CP24 Toronto News! Cherubim’s of brutality and death: the Toronto Police?
It is hard to believe that this force is the most fearful, detested,
despised, and not to mention the horrible harmful evil police, more than the Karma,
Dina, and Gestapo. These demons under the motto “To Serve & Protect,” are
stablishing a system of terror, torture and abusing the freedom of children,
women, and vulnerable seniors in the poor neighborhoods. For many years the
Toronto police are carrying out unjustified provocations, sadistic beatings and
committing murders to innocent and vulnerable civilians. “The Toronto Cherubim’s
of brutality and death,” are acting outside of the normal judicial process and
had its own courts to act as a judge, jury and executioners.
Secrecy continues on chief's report into Loku death
Police board chair Andy Pringle isn't saying whether the mandatory report was even submitted, and won't reopen discussion about releasing it until mid-May.
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COLE BURSTON / TORONTO STAROrder this photo
Toronto Police Services Board chair Andy Pringle says the board will
revisit its option to release the Andrew Loku internal investigation
report when it meets again in May, but refused to say whether the board
had received a report from Chief Mark Saunders.
The Toronto police board is refusing to say if
Chief Mark Saunders submitted the results of an internal review of the
fatal police shooting of Andrew Loku.
Such reviews are mandatory after every Special
Investigations Unit probe — and the reports are made public, in whole
or part, by at least three other Ontario police boards.
Pending an inquest, for which no date has been
set, Saunders’ report is the only chance the public has to learn more
about Loku’s death, a shooting that has provoked calls for more transparency about the civilian police watchdog’s investigations.
Premier Kathleen Wynne has still not said when the SIU director’s report into Loku’s death, currently being kept secret by Ontario’s Attorney General, might be released.
Under Ontario’s Police Services Act, every
time the SIU launches an investigation, the police force involved must
conduct its own internal investigation of the incident to determine
whether a policy change, disciplinary action or additional training is
required. A report must go to the police board within 30 days after the
SIU finishes its investigation.
Legally, the board “may” make the chief’s
report public, in full or in part. When asked by the Star if the board
plans to release Saunders’ internal report, Toronto Police Services
Board chair Andy Pringle would not confirm if the board had even
received the report during the in camera session at its April 20
meeting.
The SIU announced that it had completed its investigation on March 18, and that no charges would be laid.
Pringle said in an interview Tuesday that at
the upcoming May 19 board meeting, the board would re-open the
discussion about making the chief’s reports on SIU investigations public.
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“I’m not prepared to go public on any part of
it until I’ve consulted and discussed with my colleagues and we come
back to the public meeting in May. That’s it, pure and simple,” Pringle
said, repeatedly refusing to say whether the board had even received a
report from Saunders.
Board practice has been to keep such reports
secret, though it has the power to release them. Pringle said the board
has periodically discussed whether to change that policy ever since he
joined in 2011.
“It has come up on a number of occasions since
I’ve been on the board. We’ve looked at it and obviously, to date, have
felt that the existing policy was appropriate,” he said.
With ongoing discussion about the Loku case,
Pringle said it’s clear a review of the current policy is necessary,
“which is exactly what we are doing.”
Saunders, however, does not want the reports
made public, a position also held by former chief Bill Blair, who cited
concerns about personnel issues being released.
“However, it is ultimately up to the Toronto
Police Services Board to make a decision,” police spokesperson Meaghan
Gray said in an email.
At least three police boards across Ontario
regularly release chief’s reports on the internal investigation of an
SIU incident in some form.
In Ottawa, the reports are made available
online and searchable on the city’s website. The board released two at
Monday’s meeting, both of which included the names of the officers
involved, a brief review of each incident and whether there was a need
for action by the force. In both cases, the service’s professional
standards unit is continuing to investigate.
Two other boards aim to make the reports
available to the public when possible. In Niagara, the chief reports to
the board secretly and provides a recommendation as to whether that
report should be released publicly or not, “and the majority are,” said
Deb Reid, executive director of the Niagara Police Services Board. A
recent report made public did not name the officers.
Bill Clancy, executive director of the Durham
Regional Police Services Board, said it is the board’s practice to
receive the reports “in public session.”
Other police boards across Ontario do not release the reports, a fact Pringle cited as a reason not to do so.
“Given that the norm is that most boards do
not release this, why would we make an exception?” he said. “However,
every time there is a question that comes up, we’ll want to review, ‘Are
we doing the right thing?’ To date, I would say it would be obvious by
the fact that we haven’t changed, that we have thought so.”
Former Toronto police board chair Alok
Mukherjee said the board has long attempted to find ways to make the
chief’s reports public. Police concerns typically have focused on the
issue of releasing classified police procedures or naming officers.
In 2013, the board attempted to come up with a
template for making some parts of the report public. Mukherjee told the
Star on Tuesday that the board had asked Blair to come back with
another version of a secret report that could be released.
But there wasn’t enough information provided,
Mukherjee said, and the board was concerned the report would “create
more contempt.” He believes the template idea was dropped.
Mukherjee says the report submitted to the
board also lacked detail — even though the point is to ensure that the
police service learns from an incident where the SIU is called, and
where necessary, and makes changes to policy, procedure, training or
equipment, or lays discipline charges under the Police Act.
“It got to the point where I stopped reading
these reports, they were so meaningless,” he said. “I don’t recall a
single case where they said: ‘Here’s what we learned.’”
In 2013, John Sewell, head of the Toronto
Police Accountability Coalition, attempted to obtain the chief’s reports
into four fatal shootings involving Toronto police: that of Reyal
Jardine-Douglas, Sylvia Klibingaitis, Michael Eligon and Charles
McGillivary.
Aware that privacy considerations might
prohibit their release, Sewell made it clear he was not interested in
the names of the officers.
“We wanted to find out what the police force
had learned in respect to each of the shootings,” Sewell said Tuesday,
and whether changes had been made to avoid similar situations in the
future.
When the requests to the board were denied, he
filed a Freedom of Information request that was also denied. He
appealed to Ontario’s Information and Privacy Commissioner. The process
ended when the privacy adjudicator found that the records requested by
Sewell did not contain an analysis of the events that would inform the
actions of other officers.
“At least we can be prepared for the next time
someone in mental crisis is killed by police,” Sewell wrote in a
September 2015 TPAC bulletin. “We can demand that the mandatory report
required from the chief … (include) lessons learned. Perhaps that’s a
good starting point for requiring police responsibility after the
killing in early July of Andrew Loku.”
Loku, 45, was killed by an unnamed Toronto police officer on July 5, 2015, while carrying a hammer. In March, Ontario’s civilian police watchdog announced no charges would be laid because the fatal shooting was justified to prevent an imminent hammer attack.
The SIU’s decision launched weeks of heated
protest by Black Lives Matter, and calls for the release of more
information to explain how the watchdog makes its decisions.
TO SERVE & PROTECT
