Lethal force: Recent shootings raise questions over effectiveness of police use-of-force training

Paul Boyd, top, was shot to death by Vancouver police as he crawled across a street in 2007. Sammy Yatim, bottom, was killed by Toronto police as he held a knife on an empty streetcar a week ago.

For almost five years, the 2007 death of Paul Boyd, a six-foot-four bipolar man shot eight times — including in the head — by Vancouver police was explained thusly: He had been swinging a bike chain, he had posed a lethal threat.

But when video of the incident surfaced in May 2012, the public couldn’t see any such thing. They could see an officer fire a shot, and Mr. Boyd, an animator with a long history of mental illness, crawling across the pavement of a busy downtown street. The officer shot several more times.

In an extraordinary move, Vancouver’s police chief, Jim Chu, apologized to Mr. Boyd’s family, and expressed how “disturbed” he was by the video, which has spurred yet another review, this time by an independent investigator, the outcome expected this fall.

On Monday, Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair was thrust into a similar position addressing the death of Sammy Yatim on a streetcar last weekend — a police shooting that has galvanized those already critical of the public’s protectors, and brought more into their fold. The 18-year-old brandished a knife, ordered everyone off the streetcar and was some distance and a set of streetcar stairs away from Constable James Forcillo, who fired nine shots.  (more...)

Lethal force: Recent shootings raise questions over effectiveness of police use-of-force training