Weeks later, probe of parking officer’s tweets continues
The police association president says he is no clearer on which tweets got Kyle Ashley in hot water or who complained.

TheStar.com
Nov. 24, 2017
David Rider

An internal probe into tweets by Kyle Ashley, Toronto’s famous bike lane-protecting parking officer, continues three weeks after his bosses in the police department ordered him off social media.

Mark Pugash, spokesman for the police service said this week that “the (internal) investigation is ongoing” into the appropriateness of some of the parking enforcement officer’s tweets. He previously said it would be inappropriate to reveal the nature of the tweets during the probe.

Mike McCormack, president of the Toronto Police Association which represents police officers and parking officers, said Friday he is no clearer as to the nature of “numerous” complaints that caused managers to show up at Ashley’s home on a sick day to order him to surrender all his social media accounts.

Ashley, who then suspended his own @TPS_ParkingPal Twitter account, remains off work “for personal reasons,” McCormack said, while the TPA considers launching a grievance against the service. The police have not disclosed to McCormack their reasons for confronting a social media star credited internationally with making Toronto’s streets safer.

Ashley burst onto Toronto’s commuting scene in June when he convinced his bosses to let him focus solely on protecting bike lanes. His cheeky use of Twitter to scold motorists, including delivery companies, who invade bike lanes earned applause from cyclists,

Canada Post agreed to stop its trucks from invading the lanes after Ashley singled out the Crown corporation. The service tasked two other officers to join him in focusing on ticketing vehicles in bike lanes and using social media to spread the word.

His activism on behalf of cyclist and pedestrian safety included, unusual for a junior civil servant, social media scorn sometimes aimed at politicians, including an Etobicoke MPP and a city councillor. Both said they did not complain to the police service about those tweets.

Pugash earlier confirmed that Ashley’s supervisor raised the issue of complaints from Montreal. The suspension came two days before Denis Coderre lost his Montreal mayoral re-election bid to Valérie Plante, after a campaign that saw Coderre pressured over cyclist safety.

Asked before the vote if anyone on Coderre’s team had complained to Toronto police about Ashley tweets, a Coderre’s campaign spokesman said he had no idea what a Star reporter was talking about.

Toronto Mayor John Tory, whose office said nobody there had fielded complaints from Montreal, recently said he hopes Ashley is back on the job soon.

“It's obviously not my place to comment on the proceedings that take place inside the police service except perhaps if it came in front of the police services board,” Tory told reporters, in response to a question. “ I will say this — he performed, I think, a positive public service by drawing attention to the fact that people were disregarding the bike lanes and parking their cars there, he was enforcing the law . . .

“I think in that regard it helped me in my dealings with people like some of the courier and delivery companies and so on to send them a message that said ‘We are just not going to have people flouting the law and we have to have greater consideration given by each of the partners that are sharing valuable public space.’ So I hope he's back on the job soon.

“We all have to make sure than in using social media that we use it in a way that is constructive and appropriate given whatever our responsibilities are, whether you're the mayor or whether you're a parking enforcement officer. I don't know exactly what's going on with him but I hope that he's back on the job soon.”

An online petition to bring him back had 724 signatures Friday, while cyclist Rob McLarty, who often chronicles his commutes with videos posted on Twitter, said motorists seem to be reverting to their old ways. The two other officers dedicated to bike lanes remain on the job, but both have had vacations since Ashley went off work.

“The other day I had 13 people blocking lanes on my two-kilometre ride. When Kyle was around it would never be that bad, most of the time it would be completely clear of lane blockers,” McLarty said.