Windsor police don't anticipate charging more people in Ambassador Bridge blockade
2 people accused of organizing protests were charged with mischief this week
Windsor police say the two recent charges laid in the Ambassador Bridge blockade will likely be the last, and they took five months to lay because the cases took "a tremendous amount of effort."
Karel DeGraaf, acting superintendent in charge of investigations for Windsor Police Service, said in an interview Friday that the charges are the result of significant investigative work.
"I don't anticipate any further charges being laid," he said. "But that's not to say that if evidence presents itself to us in the interim, that we certainly would look to proceed with further charges against any individuals."
"With the number of police agencies and types of evidence that we had to go through, this obviously was a significant task and took a tremendous amount of effort to reach this point of the charges and in consultation with the Crown attorney's office."
On Thursday, police announced that two Windsor residents — Nycole Dicredico, 42, and William Laframboise, 41 — have been charged with mischief.
The police service said that on Feb. 9, two vehicles entered the intersection at Huron Church Road and Tecumseh Road West near the Windsor-Detroit bridge, blocking northbound traffic.
"This ultimately blocked traffic attempting to cross an international border," police said in a media release.
DeGraaf said the charges were laid based on video and audio evidence and the observations of officers on the ground.
He said that the protest movement's leadership was "very much fragmented and fractured," but that the two drivers were allegedly involved in coordinating movement and "establishing rallying at specific points in an effort to block the bridge."
The anti-COVID-19 public health measures protest, which blocked traffic bound for the Windsor-Detroit border crossing, began on the evening of Feb. 7 and lasted until Feb. 13.
Multiple regional police services, as well as the OPP and RCMP, were involved in the response.
A court injunction preventing anyone from blocking access to the bridge was granted on Feb. 11.
With files from Jacob Barker