Activists are calling on the Toronto police services board to immediately move its meetings from police headquarters to city hall.

D!ONNE Renée, an activist and former mayoral candidate, alleges she was physically and sexually assaulted by an officer moments after entering the building ahead of the board's Sept. 21 meeting.

Ontario's Special Investigations Unit (SIU), which probes allegations of death, serious injury or sexual assault involving police officers, is looking into what happened.

• Toronto debate over police in schools sparks anger, but few answers

Reporters awaiting the start of the meeting heard Renée's screaming and saw her on the floor of the lobby surrounded by officers moments later. She was not arrested and later made it to the meeting, where she tearfully spoke on several matters.

On Wednesday, Renée and nearly a dozen supporters, including Desmond Cole, spoke to reporters at city hall setting out six demands, including that the police force suspend the officer allegedly involved in the incident, and that the police services board immediately move its meetings.

"Why do police control the building in which meetings about their accountability are being held?" Cole asked.

In recent months, the police board has become a flashpoint for heated arguments centred on race, and at several points demonstrations by groups like Black Lives Matter Toronto have forced the board to put its work on hold.

Mayor John Tory says the board is in "active discussion" about moving the meetings, suggesting they could be held at city hall or other locations.

"We are responsive to the notion that meetings should happen at other places than police headquarters from time to time." he told reporters gathered outside his office.

However, Tory didn't rule out having future meetings at police headquarters, nor commit to a timeline on when the meetings would move to an alternate location — suggesting only it could be possible by the end of this year or early in 2018.

Previously, the police board did meet at city hall, and many other agencies, like the TTC, do the same.

Tory says if the police board does move, additional security — likely in the form of metal detectors and bag searches — would come along with it.

"We are dealing here with the senior command of the police service," he said.

"They have an obligation to keep everybody else safe, and we have an obligation to keep them safe."

Cole wants that stopped, suggesting police unilaterally moved to add the security checkpoints at its doors. He's calling for them to stop "warrantless searches" and "arbitrary detention" at its doors.

CBC Toronto contacted Toronto police on Wednesday to ask about the potential of moving the meetings, but has yet to receive an official statement.

Searching people who enter Toronto police headquarters to participate in disciplinary tribunals violates their constitutional rights, a complainant and his lawyer argue in calling for such hearings to be held elsewhere.

The assertion is in a motion filed this week with the police tribunal adjudicator in which complainant Waseem Khan calls for a change of venue in light of the recently implemented security measures.

"Police headquarters is not the appropriate place to have a public hearing and keep police accountable because of the hostile environment for civilians, particularly public complainants," Khan says in his filings.

Khan, 33, is one of two complainants in a misconduct case against Toronto police Sgt. Eduardo Miranda, who is accused of using excessive force in January by deploying his stun gun six times on a handcuffed man lying on the ground.

Video prompted police service to apologize

Khan was video recording the takedown when officers on scene ordered him to stop, threatened to seize his cellphone, and suggested he could get AIDS from the suspect. Broadcast of the video caused an uproar and prompted the police service to apologize.

Police spokesman Mark Pugash said the motion had just been received and it would be inappropriate to comment.

Disciplinary tribunals for Toronto officers have long been held at police headquarters, which until recently had no special security at the entrance. In June, however, Chief Mark Saunders implemented measures that require visitors to go through metal detectors and have their belongings searched.

The official police view is that the searches are not "involuntary" because the public has a choice about entering the
building.   

At Miranda's first appearance in late September, Khan's lawyer Selwyn Pieters was also searched, a process he said he found uncomfortable and demeaning. In a letter to the prosecutor in the case, Pieters said he had no quarrel with the increased security.

Motion requests hearing be moved to another building

"However, as it relates to an administrative tribunal hearing where my client is a public complainant with standing, he, his
lawyers, the media and any other observer must be able to attend with the minimal intrusiveness of their person and belongings."

In response to the letter, procedures were changed to allow lawyers with valid credentials to bypass the screening but Pieters says that's not enough. No other administrative tribunal in the province subjects participants to such security measures, he said.

The motion, expected to come before Insp. Richard Hegedus, the hearing officer presiding over Miranda's case, formally requests that the hearing be moved to another building — such as a hotel — to get away from the security measures.

"It would not result in unfairness or an undue hardship to the Toronto police service to move the tribunal," Pieters says in the motion.

Court filings unrelated to the current application make the case for the screening measures by including reference to security incidents at Toronto police buildings. In 2015, for example, a man attacked a female officer with a sledgehammer at a detachment, and, more recently, a knife-wielding man threatened to kill officers at headquarters.

Insp. Stephen Irwin, who is responsible for national security investigations in the Toronto area, calls the current screening protocol reasonable.   

"Firearms, metal knives, explosive devices and other obvious weapons are less likely to make it into the interior of the
building, thus enhancing the safety of those legitimately working and visiting the premise," Irwin says in a court filing.

Toronto police are reviewing a decision by an Ontario Superior Court judge that says searching members of the public in order for them to attend police board meetings violates their Charter right to freedom of expression.

Ontario Superior Court Justice Jill Copeland issued her decision Monday.

Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders implemented a policy last June that requires everyone who enters police headquarters, at 40 College Street, to submit to a search. That search involves a sweep by a metal detecting wand and a manual search of any bags, and anyone who refuses to be searched is not permitted to enter the building.

Kristian Langenfeld, who regularly attends Toronto Police Services Board (TPSB) meetings, argued the policy — when it serves as a condition to attend TPSB meetings, which are held at headquarters — violates the right to freedom of expression under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The effect of the searches is to limit expression by making public access to TPSB meetings contingent on submitting to a warrantless search.

- Justice Jill Copeland, Ontario Superior Court 

In her decision, Copeland notes Saunders argued the searches don't infringe on Charter rights because the act of attending a meeting "does not have expressive content."

Saunders also noted that individuals can watch TPSB meetings via video and make submissions remotely, Copeland wrote. According to the chief, "if the applicant's freedom of expression was infringed, the infringement did not result from government action, but from the applicant's choice not to submit to a search," Copeland wrote.

"I reject each of these arguments," Copeland continues.

"I find that the searches as a condition precedent to attending a public TPSB meeting infringe the applicant's freedom of expression."

The right to attend such meetings and be informed about the activities of a government agency via a public meeting "has expressive content," whether or not the attendee plans to speak, and is protected by the Charter, Copeland stated.

Saunders's intention with the search policy was not to limit political expression, Copeland wrote. "However, the effect of the searches is to limit expression by making public access to TPSB meetings contingent on submitting to a warrantless search."

Last October, a number of community activists called for police board meetings to be moved to city hall over similar issues.

TPS 'carefully reviewing' decision

In her decision, Copeland said Saunders also made submissions arguing that the Occupiers' Liability Act (OLA) and the Occupational Health and Safety Act gave him authority to impose searches upon entry to headquarters, including prior to attending a TPSB meeting.

Copeland rejected those arguments, writing that although the OLA may give the Chief the right to impose searches on anyone attending headquarters for business other than a board meeting, the legislation doesn't allow a government occupier of a property the authority to impose warrantless searches, without reasonable and probable grounds or reasonable suspicion, as a condition to attending a public meeting of a government agency.

It was not immediately clear how the decision will affect the search policy. Asked for the Chief's reaction to the decision, a spokesperson for the Toronto Police Service did not answer specific questions about whether searches will continue or cease, or whether provisions will be put in place for those attending TPSB meetings.

"The Service is carefully reviewing the decision and will make any changes that are appropriate," Meaghan Gray told CBC Toronto in an email.

"No final decision has yet been made on an appeal."