordoned off large groups of protesters and onlookers, and arrested people by the dozen.
Police fired tear gas on protesters on both days.
Police Chief Bill Blair defended his officers' actions, saying the police were forced to change tactics once the protest turned violent.
"The criminal conspiracy didn't end after they broke a few windows and burnt a few cars," Blair said.
"They were intent on continuing with that criminality. All through the weekend we were arresting people with Molotov cocktails, with bricks and bottles they could throw."
Toronto Mayor David Miller also defended the police response. But he criticized the federal government's decision to hold the G20 in downtown Toronto, rather than at a more easily secured location, such as the self-contained Exhibition Place site just west of the city core.
"Whether that would have prevented people who simply wanted to come to commit violence acts I think is debatable, but it certainly would have significantly lessened the impact on downtown Toronto," he told reporters.
He said he would ask the federal government to provide compensation for businesses that sustained damages.
BANKS RE-OPEN
Activity was returning to normal on Monday in the city's core, which had emptied out last week in the run-up to the summit, with many banks and businesses closing.
Gates were opened to allow normal traffic to retake the streets within the security perimeter, although a noticeable police presence remained, with officers with riot helmets and plastic restraints on their hips walking in groups.
As of Monday afternoon, police said more than 900 people had been arrested, and more than 300 charged criminally.
Those detained included a number of reporters and photographers, including two freelance reporters working for Reuters. Both were later released without charge.
Jesse Rosenfeld, 26, an independent journalist who was detained on Saturday while reporting for the Guardian newspaper, told a press conference organized by an umbrella protest group that he was beaten by police during his arrest.
A group of about seven police officers were watching the press conference from several metres away.
"We are here just to keep the peace and to monitor any kind of gathering," said one officer. "As far as I know, this is part of the G20 still, and that's what our duties are right now."
(Additional reporting by Julie Gordon, Louise Egan, Claire Sibonney, and John McCrank; editing by Peter Galloway)
