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A heated interaction between a Toronto Police officer and a group of cyclists last Saturday left many in the city’s biking community asking why their memorial ride was disrupted.
On Sept. 7, a group of more than 100 riders participated in a Ghost Ride led by the Advocacy for Respect for Cyclists (ARC) in honour of late cyclist, Navjot Kaur, who tragically passed away from a fatal biking accident in August.
Riders were mourning her death at the crash scene when a Toronto Police officer arrived and told them they had to leave. Video footage posted on Instagram by @thebikinglawyer shows the officer raising his voice at bikers, taking their bikes, and moving them off the road.
According to the City of Toronto’s Vision Zero Fatalities data, six cyclists have been killed this year – the highest number of fatalities for bikers since incidents started being tracked by city police in 2006.
David Shellnutt is a managing partner at The Biking Lawyer LLP, a Toronto law firm that specialises in cyclist safety cases. He began working with the ARC after years of attending Ghost Rides in support of members in his community and has been working to spread awareness for cyclists by building an Instagram following of 13 thousand followers on his account, @TheBikingLawyer.
“He was shouting about being a danger and creating a hazard in the roadway where the only person creating a danger was him. He was agitating people that were there to mourn and scaring people, frankly,” said Shellnutt.
One video circulating from Kaur’s ride contains Shellnutt talking to the officer, saying he was attempting to defuse the situation and the bikers were about to leave when the officer forcibly removed his bike from his hand and dropped it in the road.
“He’s saying we’re being unsafe and we’re blocking the roadway, but then he’s throwing bikes to the roadway, and, you know, it just didn’t make sense,” he said.
Shellnutt says he and his community are in the process of gathering information to bring this forward to police services.
Shellnutt also says the involvement of police in the city’s biking lifestyle is not something cyclists want more of, rather they are calling for the inclusion of other regulatory systems to help ensure safety on the roads.
“We want automated enforcement. We want bike lane cameras. We want street car door cameras, red light cameras. We want citizen reporting for bike lane parkings and other infractions. Police have shown that they are very incapable of enforcing road safety, so we’ve got to think of other alternatives,” he said.
In 2016, the city enacted Vision Zero, a road safety plan designed to reduce fatalities and serious injuries on roadways, including biking-related incidents.
Geoff Bercarich, a memorial bike creator and ARC member, designed Kaur’s memorial bike and organised the ride. He says Vision Zero is far from becoming a reality when Toronto roads and its driving penalties are a “wild west” situation.
“There needs to be more punishment for motorists that are just idling or being completely absent-minded on the roads… It’s like a license to kill on the streets. Motorists need to be responsible for their actions on the roads. It drops right into the police lap(s), and I just don’t see any enforcement. I see the lack of it,” says Bercarich.
Monet Tessier, a recent Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) alumni, began to bike to campus to combat the costs of student living in downtown Toronto. She says her bike was never fully safe on campus, as her equipment was stolen off of her chained bike multiple times.
Each time, Tessier filed a report with campus security and never received help after that.
“I told them I lost my phone once. They were extremely helpful about that… But when I got things stolen multiple times off my bike, they’re like, “Yeah, yeah. It happens. You know, have you tried locking it up somewhere else? Have you tried not locking it up here?”. It was so clear that bike theft was low on their priority list and they didn’t care. The difference in response between those two situations was disheartening,” said Tessier.
From campus security to police and motorists, cyclists often face dismissal regarding the topic of their safety. Tessier says that collaboration with the city and Toronto Police is the only answer in fixing this issue.
“I’m hoping the discourse changes and it becomes less like cyclists and drivers fighting each other and just people learning to share the road with others, and, you know, not kill each other,” she said.
In a statement Toronto Police said the officer “intervened and took appropriate measures to ensure the cyclists moved off the roadway, thereby restoring the flow of traffic,” and that there were “no arrests or injuries reported in the incident.”
OTR reached out to campus security at TMU for comment on the incident but did not hear back in time for publication.
Olivia is a Toronto and GTA based reporter for On The Record.
