Patricia Ferguson, acting deputy chief of the Ottawa Police Service (OPS), said the force should have taken more seriously intelligence that suggested Freedom Convoy protestors planned to stay for several weeks.."I suppose we would have given more credibility to the information and the intelligence telling us there was a faction that was planning on staying for a much longer period of time," responded Ferguson when asked what she would have done differently in hindsight..Speaking at the Public Order Emergency Commission on Thursday, Ferguson said the OPS were left "floundering" after protestors dug in and refused to leave after the first weekend.."We had a period after that first weekend where I say we were orienting ourselves. We lost some time there," she said..On Wednesday, Supt. Pat Morris, head of the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP)'s Provincial Operations Intelligence Bureau, testified by January 20, the OPP believed the protest would be "a long-term event." That was more than a week before the protest began..Evidence shown at the commission indicated the Ottawa-Gatineau Hotel Association sent a warning to police and city officials that someone from the Canada United Truckers Convoy wanted to book hotel rooms for at least 30 days..READ MORE: Hotel association warned Ottawa that Freedom Convoy planned to stay for weeks.And an email entered into evidence Thursday showed some within the OPS felt the Freedom Convoy would be unlike other protests.."The goal of the convoy is to remain in Ottawa until the restrictions are repealed," said a January 21 email from OPS' events planning unit..But Ferguson said OPS' plan for the Freedom Convoy was predicated on an assumption the protestors would only stay in the city for a few days.."We didn't know the size of the convoy, how many trucks we were dealing with, and how big an area we had to work with," she said.."We weighed the information and the intelligence we had and that was the plan was developed based on what our best assessment of that was.".The OPS' assessment of the situation changed by the end of the first weekend. A January 31 note from Ferguson's executive assistant reads, "No longer a protest but an occupation now.".READ MORE: Mayor testifies Ottawa Police Service 'lost control' of downtown during convoy.The OPS' original plan for the protest only extended until noon, January 31. Ferguson testified the force didn't have a new plan in place by February 4, as they were preoccupied with "putting out fires.".Ferguson also described how the OPS was also dealing with staffing issues at the time, which had been made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic. The force was also suffering from unclear command and control, a lack of collaboration, poor decision-making, and "mental and physical exhaustion," Ferguson claimed..Police Chief Sloly said he would 'crush' anyone who undermined operational plan.As the protest entered its second week, disagreements arose within the OPS about the merits of negotiation versus police enforcement. While Police Liaison Teams (PLT) from both OPS and OPP attempted to develop relationships and negotiate with protestors, others favoured taking concrete action to clear them out..Ferugson said she favoured negotiation with the protestors. “I felt that taking a longer-term approach and potentially getting a bigger win at the end was the way to go," Ferguson said..“If you give them the opportunity to have a win, they will often go on their own — and so those were some of the things that I felt we needed to give that a really good try,” she said..Ferguson said the PLT developed a "fairly reasonable relationships and open lines of communication" with the protestors. But on February 6, OPS sent a team to the convoy encampment on Coventry Road to seize a fuel stockpile..The PLT received no warning about this action, according to Ferguson, and were angered by it..“It really damaged the relationship with our PLT team, with the OPP PLT team and with the event commander,” Ferguson said..“Any ground they had gained, any relationship they made at that point in time had been damaged significantly and it would take them days or weeks to reestablish.".She later wrote the OPP PLT team was "pissed," and had decided to leave.."The OPP team were frustrated and I received emails saying, 'they are going to walk, they've had enough,'" she said..While Ferguson favoured longer-term negotiations with the protestors, she felt then-Ottawa Police Chief Peter Sloly felt differently. She noted at one point, Sloly said “anyone who undermines the operational plan, he will crush them.”.“I wrote in ... brackets he said it twice,” she said.
