Protest ends with charge for Mississauga man following Avenue Road demonstration ban in Toronto

Police have charged a Mississauga man following a protest on a highway overpass just days after demonstrations in the area were officially banned.

Const. Ashley Visser with TPS said a group of roughly 20 to 30 people gathered on the overpass near Avenue Road on Saturday, violating a ban police announced just two days earlier in response to increasingly contentious demonstrations sparked by the Israel-Hamas war.

Chief Myron Demkiw announced a ban on protests on the Highway 401 overpass near Avenue Road, saying the recent demonstrations there were raising “very serious concern for community safety.”

Police have called the protests “a public safety threat” that have left “many in the surrounding Jewish community feeling intimidated.”

Protesters on Saturday were “given the opportunity by police to leave the bridge and refused,” police said, leading to three arrests including a 26-year-old man from Mississauga.

Toronto police say Ali Nasser, 26, of Mississauga, has been charged with one count of obstruct peace officer.

Videos

Read More

The accused is scheduled to appear in court on Feb. 29, police said.

Demkiw has said members of Toronto’s Jewish community are feeling increasingly unsafe amid growing numbers of protests and a spike in hate crimes targeting both Jews and Muslims.

Police say hate-crime reports surged 42 per cent last year with antisemitic incidents accounting for 37 per cent of them.

Reports of hate crimes targeting Jewish people more than doubled from 65 in 2022 to 132 last year, while anti-Muslim, anti-Arab or anti-Palestinian hate crime reports nearly tripled from 12 to 35 over the same period.

Demkiw told Thursday’s news conference that officers would increasingly be “applying a criminal lens” when policing protests in the city.

– With files from the Canadian Press