Plenty of blame to go around in shooting death of Ejaz Choudry.
“No death of the subject, no death of the officer involved, or of any member of the public.”
That must be the goal, retired Supreme Court Justice Frank Iacobucci said on the July day in 2014 when he released his much-anticipated report on police use of force: “Police Encounters with People in Crisis.”
Iacobucci added, at that press conference: “I believe the death of a fellow human being in these encounters is a failure for which blame in many situations cannot be assigned. In these cases it’s more likely the failure of a system.”
With all due respect to the esteemed justice, that was then and remains now a cop-out.
The system doesn’t pull the trigger on a mentally troubled individual during an episode of profound disorientation and agitation.
An officer or officers does that, sometimes in situations that go suddenly off the rail, and sometimes — retrospectively — when the confrontation could have been de-escalated without irreversible lethal consequences.
As, the family of Ejaz Choudry insists, should have occurred on Saturday in a Malton highrise apartment. And maybe they wouldn’t be making arrangements for Wednesday’s funeral of the 62-year-old father of four who suffered from schizophrenia.
But the “systemic” part of the equation has been long-known and frequently addressed: In Iacobucci’s 84 recommendations, sweeping in content but largely focused on a fundamental shift in police thinking. In the 74 recommendations made by a 2014 inquest into the fatal shooting, by cop, of three mentally ill Toronto residents — Reyal Jardine-Douglas, Sylvia Klibingaitis, Michael Eligon — all of whom were holding either knives or scissors. The 39 recommendations from an inquest jury into the shooting death of Andrew Loku, a 45-year-old refugee from South Sudan, who was in possession of a hammer. From my own notes of the Loku inquest, with Const. Andrew Doyle on the stand, under questioning from the Loku family’s lawyer. Twentyone seconds between Doyle and his partner responding to a “hotshot call” and Doyle double-discharging his firearm.
“You spent 21 seconds doing nothing but screaming at Mr. Loku to drop his hammer,” asked the lawyer. “Do you agree with that?”
Doyle did. And explained: “He doesn’t stop approaching. He doesn’t drop the hammer. He doesn’t listen to any of my commands. And he just keeps closing the distance on me, step after step, getting closer and closer. I felt, with the hammer above his head, within a step of two he would easily be able to reach me and hit me with it or hit my partner with it. So I discharged my firearm. Twice.”
What is the point of yelling commands to a distraught and possibly psychotic person? Commands that might not be cognitively understood and thus ignored? Leading too often to a fatal resolution.
Doyle was cleared of any wrongdoing by the Special Investigations Unit.
It nearly always ends that way — police officers deemed not at fault. Which is why Choudry’s family is distrusting of the investigation which the SIU has launched into Saturday’s events, demanding a public inquiry and for the subject officer, the shooter, to be fired from Peel Regional Police. Which can’t happen because, under the Police Services Act, a police chief can’t unilaterally dismiss an officer, even when criminal charges have been laid. The family has also called for defunding of police, with money channelled towards social services and mental health supports instead — a theme that has gained tremendous traction amidst public outrage over police shootings of Black victims in the U.S., spawning massive demonstrations.
Time and again we’ve been told by experts, by scrutineers, that police officers are poorly placed to deal with individuals in mental crisis, who may be a danger to themselves and others. They’re not qualified nor properly trained to do that job. Yet, in Ontario’s patchwork mental health services, as Iacobucci sorrowfully acknowledged, police have “in effect, become part of the mental health-care system.”
Not a responsibility they want, but clearly it’s devolved to cops. That’s not their fault either.
Hence the establishment, after far too many tragedies, of mobile intervention teams to deal with ever-increasing calls for service involving people in mental distress.
Toronto Police Services has 10 such teams, but operating mostly between 11 a.m. and 9 p.m. seven days a week, which leaves a huge gap because crises don’t punch a clock. Peel, in fact, launched its own Mobile Crisis Rapid Response Team just this past January — two cars per day, from noon to midnight.
So how did the situation at that Morning Star Drive apartment go so disastrously haywire, which the public can see for itself on the video footage — shot by a civilian from across the street — that captured a trio of tactical officers on Choudry’s second-storey balcony (after climbing a ladder), appearing to show them breaking down the door and firing weapons into the unit from outside?
A family member had called for help — the call placed to the Peel police non-emergency line, requesting assistance with their agitated, but physically frail, relative. Paramedics were dispatched but they, apparently, could not calm Choudry. It was the paramedics, sources told the Star, who summoned police. By the time they arrived, Choudry had barricaded himself inside the apartment, with police both in the hallway and approaching from the balcony. It was not, according to sources, the first time police had responded to that address. The man was alone. He was fragile, physically — chronic lung disease, diabetes — and mentally. There was no acute urgency in the scenario even if, as has been reported, Choudry had grabbed a knife from the kitchen. At that point, surely he was a danger only to himself. Family members say they pleaded with police to be allowed to accompany them into the unit because Choudry was afraid of cops.
According to the scant information released by the SIU, police involved in the “interaction” initially deployed a Taser and fired “plastic projectiles” — a lesser lethal rubber bullet weapon.
Hard to fathom how none of that brought Choudry down or why one of the officers so hastily reached for his regular firearm and fired. At least six times, according to Choudry’s nephew.
It should be noted here that one of Iacobucci’s key recommendations — in the wake of teenager Sammy Yatim’s shooting by then-Cons. James Forcillo on a Toronto streetcar — was for more front-line officers to be issued Tasers, as well as body-worn cameras for the purpose of transparency and accountability. Tasers have been proffered as a less lethal option in such crisis “interactions.” But Tasers have been vigorously opposed by some civilian groups as inherently dangerous, just one more lethal force tool for law enforcement that discourages verbal de-escalation. Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski died in 2007 after being Tasered multiple times by the RCMP at Vancouver airport. There were at least eight Taser-related deaths between 2013 and 2018. There were two stun gun-related deaths in Mississauga last year alone. Further, studies have shown that in Canadian police forces where the devices have been adopted, the number of police shootings have remained fairly consistent.
Lethal force, even less-thanlethal force, is a wretched go-to for law enforcement, especially when the victim is mentally ill, seized by a bewildering episode of delirium and paranoia.
Mental health professionals certainly know this. On Tuesday, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health released a statement addressing “tragic outcomes”, without specifically mentioning the death of Choudry. “Police should not be the first responders when people are in crisis in the community. Police are not trained in crisis care and should not be expected to lead this important work.”
Yet CAMH has a habit of losing some of its most seriously disturbed and potentially violent patients, who either wander away from the institution or go missing on day passes. And where does CAMH turn in those instances? To cops.