In Ottawa protests, a pressing question: Where were the police?

Steps from Canada’s Parliament buildings, a sprawling festival erupted Saturday. DJs played music for crowds dancing at intersections, singers belted out songs from an improvised stage and protesters’ trucks still blocked the streets, blowing their horns to cheers.
A day after the premiere of Ontario declared a state of emergency across the province and said that anyone involved in the protest would face “severe” consequences, including nearly $100,000 fines or even jail time, nothing had changed on the streets of Canada’s capital.
The few police in sight were quickly swallowed up in overwhelming crowds of people, both protesting government pandemic regulations and enjoying the party atmosphere after almost two years of intermittent lockdowns.

“They don’t have an easy job,” said Scott Spenser, 36, looking up from a drum concert on Sparks Street, as a phalanx of six officers marched . “Hopefully, this all ends peacefully and they lift the mandates and we all get back to living.”
Throughout the day, Canadian police sought to clear many of the trucks blocking the Ambassador Bridge, a vital crossing in Windsor, Ontario, connecting the United States and Canada. But there were still a few holdouts, and traffic remained blocked for a fifth straight day.
And in Ottawa, police were still hanging back, circulating in small numbers and not visibly handing out tickets or making arrests.
Two weeks after downtown Ottawa was transformed into a raging tailgate party, many in Canada wonder how this happened — why the police seemingly abandoned the country’s seat of power, with no perceivable backup, and how a motley group of truckers, anti-government activs, anti-vaccine agitators and people just fed up after two years of stringent public health restrictions have managed not only to outfox them but also to become increasingly entrenched and to spread elsewhere.

“This is Jan. 6 in slow motion,” said Catherine McKenney, an Ottawa city councilor, who uses the pronouns they/them, referring to the Jan. 6, 2021, mob assault on the U.S. Capitol. McKenney has been bellowing for more police protection for the city’s residents downtown, who feel terrorized pickup trucks that circle through, delivering supplies to the parked trucks. “But on Jan. 7, 2021, Washington emptied out,” McKenney said. “Here, they stayed.”
The answers will surface in a post-mortem, but initially, analysts link the police officers’ hands-off approach to two opposing factors: the weaknesses of the local police force in size and preparation, and the relative strength of the occupiers — in numbers, but also in tactics, discipline, fundraising ability and logics.
Although the trucks themselves are the purported cause, symbol and tool of the protest, only a few of the self-proclaimed leaders are actually truckers. Some are, in fact, former police officers and army veterans who many believe have used their expertise to help organize the occupation.
“This is an entirely sophicated level of demonstrators,” Ottawa Police Chief Peter Sloly said in a news conference Thursday. “They have the capability to run a strong organization here, provincially and nationally, and we’re seeing that play out in real time.”
Police walk through the trucker-led protests blocking streets near the Canadian Parliament building in downtown Ottawa, Friday, Feb. 11, 2022. (New York Times)
The trucks began roaring into the city Jan. 28, spurred new federal regulations requiring truckers crossing into Canada from the United States to be vaccinated against the coronavirus. But the scope of their demands was more expansive, calling for removing all pandemic restrictions in Canada, and they called on Parliament to be dissolved and Prime Miner Justin Trudeau to be removed from office.
City councilors briefed the police were told to expect an exceptionally large convoy that would be disruptive — and loud — but most likely temporary.
“The overall sentiment at the point: late Sunday or Monday, it would move on,” McKenney said.
Instead, the trucks parked in tight groups along many streets downtown, including on the graceful boulevard that passes before the country’s august Parliament buildings, Supreme Court and political offices, including Trudeau’s. And they never left.
Police did not put down concrete barriers to keep the trucks a safe dance from the Legislature, nor did they ensure that the downtown core would not be converted into a parking lot — until days later, and then only to stop further expansion.
A police officer talks to one of the trucker protesters who are blocking streets near the Canadian Parliament building in downtown Ottawa, Friday, Feb. 11, 2022. (New York Times)
It was only at that point that everyone understood how a 30,000-pound tractor-trailer that a trucker may live in for days at a time while on the job could be converted into a strategic tool of protest — huge and immovable, equipped with a heater, bed and a built-in, ear-shattering noisemaker.
In some cases, the truckers removed their tires and bled their brake lines to make their trucks immovable, police said. And some heavy-duty towing companies have refused to work with police to remove the trucks, Sloly said, as some have been threatened and others are sympathetic to the truckers, who are their major clients.
It was not just that the trucks were immovable. The police were also greatly outnumbered and outflanked.
The mayor declared an emergency, and Sloly requested an additional 1,800 police officers. But still, there were too few officers to handle the crowds. While trying to make an arrest, some of his officers were swarmed.
On Friday, Trudeau — whose name linked to a popular epithet has become the unofficial slogan of the occupation, written on knit caps, hats, flags, handwritten signs and the side of a giant truck stationed squarely in front of the gates to Parliament — rejected calls to order the military to clear the city’s streets or some of the border crossings into the United States that had been blocked similar convoys.

Over that time, money to support the convoy in Ottawa — much of it from the United States — has poured in. The organizers have held regular news conferences in hotel rooms for the media outlets they deem trustworthy. They sent a lawyer to court to represent them in a nascent class-action suit.
Two weeks after the first trucks arrived, some of the extra forces that Sloly had been begging for, drawn from around Ontario, have appeared on the streets, sometimes in large groups. But still, they remain greatly outnumbered and inactive. Groups of protesters wheel jerrycans in wagons past them, honk their truck horns in time with the music as people dance and remain squarely parked on the street.
Former military and police officers have also made public pleas for recruitment this week — for the convoy.