“...And you, you better run because I'm going to destroy you for what you've taken from me.” .- Samantha Young, Blood Will tell Toronto Life home: On the other side, the defense will argue that every action Forcillo took was consistent with his training. That he had good reason to fear for his life and the lives of the people on the street. TO FEAR FOR HIS LIVE AND THE LIVES OF PEOPLE ON THE STREET? (Rifle – Bazooka – Missile - Assassins) The cowardly murder committed in Sammy Yatim by the police officer James Forcillo is a reprehensible despicable, abominable… act of viciousness without forgiveness. The police officer knew very well that the victim never posed any danger in his life or in the safety of police officers on duty. Videos recorded by the public reveals the cruelty of the officer Forcillo; the extreme savagery to kill a helpless young person, who was standing composed inside of the streetcar. Also the same videos are showing the excessive brutality and sadism of a second police officer, who is tasering the dying Sammy Yatim in the floor of the streetcar. TORONTO LIFE HOME October 15, 2014 The Magazine | Digital Edition | Subscribe | Newsletters | Contests | Mobile App | Toronto Restaurant Search
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Here is the evidence assassins?
The Killing of Sammy Yatim
April 22, 2014: Peter Brauti, the go-to
lawyer for high-profile police cases, with James and Irina Forcillo on their
way into the pretrial hearing. Right: Forcillo with his daughter, Alexandra,
and in a photograph promoting Movember (Image: Forcillos with lawyer by QMI
Agency)
On July 30, three days after the shooting, Irina Forcillo was in her
car when her best friend called in a panic. “They released his name,” her
friend said. “I’m looking at his face right now. It’s on CP24.” Within hours, reporters
descended on the Forcillos’ North York home. Television vans and camera crews
trying to get a picture of Forcillo and his family set up camp across the
street. Journalists harassed the Forcillos’ friends, relatives and neighbours
for information. Irina was bombarded with media requests through Facebook and
Twitter, and a reporter showed up at her mother’s workplace. The Forcillos now
have two daughters—Alexandra is five and Nicole is three—and it became
impossible to get the kids in and out of the house safely, so they temporarily
moved into Irina’s parents’ house nearby.
Irina
shut down her social media accounts when threats against her husband started
popping up everywhere. One anonymous person tweeted “We know where you are.
Expect us.” Police removed the most serious comments and continue to investigate
some, but they keep reappearing online. “Fucking pig better go down for this or
shit will hit the fan. I’m not fucking kidding pigs” and “It’s way past time to
have an INTERNATIONAL FRY PIG DAY! There was no reason on Earth for them to
shoot that boy.” Brauti received threatening emails, and a letter with a
picture of the World Trade Center towers collapsing was sent to every member of
his staff, suggesting that Forcillo’s actions were equally heinous. Forcillo was shocked
by the deluge of online comments and news stories. He told Irina that he
sometimes wondered if there was something else he could have done on that
night. Mostly, she says, he felt betrayed: “I do something because nobody else
wants to do it,” he told her. “I do my job, and now the same people who call in
the cops to help them and protect them are telling me what I did was awful.”
Immediately
after Yatim’s death, Forcillo saw the department’s psychologist, which is
standard for officers involved in fatal shootings, and he continues to see a
psychologist today. Peter Brauti, who couldn’t discuss the specifics of
Forcillo’s case, talked to me in general terms about police shootings and said
he has noticed a pattern. “Officers don’t usually embrace counselling at the
beginning, because it’s a bit of a culture of, ‘I did my job.’ Or, ‘I’m supposed
to be a symbol of strength or confidence for the public.’ But then after some
time, you see them become more open to it because they realize, ‘You know what?
I’m not okay.’”
Canada’s
criminal code defines second-degree murder as the unplanned but intentional
killing of another person without legal defence or justification. On August 19,
just three weeks after the shooting, the SIU—which had interviewed streetcar
passengers and other eyewitnesses, and had scrutinized all the cellphone
recordings, surveillance images and security video—charged Forcillo with
second-degree murder in the death of Sammy Yatim. If
Forcillo is convicted, he faces life in prison without the possibility of
parole for at least 10 years. It’s an unusual charge, especially for a police
officer in the line of duty. In fact, Forcillo is one of only three Ontario
police officers to face a second-degree murder charge since the SIU was formed
in 1990. One of them, Constable Randy Martin of York Regional Police, was
acquitted in 2000 in the shooting death of 44-year-old Tony Romagnuolo during
the attempted arrest of Romagnuolo’s 17-year-old son. A fist fight had broken
out on the front lawn of the Romagnuolos’ home, and in the struggle Martin shot
and killed the father.
The other case took four years to resolve. In 2010, David Cavanagh, a
Toronto Emergency Task Force officer, was charged in the death of 26-year-old
Eric Osawe after a drug and weapons raid went horribly wrong. While Cavanagh
and Osawe were struggling on the floor, Cavanagh’s submachine gun
accidentally discharged and shot Osawe in the back. The Crown, in conjunction
with the SIU, originally charged Cavanagh with manslaughter, but the judge
dismissed the case before it could go to trial. The Crown appealed, upping the
charge to second-degree murder, and the case was dismissed for a second
time—the judge ruled Osawe’s death a “tragic but accidental confluence of
circumstances that occurred in a high-pressure and high-risk situation.” The
Crown appealed again, but the case was dismissed for the third and final time
this past April. Cavanagh saw a psychiatrist and was on medication for
anxiety and insomnia for a time. He’s still a cop but has not been in the
field as an ETF officer since the shooting.
When Forcillo was
charged, Cavanagh called him to offer support and suggested they meet for a
coffee. “My first time meeting with him, I saw the look in his eyes,” says Cavanagh,
“an aloofness that was familiar to me—that thousand-yard stare.” Cavanagh is
blunt about how devastated he was by his ordeal. At his first psychiatric
appointment, he was so discombobulated he left the engine running in his parked
car. “Nobody goes to work thinking I’m going to kill somebody today. To
have something like this happen is unbelievable. You read about somebody facing
the same charge—somebody who robbed a bank and killed a teller—and I’m facing
the same legal consequences as this person even though I was executing my duty.
Trying to make sense of something that doesn’t make sense really causes the
wheels to spin in your head.”
When the charge against Forcillo was publicly announced, Yatim’s sister
tweeted “Good morning JUSTICE,” and the city seemed to exhale a collective sigh
of relief.
Forcillo was arrested at Brauti’s office the next day and taken to a
holding cell at Old City Hall. A few hours later, Brauti was in front of
Justice Gary Trotter with his request for bail. Forcillo’s in-laws posted his
$510,000 bond, and he was released shortly afterward. The judge included a 9
p.m. house curfew among Forcillo’s bail conditions.
There was nothing for him to do but wait. The Forcillos moved back into
their house after the media frenzy died down, and he stayed home while Irina
worked.
Forcillo
was reinstated to desk duty last February but is not permitted to carry a
weapon or wear his uniform. His assignment to Crime Stoppers caused
another flare of outrage across the city. A Facebook group calling itself Sammy’s Fight Back for
Justice issued a statement: “We are extremely disappointed that a police
officer charged with second-degree murder of which there is ample video
evidence is being allowed to return to duty.”
Forcillo’s preliminary hearing began in April and lasted four weeks.
Prelims give both sides the chance to hear evidence that will be presented at
the trial. As is now standard in most criminal cases, the judge, Richard
LeDressay, issued a publication ban on any evidence presented at the pretrial.
This is done to protect the jury pool from being tainted—an increasingly
difficult task in high-profile cases when viral images flood the media.
In
late July, the Crown added a charge of attempted murder, likely in case they’re
unable to convict on the murder charge. The trial itself won’t happen for at
least another year. The Crown will argue that Yatim’s death was criminal, that
Forcillo cannot justify the shooting. They will likely focus on alternative choices
Forcillo could have made before firing his gun. He could have waited for the
Taser. He could have backed up to create more distance between himself and
Yatim. He could have closed the streetcar doors. They will likely zero in on
the fact that Forcillo was the only cop to fire, that he clearly interpreted
the threat differently than the other officers at the scene. And undoubtedly
they will hammer away at the shocking six shots he fired after his first three
put Yatim on the streetcar floor as proof that he used excessive force.
On the other side,
the defense will argue that every action Forcillo took was consistent with his
training. That he had good reason to fear for his life and the lives of the
people on the street. That he was
charged with the responsibility of making a split-second decision in a chaotic
situation, and that’s exactly what he did. The jury will hear, among other
things, about police training, rogue cops, troubled teenagers, illegal drugs,
adrenalin dumps, sightlines, ballistics, biased media and cop culture. They’ll
have to sift through a mountain of evidence, including a 90-second video that
can’t possibly tell the whole story.
