Const. Lam chose to be excellent

When a mass tragedy occurs — or a mass killing, as in Toronto — attention turns quickly to first responders, with words of praise and gratitude. There is an understandable desire, in the midst of great suffering and sorrow, to point toward something noble, something good.

Usually that praise and gratitude is necessarily generic, as we often don’t know the names of the responders, or what specifically they did. An exception might be Father Mychal Judge, the fire chaplain in New York, killed by falling debris while tending to those at the World Trade Center on 9/11. The image of his lifeless body being carried out instantly went around the world, as it seemed as if a biblical scene had come to life — or more precisely, come to death — in a dramatic Pieta tableau.

For Toronto we have a name: Const. Kenny Lam. The laudations for him are well-earned and widespread. As one would expect, it is Christie Blatchford who has the background on who Const. Lam is, and his heroics on Monday.

Permit me only to hope that the admirable work of Const. Lam helps us to change the conversation about police and the use of force. I have not been shy in these pages to voice criticism about excessive use of force and abuse of power by police and prosecutors, on the grounds that those who have the greatest power — to arrest, to incarcerate, to kill — ought to be held to the highest standard.

On Monday, Lam met that highest standard, arresting peacefully an alleged killer who apparently had it in mind to die himself, suicide-by-cop.

The contrast was immediately drawn to the Toronto case of Sammy Yatim in 2013. The teenager, alone on a streetcar, ignored police commands to drop a small knife. Despite the streetcar being surrounded by police and there being no apparent danger, Yatim was shot and killed by a police officer in a confrontation that lasted less than one minute.

The Yatim shooting followed the aftermath of the G20 summit in Toronto in 2010, where police violence was widely criticized as both deliberate and covered up.

So the discipline and restraint of Const. Lam is a welcome corrective to a picture that might otherwise be thought of as too bleak. In less dramatic circumstances, without passersby recording the matter, similar good police work would remain unknown. Yet the Lam case also highlights where the debates on police use of force ought to move.

As attention to excessive use of force has grown in recent years, the discussion shifts very quickly to the racial, economic and even political dimensions of particular incidents. Did the police use excessive force on unarmed people because they were motivated by some bias?

Bias may well have a role in this or that incident, but what should be in focus first is not bias but competence. If police are called to a scene and people die at their hands, with reasonable alternatives left untried, there is simple incompetence at play.

A debate over prejudice becomes immediately combustible, and poisons relations in already fraught communities. A debate over competence is rather less inflammatory, and also more to the point.

The competence of Const. Lam reminds us that good policing does not cause unnecessary deaths, even of those who have just engaged in mass killing. There is no doubt that had Lam shot Alek Minassian dead on Monday, it would have been judged a defensible shooting. But that he didn’t shoot Minassian should be remembered as the difference between defensible police work and excellence.

The standard that we ought to aim at is not what is defensible, but what is excellent. Excellence in police work removes suspicions that malevolent factors are at play.

In recent years, I have taken to watching the police drama Blue Bloods, with Tom Selleck playing the lead role as New York’s police commissioner. As one would expect, the show deals frequently with police misbehaviour, including excessive use of force. It’s the kind of thing that ends up on the commissioner’s desk.

In one episode from season four, the commissioner fires a constable who killed a man in custody with an illegal chokehold. Selleck’s character explains it succinctly: “This job is not about being strong enough to use force, it’s about being strong enough not to.”

Const. Lam was strong on Monday. And smart.

CONST. LAM REMINDS US THAT GOOD POLICING DOES NOT CAUSE UNNECESSARY DEATHS.