Constable James Forcillo put his psychology degree to work on the witness stand during verbal battles with Crown prosecutors.
1. Constable James Forcillo's defence is one big blame game.
It was always going to be a risky proposition putting Forcillo in the witness box to testify on his own behalf. The last thing any defence lawyer wants to do is open up his client to cross-examination. It's usually a last resort.
But given the overwhelming video evidence against Forcillo - nine shots fired point-blank at the knife-brandishing Sammy Yatim - the defence had little choice.
Forcillo proved a tough nut to crack, putting whatever mind games he learned getting that psychology degree from York University to good use under pointed questioning from Crown prosecutor Milan Rupic. But in the end, his cocksure manner left an uneasy sense that his entire testimony was cooked.
Forcillo never apologized for shooting Yatim, and his defensiveness revealed a simmering anger when he wasn't arguing semantics.
Cocking his chin skyward like a boxer, he seemed to be daring Rupic to take his best shot. It wasn't hard to see how Forcillo might have lost his cool that night, as the Crown suggested, and let his jail-guard mentality (he used to work in court services) override his police training and kill Yatim for calling him a "pussy."
Video evidence shows that Forcillo decided to shoot Yatim before assessing the situation, drawing his gun immediately upon arrival on the scene and screaming his ultimatum to "drop the fucking knife or I'm going to shoot you" within seconds. The deadly encounter was over in less than a minute.
His, as the Crown pointed out, were not the actions of a calm Toronto officer acting and thinking rationally. Yatim posed no imminent danger to Forcillo, the public or any other officer. The teen was high and in over his head.
But Forcillo saw the incident as a battle of wills that he was determined to win, and win he did.
2. The Ontario and Toronto police colleges are churning out more automatons, than creative thinkers.
The Crown called Deputy Chief Mike Federico to testify about how Toronto police are trained to de-escalate encounters with people in crisis. Federico made it clear that he was not there to testify to the specifics of the shooting, but his testimony proved incriminating to the defence nevertheless.
According to Federico, police are trained extensively in de-escalation techniques, taught to "thoughtfully and logically" assess situations involving people in crisis so as not to get locked into one course of action.
Most importantly, he testified, the guiding principle for police officers involved in any encounter with members of the public, is the protection of life. Lethal force should be used only as a last resort.
Forcillo didn't try to talk Yatim down. He turned up the temperature, shouting at him to "drop the fuckin' knife." Pepper spray, another effective use-of-force strategy suggested by Federico, was not contemplated. An officer with a taser arrived seconds after Forcillo, but Forcillo didn't wait or seem to think he might be able to de-escalate the situation by doing nothing.
Indeed, Forcillo seemed to show disdain for police training in de-escalation techniques, at one point telling the court, "If you are pointing a knife and are refusing to do what I say, why will things magically be okay if I ask if he wanted a glass of water?"
De-escalation techniques are not magical thinking, Rupic pointed out. They're supposed to be at the core of police training. Did Forcillo not receive proper training? Is he the exception or the rule?
The defence went to some lengths to make the case that Forcillo was simply following his training when he shot Yatim. But police face potentially dangerous encounters with thousands of people in crisis every year. The vast majority of those people don't end up dead.
3. An us-versus-them mentality pervades the force.
There was little evidence at Forcillo's trial that the Toronto Police Service has moved much beyond its paramilitary roots. Police officers still "parade" in front of their superiors before every shift. They're assigned to "platoons."
Police training videos that Forcillo's defence submitted as evidence left little doubt about a police officer's number-one obligation: to get home in one piece. Or "win," as Forcillo testified.
At times it appeared that Yatim, not Forcillo, was on trial. The defence went to great lengths to portray him as someone itching for a fight, maybe even on a suicide mission. Defence lawyer Peter Brauti suggested that Yatim had been stalking women and stayed on the streetcar to wave his penis and knife at a group of women who boarded.
The thin blue line was much in evidence in the contrary testimony of police, causing Rupic to offer in his closing arguments that "very little of what other officers at the scene had to say is trustworthy."
He accused police witnesses of concocting evidence after the fact "to breathe life" into the defence's case. Far from testifying honestly, Forcillo's colleagues "circled the wagons," Rupic said.
It was a stunning appraisal from a lawyer who has spent a good part of his career defending cops.
4. Toronto police think they're above the law.
If one word can be used to describe the defence led by police union lawyer Peter Brauti, that word would be "smokescreen." Brauti pulled out all the stops and then some, trying to bully prosecution witnesses when he wasn't casting aspersions on their testimony with sarcastic asides.
He called the Crown's main use-of-force expert, Robert Warshaw, whose resumé includes work with some of the most notorious forces on the planet (including the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the Oakland and Miami police), a "Monday-morning quarterback." He suggested that Warshaw is not a real cop since he hasn't been on the beat since the 1990s.
But he saved his coup de grâce for his closing remarks, when he ventured that no one in the courtroom (not even the jury) was in a position to question Forcillo's actions because they're not cops and don't know what it's like on the mean streets. It was a recurring theme in the defence's case. In Brauti's mind cops can do no wrong. If they step over the line, protecting them is the price society sometimes must pay to preserve the integrity of the justice system.
Rupic seized on the defence's narrative, rightly pointing out that "police don't get to judge themselves." It's precisely the function of our courts to judge the conduct of those who are before it.
Though police officers are not supposed to be treated differently under our system of justice, Judge Edward Then at times gave an unusual degree of latitude to Brauti's courtroom antics. He allowed the defence to introduce a video in which Forcillo demonstrated how he allegedly saw Yatim trying to get up off the streetcar floor after his spine had been severed by the officer's first volley of shots.
Forcillo admits in the video that, after viewing the TTC video from inside the streetcar, he was mistaken about seeing Yatim try to get up. So what was the point of the demonstration? It was a ruse. But by the time the Crown raised an objection, the jury had already seen the video.
5. It may be time to disarm some front-line officers.
It's a radical notion to some. It's been described as "ludicrous" by Toronto police union head Mike McCormack.
But amid all the flabbergasting evidence, the question has to be asked if frontline officers need to be disarmed. Most Toronto police officers will never draw their guns, let alone use them, during their careers. Most police officers in Great Britain do not carry guns.
But in Toronto, despite coroner's inquest after coroner's inquest calling for changes in police training, people in crisis keep getting shot and killed.
The circumstances surrounding the Yatim shooting are particularly tragic, but it's an event we should have seen coming. In the two years prior, 15 people were shot by Toronto police, seven fatally. In most of those instances, the victim was carrying a knife or scissors. In only one instance was the officer injured.
Toronto cops are drawing their guns more and more every year, according to statistics compiled by the force's Professional Standards Review Committee, which looks at police handling of use-of-force issues.
Professional Standards has been monitoring the Forcillo trial. But it's unlikely that's with a view to meting out discipline after the trial.
As the cop assigned to the task told me during a break in the proceedings last week, "You still won't believe how many people ask me, 'Why don't you shoot in the leg?'"
Original Article
Source: NOW
Author: ENZO DIMATTEO
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