Peter Sloly takes the hit for city's loss of public trust in Ottawa police

As darkness fell in the late afternoon last Wednesday, dozens of armed officers gathered in the lobby of the Marriott Hotel at Coventry Road. Outside, two long charter buses stood idling, presumably there to transport any protesters who didn't leave the supply camp they had set up in the baseball stadium parking lot almost two weeks earlier.

That a raid seemed imminent was hardly a surprise. Days earlier, dozens of heavily armed officers descended dramatically on the encampment, confiscating a tanker of fuel. The operation appeared to go smoothly — no injuries were reported — and had the dual effect of seeming to deflate the morale of protesters, while boosting that of residents looking for action from authorities.

This Wednesday evening raid was surely the sign of the next shoe to drop.

But that didn't happen.

Instead, as protesters looked on somewhat perplexed, the officers climbed into those waiting buses, which drove through the parking lot and off the site. 

According to multiple CBC sources, the raid was cancelled — as was another deployment the following day — because of significant internal disagreements among policing leaders on the best way to proceed with the operations. Even though plans were in place, and officers stood at the ready, sources said senior leadership could not reach a consensus.

Second-guessing policing strategy has become a national pastime. But it doesn't take a tactical expert to observe that whatever local police are doing hasn't worked to end the surreal and ongoing truck occupation of the national capital's downtown.

WATCH | Ottawa mayor on Chief Sloly's resignation: 'I think he made the right decision'

Missteps began from Day 1.

On the first weekend of the demonstration, as the numbers of protesters began to swell, police put out a call for 25 officers to work overtime two days in a row, sources said. Multiple officers told CBC News they were puzzled as to why staffing wasn't shored up prior to the unofficial first day of the protest.

Issues continued, from not initially barring trucks from the downtown, to allowing them to set up camp at the stadium parking lot, to seemingly being unable — or, as some have charged, unwilling — to prevent harassment of downtown residents.

It's obvious that mistakes were made. And police have already conceded that fact.

But can everything that has gone wrong be laid at the feet of one man? That's a very different question.

On Tuesday, Peter Sloly stepped down as chief of the Ottawa Police Service (OPS) in the face of overwhelming criticism over how the local force has handled the demonstration. In particular, the public is furious that police appear to not be enforcing laws and the more stringent rules put in place to keep the protest in check. That includes everything from not stopping individuals bringing jerry cans to parked trucks in the parliamentary district — after a tough-talking news release said those people would be arrested — to allowing loud dance parties to continue into the wee hours on weekend nights.