Weapons among Freedom Convoy protesters may include items such as tire irons and tools, as Ottawa police have claimed in past reports, a congressional special commissioner said Nov. 3. the council listened.
“Weapons vary,” said Patricia Ferguson, acting deputy chief of Ottawa police. special joint committee About the declaration of emergency.
“Most of these conversations focus on guns, but the weapon could be a knife. It could be a tire iron. It could be anything,” Blacklock’s Reporter first reported. As did, she said.
“A weapon is any object that can be used to intimidate or attack someone.
OPS Interim Director Steve Bell said in March that police did not find firearms in protesters’ possession during the Freedom Convoy demonstration in Ottawa in February.
“Weapons found? Loaded firearms found, yes or no?” Conservative MP Dane Lloyd asked Bell at a meeting of the House of Commons Public Safety Committee on March 24.
“No, I am not involved in the prosecution at this time,” Bell replied.
Bell added that the cabinet would be notified if firearms were found in protesters’ trucks.
“I don’t have hard numbers”
Ferguson said on November 3 that police had not searched all the trucks, so it was not possible to say with certainty whether the protesters had firearms.
“We didn’t search all the vehicles we eliminated because we had to move around the city fairly methodically and quickly for the safety of the officers and everyone involved,” she said.
“Many of those vehicles were never searched, so we don’t know if they had guns.”
Senator Jane Cody asked Ferguson, “How many and what kinds of weapons did the police seize?”
“Regarding the amount of guns, if people are paying attention, I don’t have a solid number on that,” Ferguson said.
She added that there were only “threats or hints” of the presence of guns in the vehicle, but nothing was actually found.
“How many weapons were seized based on the information reported in your threat assessment?” asked NDP MP Matthew Green on 3 November.
“I don’t have that information,” Bell replied.
The RCMP sent a briefing note to the deputy cabinet minister on February 14, saying “intelligence information also suggests that protesters in the convoy are beginning to weaponize themselves.”
However, a report the same day by the Public Security Bureau’s Government Operations Center described the protesters as peaceful.
“There are no concerns at this time,” the Canadian Security Intelligence Agency said in a report.
On Oct. 19, at a public order emergency committee hearing on the use of the emergency law, Supt. Patrick Morris, the director of intelligence for the Ontario Police, testified that there was no evidence of firearms.
“I want to be clear on this,” he said. “We did not provide any information that these individuals were armed. There was a lot of exaggeration around that.”
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