Ottawa police chief Peter Sloly resigned from his position Tuesday, multiple reports confirmed, after weeks of continued protests against Wuhan coronavirus restrictions by Freedom Convoy truckers, a day after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked emergency powers.
Sloly, criticised by many opposed to the Freedom Convoy protests over his handling of the situation in downtown Ottawa, resigned Tuesday after alleged conflicts with colleagues in the Ottawa Police Service as well as conflicts with members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP).
Sources, according to a report from Canadian broadcaster CBC, indicated that Sloly had a short temper and berated senior police officials. He allegedly raised his voice and yelled at the members of the Ottawa Police Service leadership.
“Right now the Ottawa Police Service is paralyzed,” a source told the broadcaster and added, “They are paralyzed at the front line. They’ve been waiting for directions from the senior leadership team and are frustrated with how they’re being viewed by the public because of the spectacular failure of their leader.”
Others have accused Sloly of not having concrete plans to end the three-week protests, which have seen truckers and supporters encamp in front of the Canadian parliament building and the immediate area.
“If someone paid me $346M a year and I point-blank refused to do my job, I should get fired. The Ottawa police is employed and rewarded with budget increases every year. We have this all backwards. Defund the police,” wrote Huda Idrees, CEO of the Toronto company Dot Health in the early days of the protests.
Hired as Ottawa Police Chief in 2019, Sloly has spoken out at length on perceived issues of systematic racism within the police force and went as far as bringing charges against one of his own police officers over an alleged “racist meme” that had been shared among members of the Ottawa police service in 2020.
Sloly had previously spoken out about the possibility of the military being asked to aid police to remove the trucks and other items placed downtown by the protestors and claimed that all options were on the table. However, the military rebuked Sloly, claiming that it had no intention of getting involved in a law enforcement capacity in Ottawa.
“The Canadian Armed Forces are not involved in law enforcement in this situation, and there are no plans for such CAF involvement,” a spokesman for the Canadian Defence Ministry said.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau further added that the government had no plans to deploy the military on the streets of the Canadian capital, a statement he reiterated on Monday after formally invoking the Emergencies Act for the first time in Canadian history.
While Trudeau has claimed the emergencies Act will be time-limited and geographically narrow, promising to uphold rights set out in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland stated that the government would be looking at freezing bank accounts and assets of supporters of the Freedom Convoy as well as regulating crowdfunding platforms and cryptocurrency under terrorist financing rules.