Ottawa’s police chief abruptly resigned Tuesday, while the Mounties and Ontario Provincial Police worked closely with the local force on a plan to end a chaotic antigovernment protest paralyzing the downtown core.
Ottawa Coun. Diane Deans, chair of the police services board, said in a written statement Tuesday that the “priority is to ensure a plan is put in place to bring about a peaceful end put to the occupation of our city, as expeditiously as possible.”
She said the board and police Chief Peter Sloly had “reached a mutually agreed upon separation,” thanked him for his service and said there would be no further comment because “this is a labour relations matter.”
Steve Bell, the deputy police chief, becomes interim chief of the force, which is under intense pressure to do more to evict the protesters and their large trucks.
Earlier Tuesday, Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino pointed to an integrated command centre set up over the weekend that so that the RCMP and provincial officers could work with the Ottawa police to respond to more demonstrators flowing into Canada’s capital city.
Mendicino said the federal government is focused on ensuring the Ottawa police, as well as the RCMP and OPP, have all the tools necessary to restore order in the city.
“I know that they’re working day and night to be sure that there is an operation that will be put into effect to restore public order,” Mendicino said.
“It isn’t easy. The illegal blockade has now become entrenched in the downtown core over the last three weeks.”
Authorities are figuring out how best to use new powers — granted through the Emergencies Act, invoked Monday by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — to help remove scores of protest trucks clogging the city’s downtown.
The Ottawa police have been criticized for their response to the protest that has sparked a highly critical backlash from residents fed up with what many call an occupation.
Some protesters have harassed residents for wearing masks, flown Nazi and Confederate flags and honked their truck horns incessantly, though an injunction has helped quell the noise to some extent.
Many Ottawa residents and city councillors have expressed dismay at the local police force’s seeming reluctance to enforce laws and maintain order downtown.
Officers have been frustrated by the lack of direction as well, said Ottawa Police Association president Matt Skof.