Toronto Police didn’t have enough time to prepare for the G20 according to both Toronto Chief Bill Blair and the Morden Report.

Chief Blair spoke to the media this afternoon at Toronto Police headquarters about the findings of the Morden Report, he independent review of 357 pages written by former justice John Morden.

Blair agreed with Morden that the short period of planning the G20 policing of just a few months should have been closer to a two year period.

During the G20 over 1,100 people were arrested and parts of Toronto’s downtown was attacked by vandals protesting the G20. One person was in charge of booking each of the arrests creating a long wait period for civilians at the Eastern Avenue faculty in place to hold detainees. Planning before the G20 thought that there would be a maximum of 500 arrests. Eight of the 38 recommendations from the report address the processing centre.

Morden’s report said that much of the policing was placed to in the inner security zone where G20 leaders stayed and not enough emphasis was put on the rest of the city. That emphasis resulted in violence within Toronto and not enough police to take care of crowd management.

While Chief Blair was faulted for some of the problems the report states that at times it was not clear who was in charge of police operations, leading to confusion at all levels, the report states.

The Toronto police services board is promising to make substantive change following the report.