Surprise Police Raid on my Preconceptions

St James park has been cleared. It was a remarkably peaceful endeavour. Here's the summary:

Eleven people were arrested in all and most were released on site with trespassing tickets, rather than criminal charges.

It was surprising. I was shocked that our police force showed such restraint. That despite prepping a bunch of riot gear laden cops, they sent in only regular uniformed guys. The big extra piece of protective gear they had was raincoats. After last summer's G20 fiasco and the assorted abuses at other Occupy camps, it was a pleasant surprise. I mean, it's not like I expected a heavy-handed tear-gas rubber-bullet riot-like apocalypse, but what we ended up getting was way better than I had hoped it could be.

Then I read this:

Everyone's talking about how the police have been peaceful & no one is talking about how protestors are non-violent.

That's me. I was talking about how the police were surprisingly peaceful and had nothing to say about how well behaved the protestors were. And that's because I have lowered my expectations of reasonable behaviour from the police so far that I was shocked they didn't fuck everything up in a hail of police brutality. Because my expectations of the protestors - supposedly violent anarchists - was way higher.

Because this is the level to which my opinion of police has fallen. I am delighted that I was wrong about what I feared might happen in St James Park. I am very happy that I was mistaken about our law enforcement's lack of ability to learn. That despite my strong disagreement with what the police were doing - i.e. dismantling the Occupy Toronto encampment - I found myself, well not proud - but at least not ashamed of teh Toronto Police Services. Congratulations TPS, you managed to acheive the bare minimum I want from a police force - you did not make things worse.