Toronto’s long history of anti-racist protest,
Black woman’s falling death is just the latest in decades of incidents and accusations
The falling death of Afro-Indigenous woman Regis Korchinski-Paquet in the presence of police officers is sparking outrage and protest in Toronto, as cities across the U.S. have meanwhile erupted in several days of anger over the shocking death of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man who was killed by a white Minneapolis police officer.
Floyd’s death is, of course, the latest in a long string of police killings that have sparked protest against anti-Black racism by U.S. police.
Closer to home, Toronto has its own long history of deaths, incidents and investigations that have sparked outrage and accusations of racism.
A timeline of the past three decades of racial controversies in Toronto:
> August 1988 — The death of Lester Donaldson: The 44-year-old Black man was shot at point-blank range in a Toronto rooming house. Metro police said they were responding to a report of a man holding hostages, but found Donaldson alone in his room. They said he had lunged at them with a knife. In 1990, the outcry from Donaldson’s death helped establish Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit (SIU), the civilian police oversight agency that is investigating Korchinski-Paquet’s death.
> December 1988 — The death of Michael Wade Lawson: The 17-yearold Black teen was reportedly shot in the back of the head while driving a stolen car in Mississauga. Two white Peel police officers were charged in his death, and were acquitted by a Brampton jury in April 1992.
> May1992 — The death of Raymond Lawrence: The 22-year-old Black man was shot in a west-end backyard after police said he wouldn’t drop a knife. Two days later, Lawrence’s death, the Lawson verdict and outrage over the acquittal of four Los Angeles police officers in the videotaped beating of Rodney King sparked a riot on Yonge Street.
> October 2002: The Star publishes “Race & Crime,” the first series in what became a more than decade-long investigation into Toronto police practices. The first analysis of crime data finds Black people are treated more harshly than white people by Toronto police.
> June 2004 — The death of O’Brien Christopher-Reid: The 26-year-old Black man was shot dead by Toronto police in June 2004, after reportedly advancing toward them with a knife. He had been diagnosed with paranoid delusional disorder.
> June 2006 — The death of Duane Christian: The 15-year-old Black teen was shot dead by police while at the wheel of a stolen van in the parking lot of his Scarborough apartment building. Two months later, the SIU cleared Const. Steve Darnley, saying he was justified in shooting Christian to prevent his partner from being deliberately run down.
> 2010-2012: Two Star series, “Race Matters” in 2010 and “Known to Police” in 2012, reveal people of colour are far more likely than white people to be stopped by police in a “carding” stop, which involves an officer stopping and questioning someone who is not a suspect of crime. The Star finds cards for Black people make up 25 per cent of the data in a city with a Black population of 8.3 per cent.
> May 2010 — The death of Junior Manon: The18-year-old Black teen died after he was tackled to the ground by Toronto police following a traffic stop. Manon fled after he was pulled over for driving a car with an expired temporary licence plate sticker. Although the two police officers involved claimed they never put their weight on the teen’s back, multiple witnesses testified they had. The officers were cleared by the SIU and jurors at Manon’s coroner’s inquest ruled his death an accident, but said police actions during his arrest contributed to his death.
> November 2011 — The Neptune Four incident: Four Black boys, ages 15 and 16, were on their way to an afterschool learning program in a Lawrence Heights public housing complex on Neptune Drive when they were stopped by two Toronto police officers with the controversial and now-disbanded Toronto Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy (TAVIS) unit. When one of the boys asked why they were being stopped, the incident escalated, one of the officers drew his gun and the teens were charged. The controversial incident is still the subject of an ongoing police misconduct hearing, nearly nine years later.
> February 2012 — The death of Michael Eligon: The 29-year-old Black man was shot by Toronto police in the middle of an East York street while carrying two pairs of scissors. Although the officers were cleared of wrongdoing in Eligon’s death, the SIU director at the time said the tragedy raised legitimate
questions about how police are trained to deal with mentally ill people.
> November 2013 — The death of Ian Pryce: The 30-year-old Black man was shot by two Toronto police officers after an hour-long standoff. Police believed Pryce, who had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, was about to shoot a weapon they believed was a handgun. It was later revealed to be a pellet gun that appeared almost identical to a handgun.
> April 2014-2015: The police board passes a policy dealing with carding, with the new rules only allowing it for specific offences. A standoff ensues between then-chief Bill Blair and the board, as the chief delays implementing the new policy.
> June 2015: Mayor John Tory calls for a permanent end to carding, citing “eroded public trust” in police.
> July 2015 — The death of Andrew Loku: The 45-year-old South Sudanese man, who was experiencing a mentalhealth crisis at the time, was shot dead by a Toronto police officer while he was wielding a small hammer. His death prompted protests and a review of police oversight by Ontario Court of Appeal judge Michael Tulloch.
> December 2016 — The beating of Dafonte Miller: The then-19-year old Black Whitby man was severely beaten during an encounter with off-duty Toronto police officer Michael Theriault and his brother, Christian Theriault. He sustained serious damage to his eye, which required surgical removal. The brothers were charged with aggravated assault; the trial was completed in January but the verdict has been delayed by the COVID-19 court closures.
> July 2016: Activists with Black Lives Matter Toronto bring the Toronto Pride parade to a halt. The group demands, among other things, that police no longer be allowed to march and that organizers apologize for historic “anti-Blackness” — both of which happen.
> July 2017: A Star analysis finds that between 2003 and 2013, Black people with no history of criminal convictions were three times more likely to be arrested by Toronto police for possession of small amounts of marijuana than white people with similar backgrounds.
> February 2018: Black teen Reece Maxwell-Crawford is shoved and then pinned to the ground outside a streetcar stop by TTC fare inspectors. MaxwellCrawford sues the TTC for alleged racial profiling, and the agency settles after the city ombudsman concludes it mishandled its investigation into the incident.
> December 2018: A report by the Ontario Human Rights Commission finds Black people are “grossly over-represented” in cases in which Toronto police have used force, including in seven of 10 fatal shootings by police between 2012 and 2017.
March 2019: A Star investigation into 40,000 records of personal information collected by TTC officers from riders who weren’t charged with an offence suggests Black passengers were stopped at a disproportionately high rate, prompting comparisons to the police carding controversy.
July 2019: CEO Rick Leary acknowledges there is public concern about racial bias at the TTC, as the agency launches an anti-racism strategy “aimed directly at preventing racial profiling, and covering all aspects of the TTC’s operation.”
October 2019: Research based on Statistics Canada data finds Black families are twice as likely to go hungry as white households, even accounting for income and education.
May 2020 — The death of Regis
Korchinski-Paquet: The 29-year-old fell 24 storeys to her death from her apartment balcony after police say they were summoned to the apartment by multiple calls for an assault in progress, at least two of which mentioned knives. Her family says there were no weapons by the time police arrived and that Korchinski-Paquet needed mental-health support.
Her death prompted thousands of protestors to take to the streets of Toronto demanding justice.