Security, Justice

"On an instinctive level, juries in particular see the police as the protector of a community, and realize that the police are operating under incredibly stressful circumstances. Do you charge someone criminally and say that they're a criminal because they made a mistaken judgement, or they were rattled by the circumstances? There's lots of things that defence counsel can appeal to when it comes to a jury."
Bruce MacFarlane, former federal prosecutor, teaching criminal law at University of Manitoba

Ontario's Special Investigations Unit has responded to public outrage over the shooting death of 18-year-old Sammy Yatim by proceeding, on the basis of their findings to laying charges against Toronto Const. James Forcillo of murder. Their own statistics indicate that no fewer than 22 officers were charged criminally in the occurrence of 19 deaths over the past twenty years in the pursuit of official police duties in Ontario. None were convicted.

The young man, on that fateful July evening in Toronto where he sat on a streetcar, held a knife, exposed himself, threatened other passengers, finally ordering them off the streetcar, was behaving in an obviously peculiar manner. He was suffering from some manner of mental disequilibrium. Police responded quickly to emergency calls. From among over twenty responding police one fired at the young man who refused orders to drop his knife, to stand back.

All the other officers observed as one of their colleagues, Const. James Forcillo, fired three bullets, and shortly afterward, as the young man fell on the floor of the streetcar, another six, and was then hit with a taser. Bystanders took videos of the occurrence with those ubiquitous cellphones. Popular opinion was that there were no extenuating circumstances, no reason to fire, no reason for a young man to die.

He appeared to be a young man afflicted with mental problems. His family seemed incapable of coping with his problems, as is often the case. The province has had a quite relaxed attitude to mental disturbance for many decades during which institutions have been closed and those who are mentally disturbed are expected to fend for themselves as best they can. Psychiatric hospitals can barely keep up with the demand for their services. The mentally disturbed form a large proportion of the homeless.

It is civil society's security agents on the street, in neighbourhoods, in towns and cities across the province who face the problems raised by the mentally disturbed who now and again run into problems their disturbed minds cannot fathom and they act and react in unpredictable, sometimes frightening, sometimes threatening ways toward the 'normal' people within society. Police take up the slack. And sometimes they fall victim to events that cannot be predicted, someone running amok.

They must immediately make judgement calls on how best to manage situations that confound and confuse anyone, with the possible exception of psychiatrists. And when the outcomes are outrageous, unacceptable, exceptional, deemed to be demonstrations of overkill, the public demands answers. Answers as simple as people doing their best under trying circumstances and failing do not assuage public outrage. There is no outrage when a police officer is run down and killed by a disturbed man operating a stolen piece of machinery.

Perhaps those simple answers shouldn't suffice. More likely they should, since the public is reliant on the dangers to which police willingly place themselves for the higher professional purpose of shielding others from harm. Police officers charged with crimes representing events that have gotten out of hand, resulting in grave harm through what is considered to be undue use of force, are charged, as Const. Forcillo was, of second-degree murder.

It is a crime that occurred while the individual charged was on duty. This is a universal conundrum; it happens anywhere in the world. Men and women are trained as police officers, as public security agents meant to defend the people around them who are civilians, incapable of defending themselves, not trained as police are, to respond to dangerous situations. Police are also like everyone else; occasionally reacting inappropriately.

Should this man be convicted as charged, how likely is it that his fellow police officers will feel inclined to pursue their committed duties on behalf of the public that has demonstrated it has little reason to trust their judgement, their actions, their willingness to place themselves in harm's way in the discharge of their professional duties?