THERE’S LITTLE DOUBT that a public inquiry is needed concerning the G20 Summit, if only to produce recommendations for any future such summit on Canadian soil.

And its just as obvious that the inquiry will have to look closely at both the unchecked violence by the shadowy Black Box hooligans and the hourslong standoff the following day at the intersection of Queen and Spadina.

However, we doubt that whoever conducts the inquiry will find serious fault with the conduct of police officers who had to cope with behaviour never before witnessed, at least on such a scale, in Canada’s largest city. At most he or she might observe that there should have been a lot more undercover officers in the main parade ready to deal with the criminals both when they went on their rampages and later when they doffed their black “uniforms” so as to melt into the crowd.

However, in our view, the issue of appropriate police responses deserves to have an inquiry of its own, aimed at producing guidelines that would reflect a balancing of conflicting public interests.

After all, it’s not just during protests that such conflicts arise, and the conflicts aren’t just between the constitutionally protected freedoms of assembly and speech and that of the need for law and order and in the case of the G20 violence, protection of property.

Almost daily, we encounter instances where the obvious public interest in law enforcement comes into conflict with the public interest in freedom of movement.

We refer to the increasingly regular phenomenon of major highways being closed for hours while police investigate serious traffic accidents.

Our understanding is that one reason for such closures taking so long has little to do with police work but rather is to give the investigators for various insurance companies to do their own work aimed at providing evidence for claims adjusters and potentially litigation based on assertions of negligence on the part of one or more drivers.

A perfect illustration of how accustomed we have become to such closures came just days after the G20, when all eastbound traffic on Canada’s busiest highway was halted for six hours for no apparent reason.

The only excuse given the public by police was that they were investigating a nearly-fatal crash involving a truck and a man apparently wishing to commit suicide after murdering his girlfriend a few blocks away.

Within minutes of the mishap, the man had been taken to hospital and the truck was parked at the side of Highway 401 at the one place in Toronto where the freeway isn’t divided into core and collector lanes.

We submit that while a road closure was needed until the ambulance had left the scene, the only meaningful police investigation on the highway required nothing more than getting a statement from the truck driver and sending him on his way. Since the real police investigation was into a homicide, there was no realistic need for insurance investigators or such things as measuring skid marks on the highway.

Interestingly, the only media attention given the traffic paralysis resulting from the closure was on radio and TV news channels. The chaos that left untold tens of thousands late for work, added hugely to pollution from idling vehicles and disrupted both GO Transit and Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) bus services went virtually unmentioned in Toronto’s daily papers.

Interestingly, the six-hour (3 to 9 a.m.) closure was the result of an incident remarkably similar to ones that occur regularly on the TTC. We refer to suicides and attempted suicides on TTC subways.

There, a longstanding practice is to cut power to the rails, summon emergency personnel immediately, remove the individual from the tracks and resume subway service as soon as possible, usually within about 20 minutes. One obvious exception is when witnesses tell police they saw the victim being pushed into the path of an approaching train. But even then the service interruption is relatively short, reflecting an acknowledgement that there is a clear public interest in minimizing public inconvenience caused by the loss of a facility that can transport up to 40,000 passengers an hour.

Note that since both types of incident routinely require a police investigation it can be assumed that police have the ability to take as long as they please to conduct their probes, yet do so in Ontario only then the incident occurs on a highway. (Our understanding is that no similar hours-long shutdowns occur on U.S. Interstate highways, but we stand to be corrected on that point.)

All this leads us to a conclusion that no guidelines exist as to the appropriate police response when faced with the conflicting duties in the areas of law enforcement and traffic safety.

We think such guidelines should include a responsibility to provide temporary, marked detour routes (with the assistance of either auxiliary officers or road maintenance crews).

And at all times, the officer in command should be required to communicate quickly for the travelling public both the length of the planned closure and the recommended alternate routes.