I WENT TO THE G20 AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS BLOODY T-SHIRT – OH, AND I WAS DETAINED WITH A CONCUSSION FOR NO REASON

Yesterday was Canada Day (or, as people in Quebec call it, Thursday) — which is sort of our version of the 4th of July except with more politeness and maple-leafed attire. While many Canadians get their toques in a tizzy over any occasion to crack a two-fer, yesterday close to 1000 people who were detained over last weekend’s G20 summit in Toronto, along with their supporters and constitutional law experts were severely bummed for what they believe is the loss of basic civil rights in this land, like the right to freedom of assembly. I spoke with our bud Nick Marian, who was one of the arrested, about his experiences getting locked up for what he said was the heinous crime of “bleeding on an officers boot,” after they kicked the crap out of his head.

Vice: Hi Nick, how are you?

NM: I’m well, I guess. Well enough.

So I heard you got arrested?

Yeah, I was detained for apparently assaulting an officer. I was beaten up for having a camera and I guess the assault charge comes from when I was bleeding on his boots, so that’s how they arrested me.

What day were you arrested?

Saturday, the 26th, at around 10:45 PM. We were at Cameron and Queen, just west of Spadina. I was down there all day, just taking pictures and being an observer. I wasn’t doing any protesting, I wasn’t yelling. I was completely calm the entire day. I just wanted to see what was going on, and just wanted to document it for my own personal reasons. I’m the farthest thing from anarchist or protester; I’m just a photographer. In a country like Canada, it’s now considered a terrorist act.

What was going on at Queen and Spadina at that time? Was there a large crowd down there still?

There was a small crowd down there at that point, maybe about 200 people or less who had all dispersed because the riot cops had been slowly moving west down Queen Street trying to get rid of the crowd. People were starting to go home already, as it was a peaceful protest. The cops were saying, “Go away. There’s nothing left to see here.” And my friend Dylan and I were just taking pictures close enough to the riot cops, but not to be a threat or anything. I don’t remember this, but my friend Rich said that plainclothes officers had been mingling in with us telling us to come closer and started to rally us up. They were like, “come on, let’s get in there, let’s get closer and see what we can do to these guys.” Apparently those were the guys that took Dylan me down.

Yeah I was watching footage of the scary cop lady on Youtube all day yesterday. Yikes.

I didn’t notice them at all because they attacked me from behind, but my friend Rich said that they were wearing white shirts, jeans, whatever. They weren’t wearing vests or anything. They looked like normal-looking jocks, I guess. They tackled us from behind and zip tied us, and then the riot cops punched Dylan in the face. I was taken down and cuffed, and then I remember seeing Dylan being dragged facedown, but I’m very hazy on what happened next because I was kicked in the head.

Ouch!

Dylan said the riot cops just started kicking me in the face and on the arms. So this now hurts a lot up here (points to his upper torso and shoulders), but it hasn’t started to bruise yet. But yeah, Dylan said that they were definitely kicking me a lot and also dragging me on my face. That’s where I got my nose cut, which isn’t very big, but I mean, it was bleeding a helluvalot, and I got it up here too (points to his right temple). I don’t remember this because of the head kicking, so my memory is a little foggy.

No shit.

So they got us down and treated us horribly and accused us of being anarchists. I have this pin on my bag of an ice cream cone with a smile on his face, just like the gayest thing, just a stupid pin because I think it’s funny, and this cop goes “oh look at this fucking anarchist pin, I bet you it’s you who burnt those cop cars” [referring to those allegedly planted cop cars that burned wildly on Bay Street earlier]. I mean, an ice cream cone with a smile on it. It’s completely unbelievable. This is the kind of stuff that was happening—a complete disregard for anybody.

Fak…

So that was around 10:45, and I suppose I was on the ground for a while. Oh, and there’s footage of me on the ground bleeding on myself.

A local news station CP24 had your image on TV right?

Yeah, they were right behind me. I heard those guys got arrested as well. Anyway, it was around 11 o’clock when they took my belongings and sealed the bag up. When I eventually got my belongings back, it said on the bag the time it was sealed: 11 o’clock.

What can you remember about the moments leading up to your arrest? Were there mass arrests going on at that point?

No, it was all individual arrests. Dylan and I got arrested at the same time, I guess because we were together. We stayed in the paddy wagon for quite a while. It was hard to judge at that point, how long it was before we eventually got to the Eastern Ave. Detention Center. When we finally arrived, they took me straight to the medical tent and gave me very minimal treatment. They said, “your nose isn’t broken, but you do have a mild concussion”… I was completely delirious, but I heard someone say “just get that blood off his face” because I had blood all over my face, and that was basically the medical treatment. Oh, and they gave me a few Advils.

Your nose looks pretty swollen to me, you look like you’re getting quite the shiner too.

Yeah, it’s very swollen and it hurts quite a bit, and it was bleeding a horrible amount on my shirt as you can see here.

Were these cops inside, or guards?
They were court officers.

I’ve heard bad things about those guys.

They’re very terrible people. I remember the name of one officer: Egerton. That’s the only one I remember because I was concussed, so I couldn’t remember anything too specific, but I remember him laughing at us, and calling us punks and faggots, and eating in front of us…

Taunting you…

Completely taunting us to the point of us just wanting to kill him. One guy actually yelled “if I ever see you on the street, I’m going to fucking kill you.” I assume they were trying to rile us up. They brought us into the main detention area, like the off-loading center, and I think if I remember correctly there were four large cells filled with people. They brought us in there and they had us handcuffed in the cells, like we were going to do anything in there like that. Most of the people in there were all non-violent people, all peaceful people. Most of the guys in my cell got arrested at the Novotel (the large downtown hotel where the French delegation were staying during the summit). Every one of them said they were sitting on the ground with their hands in their air making peace signs and they just got rushed, and that was the big mass arrest at that point. They said they got rushed and a couple of them got beaten up; one guy had a black eye.

What were the cells actually like?

I felt like I was a fucking dog in the dog kennel. I felt like I was a prisoner of war, and I guess that’s what we were essentially. Yeah, there were these big, commercial-sized halogen lights, buzzing the whole night in our cell. Coming into the cell itself, if you open the cell door, to the left of it, there was a small, four-person bench, and there was a port-o-potty with no door, which I guess is standard for a jail or whatever. There were concrete floors and the main cell that I was in was dusty. I guess there was old paint that was chipping away off the wall and all our clothes were covered in this dust because all thirty or forty of us were sitting on the floor. Also, it was freezing cold in there, like they must have had the air conditioning blasting, because people were shivering.

What were people doing to occupy themselves?

Just sitting. Most of us were so tired and demoralized and beaten. Guys were passing out all over the place from lack of water. Another thing I noticed was that all the guards or court officers had the option of having their names on their uniforms, because a lot of them didn’t have their Velcro nametags on their bulletproof vests. As well, their numbers were hidden underneath their shoulder straps, so some of the guys who were really bad, got to be complete anonymous assholes. Even the riot cops who beat me down had no badge numbers. Nothing on them. And if I remember correctly, it was York Regional Police who beat me down.

Right, because this wasn’t just Toronto Police acting as security during the whole G20 weekend, it was a unified force made up of officers from all over the country.

The more I hear about people’s recounts of what happened in there, the more sick I get of how people were treated, people like myself and Dylan. Of course the cops arrested some bad people–it would be naïve of me to say that they didn’t, but I do believe that over 90% of the people in there were definitely innocent. And there were way more than the reported 900 people arrested.

What do you think the fall out of all of this will be with all these public inquiries that are starting up?

Someone’s going to get the shit for it. Someone has to be accountable. They’re saying that nobody was beaten, which is a lie. Dylan got phone booked in there.

Holy shit! He was phone booked?

He was hogtied and phone booked; they put the phone book on his ribs and hit him with a billy club. He’s now got a line bruise on his side from the edge of the phone book. I think he was asking if I was okay or something along those lines. He was saying stuff like “I need to see my friend. Is he okay?” At one point Dylan saw me being dragged through the halls completely unconscious and bleeding all over myself. They said that Dylan was being rowdy, so they took him into solitary confinement and just beat him up.

And after they beat him up, they just put him back in the cell with everyone else?
Yeah. Initially when we were in there, it was kind of a joke; we couldn’t believe what was going on. We thought we were going to be in there for maybe, three hours, four hours. We get processed, we get charged, we get our court date, we get let out. Easy. Twenty-four hours and thirty minutes, with no lawyer, no questions answered, handcuffed. And it’s so sad. I didn’t even get it that bad, I mean, I did at the time, but I heard reports of people being chained with their arms up, their joints are all swollen because they had been standing for 15 hours. People were tortured in there, you know? I’ve heard so many stories that are all coming out now as everyone is being released. There were reports that they weren’t even giving tampons to the women, they were completely denying anything to anybody, including phone calls and food and water.

After being locked up for over 24 hours, and you were finally being released, what did they say to you on your way out?

They said that I was being charged with breach of the peace. I guess they just made that up because they lost my file. They I had no idea who I was at one point in there. Even thought at one point I was being charged with assault for bleeding on the boot of a police officer. But they ended up just charging me with breach of the peace.
So they ended up charging you with something?

It’s not a real charge; it’s a “catch and release” charge.

Do you have a court date set up?

No. So basically what’s going to happen is that if I were to get arrested in any protest that’s related to G20, then I will get charged. That’s what they told me.

What happened to you when you were finally released back on to the street? Were you given an escort home?

My mom was there to pick me up. She actually found out that I was in jail because of my ex-girlfriend who lives in New York. I’m not sure who told her, but she called my mom and she told her that I was in there. My mother got off work and went straight down there and was waiting for me outside. The jail solidarity was still going on at the time I was let out, and they gave me a towel because I was soaking wet from the rain. They wiped me down, gave me a granola bar and juice box and they were saying “anything you need, just let us know, cigarettes, anything, just let us know…” Those people are so brave to sit out there and help us out for being completely innocently detained.

So your mom took you right home then?

Yeah I went to my dad’s and had a huge glass of tequila.
I was going to ask if you had a drink after all of this.
Absolutely. I had a plate of meat loaf that my dad had just made, and a tequila and coke, which is disgusting, but anything I could find I just had to drink.

Are you seeking legal action for the way you were treated?

Apparently a lawyer saw Dylan and me getting beaten up on TV and he was waiting outside the detention center when Dylan got out and he said “I recognize you from TV. Take my number.” And he called Dylan yesterday and he wants to meet up.

So you’re going to participate in this legal action?

Absolutely. I’m going to do whatever they can and a lot of people are going to do whatever they can. While I was in there, there was a legal observer named Jeff who was there to observe the jail solidarity outside the detention center. Same situation as me, completely non-violent and he was arrested and detained for absolutely no reason. He had LEGAL on his hat and he was just like “I’m a legal observer, I’m not a protester.” How can you arrest a legal observer? How can you arrest a photographer? How can you arrest the media?

I think these are all questions that the public is demanding answers to know.

Somebody is going to have to pay for this, and I’m going to fight this for as long as I can. A lot of people know my story. I’m on the news for fuck sake getting my face kicked in by police officers. This is completely horrifying that this is happing in our city, not to mention our country. Big Canada: the peaceful country.

PHOTOS AND INTERVIEW BY CHLOE VICE