I received the following as a response to one of my blog posts on Sammy Yatim, the young man gunned down a week ago by the Toronto Police. Anon’s comments and insights are more powerful than anything I could have written: Sammy…I’ve wanted die…Only I was to scared to do
Continue readingTag: toronto police force
Politics and its Discontents: Sammy Yatim: A Petition From Change.Org
A petition has been established at Change.org. seeking justice for Sammy Yatim. At last count it was closing in on 27,000 signatures. Here is how it reads: In the early hours of Saturday, July 27, 2013, Sammy Yatim was shot dead by a Toronto Police officer as the 18-year old
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Sammy Yatim Killing: The Spin Cycle Has Begun
There is no question that the police and their supporters are desperate to ‘change the channel’ from the murder of Sammy Yatim to the terrible pressures police officers face. As I noted in a blog posting last evening, that organ of the right, The Globe and Mail, started the process
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Sammy Yatim Killing: Once More, The Globe And Mail Is Out Of Step
Thanks to a tweet from Dr.Dawg, I became aware of an odious, but ultimately not very surprising editorial from The Globe and Mail on the shooting of Sammy Yatim. I have written numerous times of how I view the paper as the organ of the establishment and the status quo,
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: New Footage Of Sammy Yatim’s Killing
The first shots are fired at about the 55 second mark on the video. They continue after he has fallen, his body jerking with each bullet. Sure looks like an execution to me, given that he clearly posed no threat to anyone, something the video also makes clear: Recommend this
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Standing Up To Police Abuse Of Authority
I remember a story my son told me of being in a coffee shop in Toronto during the notorious 2010 G20 Summit, about which I have written extensively on this blog. Two police officers came into the shop, one of them noticing my son had his smartphone out. He said
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Murder By Police?
Rarely at a loss for words, I find myself in that state as I think about Sammy Yatim, the 18-year-old killed just after midnight Saturday night aboard a TTC streetccar. As the video posted last evening shows, police, under no apparent threat, opened fire on the teen a few seconds
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: What Does The Toronto Police Force Have In Common With The BART Transit Police Force? UPDATED
The following execution by Bay Area Rapid Transit Police happened in Oakland, California January 1, 2009. This killing, aboard a Toronto Transit streetcar, was executed by the Toronto police. Any apparent differences between the two videos, other than the fact that the 18-year-old in the second one refused to drop
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: A Reasonable Doubt?
You decide. Recommend this Post
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: It Certainly Took Him Long Enough
His Mad Face? Seasoned cynic that I am, I can’t help but think that Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair’s denunciation of police misbehaviour is little more than a public relations exercise. Almost three years after the G20 debacle, in which over 1000 people were arrested and a mere handful of
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Kafka, The Toronto Police, and Toronto Community Housing
“Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning.” – The Trial, by Franz Kafka Last evening, I made a brief post which included a quotation from George Orwell’s 1984, linking it to a story from The Guardian
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Police Workout Video
No need to join a gym, I guess, when police have so many on-the-job-workout opportunities. Raymond Costain, afterwards. H/t trapdinawrpool Recommend this Post
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Toronto Police: Again and Again and Again ….
Albert Einstein famously defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. By that standard, perhaps both the Toronto Police force and I are insane; I seem to periodically write essentially the same blog post about their misbehaviour, and they seem to keep practising
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: “This was an attack on the rule of the law.”
So said Crown attorney Elizabeth Jackson, who is seeking a sentence of 18 months in jail and three years’ probation at the sentencing hearing of George Horton, 24, whose crime during the 2010 Toronto G20 Summit was kicking the scout car of Staff. Sgt. Graham Queen as well as another
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Excessive Force Or Standard Police Operating Procedure?
You decide. Recommend this Post
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Police Overreaction?
Or justifiable force? You decide. Interesting, though, the number of police that swarm the man recording the incident on his cellphone, beginning at around 5:20 of the video. Recommend this Post
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Chief Blair’s Poodle Speaks
First, bullets flew through the Eaton Centre food court. Then, two weeks later, on a sun-filled patio in Little Italy. On Sunday, a man was shot while hundreds watched a fireworks display in the city’s east end. Just 24 hours before that, a stray bullet grazed a toddler’s leg in
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Deny, Deny. Deny
In the strange parallel world inhabited by Toronto Police chief Bill Blair, that seems to be the rule governing administrative oversight. When confronted with an authoritative and damning report on the behaviour of your officers, both frontline and senior, attempt to deal with its implications by refusing to apologize for
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Senior Toronto Officers Facing Charges
The Star reports the following: About five high-ranking Toronto police officers were informed last week they will face misconduct charges for their actions during the G20 summit, the Star has learned. The CBC is reporting 28 front line officers have been charged with misconduct — including unlawful arrest and excessive
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: The Irony Of Police ‘Sensitivity’
Given the brutal manner in which some police officers discharge their authority, it always strikes me as just a tad ‘precious’ when they complain about how unjustly they are being treated whenever the press offers some criticism of their practices. In responding to The Toronto Star’s series, Police Who Lie,
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