[Editor’s note: The Tyee’s Hook blog welcomes eyewitness accounts of the G20 protests over the weekend. Send them to [email protected]. Here is one sent to us by Canadian filmmaker Mangla Bansal.]

The week leading up to the G20 and the riots was strange. Police officers by the twenties were sitting in the shade, drinking coffee, eating chocolate bars. For me, a civilian, who has seen the Olympics, will tell you that this is VERY different. There is no need for five cops on each corner of an intersection. No need. Especially when they are sitting around talking to one another with their coffee or chocolate bars. It’s an insult and we as civilians are paying for it!

I also had the pleasure to see the parade/march to Allen Gardens for the Toronto G20 tent city. Hundreds of cops followed protesters on their bicycles. There was an additional couple hundred just lining the streets. Once the protesters were in Allen Gardens the police grouped off again and went back to chatting, drinking coffee and eating chocolate bars!

The riots today (Sat June 26, 2010) were just outrageous. Angry protesters started smashing windows down Yonge and Queen Street, they then moved on to College Street to The University of Toronto Campus. Once I felt safe enough, I went to check out the aftermath. There is one particular case of some protesters smashing a window of a Starbucks coffee shop with a woman sitting at the window. The woman was balling and crying when the police pulled her out of the glass afterwards.

I just don’t understand what the police were doing. They seemed to be trying their best not to get too involved. They stepped back and let most of it happen. They did not want to be the wrong ones in the situation. When marching together behind non-violent protesters they show their authority, but they still let the ignorant civilians make their violent point.

There were hundreds of protesters who were non-violent, who had a solid statement to make, but the violent ones have turned their message into a joke. I would look at some youth who continued to hold up their signs on Yonge Street and wondered if they felt betrayed by everything. Or if they even understood truly what had happened and that some people now viewed them as a part of the violence.

Some shops with broken windows were going on with business as usual. The Bell store was still selling phones. As I was taking a picture, a man came up beside me and said, "That is a great shot of capitalism today if I ever saw one." I agreed. Some other independent shopkeepers that were spared started boarding their windows with cardboard. I went up to one and asked the restaurant owner if his windows had also been smashed, he laughed and said, "No, this is only in case."

I managed to get a picture of some violent protesters who openly showed their choice of using force. They were dressed in camouflage; they spattered their faces with fake blood and even had special effects makeup showing various fake bloody gashes on their faces. It was a sad sight. Then I turned around and literally in the same spot there were happy Ghanaians waving their flag down Yonge Street screaming happily over their win against the USA in the FIFA World Cup. What a lovely contrast! (see all my Flickr photos of the protests here.)

Many people commented openly about their shock and disapproval. People were talking on their cell phones with friends and family members about what they were seeing. Others held hands with a loved one while walking down the street wide eyed at the carnage. Some families even brought their young kids into the streets and were getting hot dogs; apparently it was amusement. And of course there were the occasional jokesters who would look at the smashed window of a large pizza chain and say, "Man where I am going to go to eat now?"

I reflected a lot while walking home. I could never see myself smashing windows to prove a point, but I don’t think doing a salt march would be enough either.

Mangla Bansal is an award winning Indo-Canadian filmmaker who has made fiction films and documentaries in India.