The wrong way, and the right

Const. Ken Lam is widely known as the hero cop who arrested the suspect in last week’s van rampage without firing a shot. He says he’s just a cop who was doing his job, and he’s right.

But the reason the hero accolades settled so rapidly and abundantly on his shoulders is because of so many other high-profile cases that came before this one, where police officers did not do their job so well.

It’s fitting, then, that a week after Lam showcased good police training in action — defusing a tense situation rather than ending it in a hail of bullets — Ontario’s highest court upheld the conviction of a Toronto police officer who demonstrated quite the opposite.

Five years ago, Sammy Yatim was a mentally ill 18-year-old armed with a small knife and cornered on an empty streetcar. But less than a minute after arriving on the scene, Const. James Forcillo fired nine shots in two distinct volleys.

The first three bullets were the ones that killed Yatim. But it was the second volley of six for which Forcillo was convicted of attempted murder. He delivered those without even trying to speak to the teenager dying on the floor of the streetcar, clearly no threat to anyone.

In a welcome decision issued Monday, the Ontario Court of Appeal dismissed Forcillo’s appeal and upheld his six-year prison sentence.

Yatim’s death was one in a string of cases across North America that raised deep-seated concerns about how readily police resort to lethal force, particularly when dealing with people in emotional distress or in the midst of a mental-health crisis.

Forcillo’s conviction and prison sentence delivered an extraordinary (for its rarity) and necessary message that misuse of police power will not go unpunished. And in their unanimous ruling, the Chief Justice of Ontario, George Strathy, along with justices David Doherty and Gary Trotter, reinforced that.

Police officers on duty are not above the law, and their lives are not the only ones they’re meant to protect.

“A distinguishing feature of this case,” the court said, “is the appellant’s egregious breach of trust in using lethal force against a person who was not an imminent threat.”

Another distinguishing feature is that it was caught on video. That allowed the jury — and ultimately the public — to know just what happened on that streetcar. In too many cases of police shootings, information is hard to come by, police close ranks and it’s impossible to prove what really happened.

After his death, Yatim’s mother said Toronto police need to do better if the force is to remain “a source of confidence, security and respect.” Lam’s action last week fit her plea perfectly. Again with the help of a citizen video, the public knows what happened in that incident. They know that Lam arrived on a fraught scene and turned off his siren so he could speak to and hear the suspect. He refused to be baited into shooting him and ultimately put his own gun away in favour of a baton and made the arrest without incident.

It’s one of the things that made the city proud on such a terrible day.

Police are afforded special privileges and protections under the law to carry out their enormous responsibilities. But that, the appeal court has reaffirmed, does not give them carte blanche to behave however they want.

The firearms given to police are “meant to be used to protect themselves and others, all within the bounds of reasonableness and necessity and in accordance with police training.”

Forcillo did not do that. Lam, thankfully, did.

Officers are not above the law, and their lives are not the only ones they’re meant to protect