Politicians also owe Zameer an apology
If some politicians had their way, an innocent man would have spent almost three years behind bars for a crime he didn’t commit.
That would have been the result if the courts had followed the loud public advice — no, demands — of Premier Doug Ford, then-Toronto mayor John Tory and Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown in the case of Umar Zameer, the man charged with first-degree murder in the death of police officer Jeffrey Northrup on July 2, 2021.
When Zameer was freed on bail while awaiting trial, you couldn’t keep those three away from their Twitter feeds.
Ford called it “completely unacceptable that the person responsible for this heinous crime is now out on bail” (the wording of his tweet was quickly changed from “responsible for” to “charged with,” but the premier had already convicted Zameer in the court of public opinion).
Tory said it was “almost impossible to imagine” granting bail to such a person and Brown chimed in to call the decision “very disturbing” and “shameful.”
Those statements looked decidedly foolish now that Zameer has been declared not guilty by a jury after a trial that exposed how weak was the prosecution’s case against the 34-year-old accountant.
Justice Anne Molloy, who made no secret of her doubts about the case against Zameer, offered him her “deepest apologies” for the ordeal he was put through.
Those politicians ought to do at least that much. They ought to apologize to Zameer for getting it so wrong and stoking public hostility toward someone who was ultimately found to be no more than a participant in a tragic series of mistakes. They should have known better. They were clearly pandering to public opinion, which was understandably outraged by the death of an on-duty police officer. In the absence of any actual evidence about what happened that day in the parking garage under Toronto City Hall, it was all too tempting to play the “jail, not bail” card.
Two of them (Tory and Brown) are lawyers. They should have been particularly sensitive to the importance of the presumption of innocence — the foundation of our system of criminal law. It’s also the underlying reason why people charged with crimes have a presumptive right to bail in most circumstances.
It’s not a matter of “coddling criminals,” as grandstanding politicians often claim these days. It’s a basic principle that people shouldn’t be deprived of their freedom until it’s proven in a court of law that they actually committed a crime.
The evidence that unfolded during Zameer’s four-week trial clearly didn’t support the charge of murder. There’s no need to rehearse it all here; suffice to say it was unbelievable that a man out celebrating Canada Day with his pregnant wife and two-year-old child would intentionally drive over a police officer. Plainly, the jury didn’t believe that. Nor did they believe the testimony of police witnesses, whose version of events was contradicted by video and other physical evidence.
Northrup’s death was a tragedy, especially for his family. But the police don’t come out of this looking good, either. When Zameer was charged, then-Toronto chief James Ramer called what happened “an intentional, deliberate act” — prejudging the entire judicial process.
Even when Zameer was acquitted, Chief Myron Demkiw couldn’t resist saying the force was “hoping for a different outcome.” Demkiw may think he was just supporting his officers, but what does he want? A guilty verdict in the face of testimony showing Const. Northrup’s death was the result of a terrible mistake, not murder? Didn’t he learn anything from the trial — especially the disturbing evidence that police witnesses colluded on a version of events that couldn’t be squared with physical evidence from the scene?
All these leaders whipped up public opinion against an innocent man. The fact that Zameer is from Pakistan made it worse, exposing him to xenophobic hatred. The system eventually worked, but no thanks to politicians and others who jumped to conclusions before the facts were in.
They — and the rest of us — should learn some lessons from that. The first is: when you don’t really know what happened, just shut up.