One thing that is fundamental here is the ubiquity of amateur footage capturing police operations. In some of the academic literature this is referred to as "sousveillance" and includes any kind of recording of police actions, either text or picture. We were first exposed to this reality in 1992 with the beating of Rodney King by members of the Los Angeles Police Department. Here was an early instance when the public at large was able to watch police going about their business. This particular footage indeed shocked viewers, including members of the police community. Notwithstanding the prior events, including anything provocative that Mr. King may have done when interacting with the LAPD officers, this was a brutal, vicious, and sustained abuse of force by individuals sworn to uphold the law. These events, and the not guilty verdicts that followed for the officers involved sparked serious and sustained riots in LA that sent further ripples throughout North America and served as a setback to race relations both in the United States and Canada.
What we may learn from the videotape, enhanced or otherwise, provided by Markus Grupp is only a partial account of this event in its entirety. Of course, there is information to be gathered from other eyewitnesses, bystanders, the driver of the TTC streetcar, and importantly, the officers involved in the shooting and those many officers who congregated at the scene after Mr. Yatim had been wounded.
A Toronto Police Association representative has noted that this videotape represents just a "slice of the pie" and there's much more to this story that needs to be addressed. This may be the case, however, it's an exceedingly weak analogy. Anyone, police officer or regular citizen, can make some quite reasonable assumptions about the entire "pie" from a careful examination of a single slice. For example, it's clear Sammy Yatim is the only person on the streetcar; all of the passengers, including the driver, have been able to safety exit the vehicle. It's clear there are at least two police semi-automatic weapons trained on Mr. Yatim as he stands near the front door of the streetcar. It's relatively clear that the officers involved are shouting commands to Mr. Yatim to drop the knife and not move. This has created a situation where neither the police, nor Mr. Yatim, have much room for de-escalation, or manoeuvring to safer ground. It's also reasonably clear that the police officer who fires the first shots at Mr. Yatim did so quickly and deliberately.
These circumstances may well benefit from further commentary and explanation from the officers and from the senior command of the Toronto Police Service (who are eminently able to speak to issues of training, policy, procedure, and law). These aspects will certainly be carefully reviewed and considered by investigators attached to the Special Investigations Unit (SIU), a provincial body established to provide independent scrutiny of events resulting death or serious injury involving the police across Ontario. They will also be given expert consideration within the Toronto Police Service as Chief Blair causes an internal investigation to take place in order to determine if there may be disciplinary charges against the officers involved in this event.
Amateur video-recordings have been pivotal during the review of a growing number of police-citizen encounters. The Rodney King beating has already been mentioned. In Canada the Robert Dziekanski case provided an essential part of the equation which led to the Braidwood Inquiry and compelled the RCMP to come to grips with its policies and practices around the use of Conducted Energy Weapons (CEW), also known as Electronic Control Devices (ECD). The G20 protest in London, England included an instance where an police constable on riot patrol forcefully shoved a man to the ground. Ian Tomlinson died as a result of this encounter with PC Harwood and this officer was found to have used excessive force contributing to Tomlinson's death. Harwood was removed from his job and the full details of this incident would not have come to light in the public forum without video footage supplied by a citizen to the Guardian newspaper.
In July 2013 two Surete du Quebec officers were videotaped beating a young Innu man in the community of Unamen Shipu. These pieces of footage become part of the chain of evidence that allow the public, and those charged with analysing and assessing the legality and reasonableness of instances of police use of force.
Increasingly, it has become important for the police to realize that many of the individuals they deal with on the streets are suffering from mental disorder or emotional disturbance. This is why many Canadian police services have Crisis Intervention Teams (CITs) that include specially trained officers, medical professionals, and/or mental health workers who can work collaboratively when dealing with such individuals. There are specific response strategies that may be deployed when comfronted by persons who exhibit different categories of behaviour. Indeed, a valuable online course is available through the Canadian Police Knowledge Network (CPKN) that deals with precisely this topic. It was designed with input from psychologists from Dalhousie University and covers a comprehensive range of topics for approaching the following categories of people:
- Category R: Reality Impaired;
- Category A: Antisocial, Argumentative, Abusers;
- Category S: Suicidal & Depressed; and
- Category ExDS: Excited Delirium Syndrome
Recent research and study has called into question the excited delirium label and some jurisdictions (e.g., Great Britain) do not use it at all when speaking about disturbed individuals.
There will be much more learned about the Sammy Yatim case in the coming days and weeks and, while exceedingly sad that someone's lost their life through this process, it will offer considerable food for thought for the Toronto Police Service, the Canadian policing community, and others as people come to terms with ways of dealing with such circumstances for safely and successfully.
