To Serve & Protect - or - Academy of Assassins?

“Second charge laid against Toronto cop in Sammy Yatim shooting”

Canada is a country of heinous crimes of grief and mourning, a land of human misery without any hope. An ocean of human tragedy, that their fierce waves drag millions of shattered lives.
- Nadir Siguencia

                                          Taliban's - AlQueda's - Nine bullets in the humanity of the young Sammy Yatim, and the feast of the vultures was still going on when the dying boy was again tasered by the police.                            PUBLIC EXECUTION?                                                                                                                          Second, third, fourth,... charges laid against the assassin of Sammy Yatim is a complete circus, once again the office of the Crown Attorney is trying to manipulate the public and create an insight that the justice is served. The truth is: the videos of Sammy Yatim execution which was uploaded in “You tube” is showing to the world that the officer James Forcillo is murdering Sammy Yatim; in cold blood for the reason that the young Sammy was behaving with improper words learned in the Canadian elementary and secondary schools. Also the officer is showing that he was trained to kill even when the victim was not representing any danger in the lives of the police. Sammy Yatim he was massacred like so many defenseless people who were murdered in previous occasions by their fellow officers. With the help of the media are trying to convince us, that every victim from the Police Academy of Assassins them were suffering of mental illness? The murder of Sammy Yatim at the hands of the executioner officer James Forcillo; again is other crime for the impunity books. Actually the Canadian Justice System has proved that it is a complete corrupted system, their mission is to protect dangerous criminals which are causing more victims of police brutality and killings.

POLICE BRUTALITY: Toronto Cops Tackle & Kill Mentally Disabled Man For Nothing

                                                                 " Special Impunity Unit"                                                                                                                     News / Crime

Second charge laid against Toronto cop in Sammy Yatim shooting

Const. James Forcillo had already been charged with second-degree murder in the death of the teenager on a streetcar last summer.                                            Nathan Denette / THE CANADIAN PRESS FiLE PHOTO                                                                                              Const. James Forcillo, left, shown with his wife Irina in June, is now facing charges of both second-degree murder and attempted murder.                                                                                                                           By: Marco Chown Oved Staff Reporter, Published on Wed Jul 30 2014                                                                    The Toronto officer charged with second-degree murder in the streetcar shooting of Sammy Yatim last summer has been charged again.                                                                                                                                        On Wednesday, the Crown revealed that it had added the charge of attempted murder to the indictment of Const. James Forcillo, leaving him in an apparent contradiction: prosecutors claim he both murdered and attempted to murder the Toronto teen.                                                                                                  Yatim was killed after brandishing a small knife on the Dundas streetcar last July. Once passengers evacuated the TTC vehicle, several police officers approached the open front doors and ordered Yatim to drop the knife.                                                                                                                                                               Several videos of the event show a single officer — later identified as Forcillo — firing nine times, leaving the boy crumpled on the floor. Yatim was then Tasered and handcuffed before being taken to hospital.                   MORE ON THESTAR.COM:                                                                                                                                          YouTube video had huge impact on Sammy Yatim case                                                                                              Dad haunted by death of Sammy Yatim year after teen shot by police                                                             Innovative recommendations for Toronto police dealing with the mentally ill                                                         Calvin Barry, who has worked both sides of murder trials — first as a Crown prosecutor and now as a defence lawyer — says he’s never seen a person charged with murder and attempted murder in the same case. “It could have the effect of creating a charge to the jury which would be somewhat complex   

“In the law, an attempted murderer is just a lucky murderer,” said criminal defence lawyer Nader Hasan, who is not involved in the case. “An attempted murder involves all the same intent, but the victim doesn’t die. Yet in this case, the victim did die.”

Characterizing it as a “pretty clear case of second-degree murder,” Hasan said the Crown could be opening up the door for a plea bargain.

Because second-degree murder carries a mandatory life sentence with no parole for 10 years, while attempted murder means a mandatory five years, “it may provide an opportunity for the officer to plead to something lesser than murder,” said Hasan.

Toronto Police Association president Mike McCormack disagrees, saying the Crown has indicated it will be fully prosecuting the case.

“No plea is happening here,” McCormack said.

Another theory is that the Crown is concerned that it won’t be able to prove Yatim died from the bullets.

“In order to prove second-degree murder, the Crown has to prove not only that Const. Forcillo had the required intent and carried out this intent by shooting at Sammy Yatim, but also that his shooting caused Sammy Yatim’s death,” wrote Gerald Chan, a criminal defence lawyer who isn’t involved in the case.                                                                                                                                                                                    Yatim’s cause of death might turn out to be heart failure, which could be attributed to the Tasering, said Brian Heller, another uninvolved criminal lawyer.                                                                                                 “So he might have died from the Tasering before he died from the shots,” Heller said.                                 In this way, Forcillo’s lawyers may try to argue that he didn’t cause Yatim’s death and the Crown would have to fall back on attempted murder.                                                                                                                      “Might the sustaining of the shots have diminished his capacity to withstand the force of the Tasering?” Heller asked.                     After a court appearance Wednesday morning, Forcillo’s lawyer, Lawrence                                                   Gridin, said the new charge indicates weakness in the Crown’s case.                                                                   “The Crown’s changing theory just highlights that this case is by no means clear-cut, and we are looking forward to presenting a strong defence,” Gridin wrote in an email to the Star.                                             McCormack claimed the two charges are contradictory.                                                                                        “We’re scratching our heads; the public is scratching their heads; no one understands it,” he said. “To us, it’s like throwing all sorts of stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks.”                                                               After discussing the case with Forcillo’s lawyers, McCormack speculated that the new charge might reflect the officer having felt threatened by Yatim.                                                                                                          “It seems Forcillo could have been justified in firing some but not all of the shots,” he said.                                          The second charge comes only days after the one-year anniversary of the shooting. Last weekend, Yatim’s father, Nabil (Bill) said in a statement that his son “did not deserve to die this way.”

With files from Alyshah Hasham and Laura Armstrong.

THE TREACHEROUS CANADIAN MEDIA ARE BRINGING THE TRUTH OF THE HUMAN CARNAGE COMMITTED EVERY DAY BY THE CANADIAN JUSTICE SYSTEM?

To Serve & Protect - or - Academy of Assassins?

Canada is a country of heinous crimes of grief and mourning, a land of human misery without any hope. An ocean of human tragedy, that their fierce waves drag millions of shattered lives.

- Nadir Siguencia                                                                                                                                   

                                                                                                                                                                                              The Iacobucci report’s unwise colour-blindness

Over the past 26 years, 73 per cent of those in mental distress killed by the Toronto police have been non-white. So why wasn’t race a consideration in a recent report on the problem?

Darren Calabrese / THE CANADIAN PRESS

Retired Supreme Court Justice Frank Iacobucci says the issue of race was beyond his mandate as he prepared his report on police use of force.

By: Anthony Morgan Published on Tue Jul 29 2014

Does race matter when a Toronto Police officer encounters a person in mental distress?

Revisiting our recent past is a good place to turn to help us answer this question.

Since 1988, 11 families have had a loved one in mental distress killed by a Toronto police officer. In memory of these individuals and out of respect for their families, it is important that we do not forget their names or when we lost them: Sammy Yatim (2013); Michael Eligon (2012); Sylvia Klibingaitis (2011); Reyal Jardine-Douglas (2010); Byron Debassige (2008); O’Brien Christopher-Reid (2004); Otto Vass (2000); Tony Andrade (1997); Edmond Yu (1997); Wayne Williams (1996); Lester Donaldson (1988).

We should regard the life of these people as being equally endowed with inherent value, worthy of being afforded the same levels of dignity, honour and respect that every human being deserves. Not one of these losses is more or less tragic than another.

But if diversity is truly the strength of our city, we cannot afford to take a colour-blind approach to this issue. Together, we have to confront the fact that racialized minorities, especially black males, are dramatically overrepresented in incidents of police use of deadly force when confronted with a person in mental distress.

Unfortunately though, a colour-blind approach seems to be exactly what Justice Frank Iacobucci applied in his sweeping report, “Police Encounters with People in Crisis,” released last week.

During the news conference where the 413-page review was released, Justice Iacobucci and Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair were asked on three occasions if race was explored as a factor that may influence the decisions of officers to use lethal force against a person in mental distress. They responded by saying that considerations of race fell outside of Iacobucci’s mandate and instead, the review’s focus was to be a “more holistic” overview of this sensitive issue.

Over the past 26 years, 73 per cent of the people in mental distress that the Toronto police have killed are non-white. This in a city where racialized people are still a minority of the population.

So how could race not be considered a relevant factor that contributes to incidents of police shooting people in mental crisis? And how does a 413-page review ignore almost 75 per cent of the racialized identities in these cases?

Individuals do not experience mental distress in a vacuum. Mental distress is experienced in relation to many components of the complex and multi-faceted identities that make up an individual’s full humanity. The race, ethnicity, nationality and citizenship status of a person do not disappear into irrelevance with the onset of a mental crisis.

In their recent book, entitled Racialization, Crime and Criminal Justice in Canada, professors Wendy Chan and Dorothy Chunn support this point by noting that: “Experiences of mental illness and distress, regardless of their origins, take place in a social, cultural and historical context which includes environments of discrimination.”

This should not be a new revelation. The importance of considering race as a factor that contributes to police shootings of people in mental distress was recognized throughout the inquest into the killing of Lester Donaldson in 1988 and again in 2013 with the inquest into Michael Eligon’s killing, both by Toronto police.

It has been a year since we all watched Officer James Forcillo pump eight bullets into 18-year-old Sammy Yatim with 10 or so other well-armed Toronto police officers standing by.

Witnesses say that before he was killed he showed signs of mental distress. But since his killing, we have also come to learn that he was a recent immigrant from Syria, struggling to piece his life back together in Canada.

Iacobucci’s mandate prevented him from considering any individual cases. This however does not explain why his review was silent on the overall racialized outcomes of police use of lethal force against people in mental distress.

With this in mind, Iacobucci’s report ignores the complexity of Torontonians’ racialized identities, and reads as if people with mental illness are to be approached as if their illness is the defining factor of their entire existence.

If that were true, racialized people would not be so alarmingly overrepresented in these tragic incidents.

If the police in Toronto and across Canada are to make meaningful advances on this issue, they have to face the facts as they are and not as they prefer them to be.

Discomfort should not induce colour-blindness, especially when outcomes have been so clearly colour-coded.

Indeed, race clearly matters here. If the Toronto police are not willing to face this, how can we put full trust in any of their actions to address this long-standing issue?

Anthony Morgan is the policy and research lawyer at the African Canadian Legal Clinic.

Nazi Holocaust – Armenian Genocide – Ukrainian Holodomor – Ruanda Genocide -                                                                     CANADIAN CALAMITIES: 

The Toronto Police Service is committed to serving the diverse people of Toronto the way we expect to be treated, with dignity and respect, says Chief Bill Blair. Again the same preaching!

                          My officers go where crime occurs. They go to where the community calls us. They go where our intelligence says there is a greater risk of victimization.                                                                                                                                                           

Canada is a country of heinous crimes of grief and mourning, a land of human misery without any hope. An ocean of human tragedy, that their fierce waves drag millions of shattered lives.
- Nadir Siguencia

“CRIMES THAT CANADA IGNORES AND THE STRUGGLE AGAINST IMPUNITY”

Canada is a police state; a country  of human tragedy and oppression which have so far claimed the destruction of hundreds of thousands of families and the lives of so many underprivileged people. The silences of the Canadian media over the police abuses, brutality, and unjustified killings that occur on daily basis are helping for the perpetuation of the police to commit crimes. Chief Blair has to accept the racist police attitudes against the poor communities, the verbal abuse and ill treatment on detainees by their subordinates and the inexcusable public executions (Sammy Yatim). A high percentage of Torontonians are witnessing the harsh treatment of homeless people, persons of color, and police captives they are subjected to repeated punches, kicks, kneeling, beatings, tasering and assassinations in the streets, parks, shelters…. of this city. The failure of the judiciary system to punish the police for human rights violations create a climate where the Toronto police force can continue to commit all kinds of brutality and assassinate poor people without fear to be reprimand and jailed for their heinous crimes.   

From the Toronto Star; Chief Blair: Racial profiling not tolerated in Toronto police force

The Toronto Police Service is committed to serving the diverse people of Toronto the way we expect to be treated, with dignity and respect, says Chief Bill Blair. Again the same preaching!                                                   We will continue our unrelenting efforts to ensure we deliver bias-free policing services in a fair and impartial way, as well as our commitment to our core values of respect for the people we serve.

Darren Calabrese / THE CANADIAN PRESS                                                                                                                        "We are not racist but we are all human," writes Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair.

By: William Blair Published on Mon Jul 28 2014

Our contacts with the people of Toronto have been the subject of much discussion. I want to take this opportunity to explain what we do, how we do it, how we review what we do and our constant process of self-examination and improvement.                                                                                                                           Our contacts with the public will never be in direct proportion to census figures because poverty and unemployment are disproportional. Opportunity is not equally distributed across all communities. Some groups and neighbourhoods experience higher rates of victimization and violence.                                                 My officers go where crime occurs. They go to where the community calls us. They go where our intelligence says there is a greater risk of victimization.                                                                                               The Toronto Police Service is committed to working in partnership with all communities to address these disparities but, until that is achieved, our community contacts will reflect the disproportion that exists and the conditions that give rise to it.                                                                                                                                 We will continue our unrelenting efforts to ensure we deliver bias-free policing services in a fair and impartial way, as well as our commitment to our core values of respect for the people we serve.                          Project PACER (Police and Community Engagement Review) is our comprehensive review and redesign of our practices, designed to ensure fair and bias-free policing.                                                                                 Dr. Atiba Goff, researcher and professor with the University of California at Los Angeles Centre for Policing Equity, has said: “(PACER) is about as good as you can ask for — even those hating law enforcement can acknowledge that. There always will be, and should be, community concerns because of the incredible power given to law enforcement. But, if you’re looking to get better, this is certainly a recipe for it.”                                                                                                                                                                    Audrey Campbell, immediate past president of the Jamaican Canadian Association, is one of 16 community members representing a wide variety of groups to provide input on the PACER recommendations and is seeing them through. She has said she believes the service is genuine in its ambitions to police fairly and ultimately believes in Project PACER.                                                                             She participated in the Fair and Impartial Policing training alongside me and my senior officers.                            She said, “One of the things I want people to realize, including the police, is that the organizations that are at the table are there because we believe. We believe that TPS is sincere about this initiative. If we did not believe that, we would not be at the table. Because, at the end of the day, we have to go back to our community, we have to give reports and we have to justify whether we want to support the decisions taking place.”                                                                                                                                                                    We do not tolerate racism or racial profiling in the Toronto Police Service.                                                                We are all committed to serving the diverse people of Toronto the way we expect to be treated, with dignity and respect.                                                                                                                                                              We have demonstrated this commitment in many ways.                                                                                                      We have created the most diverse police service in Canada. We speak the languages, have the cultural competencies and possess the diversity of perspectives that reflect the city of Toronto.                                       We have worked in partnership with our Police Services Board, the Ontario Human Rights Commission, our community partners and the people of Toronto, to develop policy on training, recruitment, deployment and services that embrace our pluralism and demonstrate our commitment to a diverse city.                                                                                                                                                                                            We are not racist but we are all human. The science of bias teaches us that even the best-intentioned, most decent and honourable people can be influenced by the implicit bias all people have.                                     As police officers, the decisions we make are important. We make decisions that affect people’s safety and their liberty. We make decisions that determine how a young person or a whole community will see themselves. These decisions can affect their quality of life and their ability to be fully included in a cohesive society.                                                                                                                                                                         It is essential we do everything possible to ensure that bias does not influence our decisions.                                    We must be able to articulate and justify our actions and decisions. This isn’t always easy, but it is what the people of Toronto deserve and expect from us.                                                                                                           We know we can never be complacent. Good enough won’t cut it. What we do is too important. We must always do our best and we must always work to improve.

William Blair is Chief of Police, Toronto Police Service.