Security at G20 well worth the cost

To the editor:

As a Torontonian, born in this great city over four decades ago, it wrenched my stomach watching what I perceived as bias press coverage against Metro's finest and their out-of-city colleagues and in favour of the crowds many of whom were violent trouble-making thugs and hooligans going up to the police with camcorders in the officer's faces with finger gestures and profanities behind their cameras and being utterly contemptous of law-and-order, provocating the officers endeavouring to safeguard our city.

I, on this rare occasion, agree with Mayor David Miller's broadcasted accessment of the anarchists as blatant criminals and it is indeed regrettable that bystanders just stood by watching the defacing of TTC vehicles, the smashing of business windows and the assaulting of officers.

Hopefully, there will be forthcoming arrests of the culprits from "building security or citizen video" delivered to police to assist in apprehending the instigators of the hundreds of thousands of dollars in vandalism that tarnished our beautiful Toronto.

The protesters ruined many people's weekends who couldn't get downtown for a night on the town as the blocking of transit inconvenienced countless folks like myself who would note that unlike the $1 billion wasted in the Liberal's Ontario E-Health fiasco, the $1 billion for security by the Harper Conservatives proved a sound measure.

The consensus that Prime Minister Stephen Harper got from the other leaders to cut in half national budget deficits in the next three years will help thwart the pillaging of the standard of living of future generations that would have been inherent without the PM's bold initiative. President Barack Obama's words of thanks to his friend and partner our Prime Minister Harper for hosting the G8/G20 spoke volumes.

Dalton McGuinty's Liberals were wise to grant police extra powers prior to the G8/G20 as was self-evident with the swift, terrorist-like, masked, axe and hatchet-wielding losers that would likely have continued their rampage on Sunday had the police not acted decisively as they did.

The irony I would surmise here is that the polls will likely show another nudge higher toward that majority government that has alluded the Conversatives to date to the likely dismay of MPP Peter Kormos and union leader Sid Ryan.

Congratulations to Police Chief Bill Blair for keeping the territorial integrity of the security wall uncompromised amidst all the chaos.

David C. Searle