Within hours of the shooting of 18 year old Sammy Yatim on a Toronto streetcar in July of 2013, people were in the streets, outraged at the death of yet another person in crisis at the hands of the police.
Arguably, that outpouring of anger played a role in the Special Investigation Unit's decision to charge the man who shot Yatim, Constable James Forcillo, with second-degree murder. Community mobilization was doubtlessly also a factor behind the long-awaited independent investigation into the use of force in such circumstances commissioned by the Toronto police, resulting in the Iacobucci report on Police Encounters with People in Crisis.
And it may well be that the public profile of Yatim's death helped ensure that Forcillo actually went to trial, the first Ontario police officer ever to proceed to trial on a murder charge.
Yet last week's jury verdict inspired no further protest. Although a jury had found a police officer acting in the line of duty guilty of a criminal offence, the overwhelming response was one of confusion.
Forcillo was found not guilty of second-degree murder and manslaughter but guilty of attempted murder. Sammy Yatim was dead, the officer who shot him guilty of… an attempt? (more...)
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