Murder charge in Toronto shooting no victory for justice
The announcement Monday of a murder charge against the Toronto police officer who shot and killed 18-year-old Sammy Yatim is being roundly hailed as a victory for justice, or at least (depending of course on how satisfactory the anticipated verdict is deemed) as a potential victory.
It may prove to be the proper charge, and it’s certainly against the right officer, but I’m not nearly so sure it qualifies as a win for justice.
The teenager died in a hail of nine bullets fired by Const. James Forcillo during a brief standoff last month on a Toronto streetcar.
The six-year veteran must turn himself in to the province’s Special Investigations Unit on Tuesday, and then will make his first court appearance. He is charged with second-degree murder, an offence that carries an automatic life sentence with no chance at parole for between 10 and 25 years.
According to published witness accounts, Yatim had been exposing himself and brandishing a knife on the streetcar, but it appears that by the time police arrived, he was the only person left on it.
Much of the tragic standoff was caught on video, which in the modern fashion was promptly posted on YouTube and since viewed, according to CBC News, more than a million times.
That video, as such video does, made instant experts — on everything from police use-of-force tactics to how officers should deal with the emotionally disturbed — of almost everyone who viewed it.
It fuelled several raucous protests on downtown streets (one of which saw some of Yatim’s remarkably poised family remind the crowd “we’re not against all police”) and contributed to both the rather breathtaking ignorance of the law and policing that has been on display for weeks now and the roiling lust for vengeance online and on talk radio.
As is perfectly typical now — think of the Rehtaeh Parsons case in Nova Scotia, where there’s a pretty straight line between online activism, a government-ordered second-look at the evidence and belated charges laid against two boys last week — the SIU made its charging decision in a hyper-charged and overtly politicized atmosphere.
In the Yatim shooting, for instance, which occurred in the early morning of July 27, no fewer than two investigations, in addition to the probe by the SIU, are already underway.
Ontario Ombudsman André Marin quickly appointed a leading light — himself — to study the direction the provincial government provides to police for defusing situations.
Precluded from probing police forces, Marin’s will be a “systemic investigation” with particular emphasis on what’s happened to all those recommendations, made over the years in other police shootings, by inquest juries. “It seems to be like Groundhog Day,” he said. “Inquest after inquest, police shooting after police shooting.”
(Notable is that many juries have urged that front-line officers be equipped with Tasers, as opposed to the way it is in Ontario now, with only sergeants and senior officers having access to them.)
(As well, juries repeatedly have urged upon the health ministry better mental health care for psychiatric patients. It’s always fascinating to me that as we all bemoan how little has changed for the mentally ill in this province, the only folks who are ever called on it are the poor suckers left to deal with the mentally ill in crisis — the police.)
A few days later, Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair asked former judge Dennis O’Connor to review how the force deals with emotionally disturbed people. O’Connor is to study best practices and come up with ways the force can do better. Blair promised the report would be made public.
Hard on the heels of that, police board chairman Alok Mukherjee read aloud at a board meeting a statement urging that the judge’s review be “very thorough and comprehensive” (as opposed to what?) and announced that the board was “committed to making the report public” (presumably, even more public than Blair already had said it would be) and patted the board on the back for publicly supporting Ombudsman Marin’s investigation.
Appeasing the families of victims, however terrific they may be; quieting the howling mob, however loud their cries ... such things aren’t conducive to good decisionmaking.
After the meeting, Mukherjee also made an astonishing statement. “Right now it is very, very hard to terminate a police officer,” he said. “There are occasions when you say: ‘How in God’s name is this person working here?’ ”
It’s pretty clear that there are many who want a piece of poor Sammy Yatim now that he’s dead and can be made into a cause or useful instrument.
On learning that Forcillo is being charged, the teenager’s sister Sarah tweeted, “Good morning JUSTICE.”
She and her family have been models of restraint throughout this awful time; I don’t begrudge her for a moment of relief, or peace, if that’s what it was.
But appeasing the families of victims, however terrific they may be; quieting the howling mob, however loud their cries; playing to the changing favourites of the public gallery, however much that may suit the agenda of government or agency; such things aren’t conducive to good decision-making.
Worse, the only justice they have anything to do with is the sort preferred by the Queen in Alice in Wonderland. “No! No!” she cried. “Sentence first — verdict afterwards.”