Report on Police Interventions Calls for ‘Zero Deaths’

Rob Wipond
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A retired Supreme Court Justice has issued a 300-page investigative report into Toronto, Canada police interventions with people undergoing psychological crises, and his recommendations call for “zero deaths,” reports the Toronto Star. The report’s recommendations also call for significant changes in “police culture” and police attitudes towards people in crisis. According to the Star, the report “advocates for training that emphasizes de-escalation techniques and communication, in place of force.” Yet it also promotes more use of conducted energy weapons, or Tasers.

Peter Rosenthal, a Toronto lawyer who has represented families of police shooting victims, told the Star the report’s support for Tasers was “disappointing.”


Iacobucci report calls for a ‘zero deaths’ police culture (Toronto Star, July 24, 2014)

Police Encounters With People in Crisis (Toronto Police Service Report, July 2014)

14 COMMENTS

  1. Let us remember, and never forget, that this is the city were a Toronto City Councillor and brother of the Mayor of Toronto said when objecting to a halfway house for autistic teenagers: “my heart goes out but I didn’t think they’d be leaving the house”

    The city that humanity forgot. Zero deaths? Uh huh. And I’d like a pony.

    http://www.thestar.com/news/city_hall/2014/05/18/doug_ford_defends_comments_that_youth_group_home_ruined_community.html

  2. Additionally, Canada has a very bad history with using stun guns on persons with psycho-social disabilities and other unarmed citizens. We have been challenged by the UN Committee Against Torture and our internal courts to no avail.

    People shouldn’t die because police in Canada do not know how to respond to persons experiencing crises.

    As a Canadian I am ashamed.

    Just one article: http://www.guelphmercury.com/opinion-story/4573138-expanded-use-of-police-tasers-should-concern-canadians/

    • Its a change I’ve noticed recently copy_cat.

      Back in my youth police liked donuts and were big but not in a healthy way. I spoke to one police officer recently and it was so obvious that he was pumped on steroids, and suffering ‘roid rage’. It was after this I began noticing others I believe are doing the same, lots of them.

      No point teaching them deescalation techniques, because you have to WANT to deescalate a situation.

      It was interesting how this one played out in our courts.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsNpHC6h2gA

      Two police convicted of assault, still got their jobs, the guy that was tazered doing a long stretch after being ‘deescalated’ lol.

    • Not necessarily. I had a very positive encounter with police during crisis which was 1000X better than with any psychiatrist I’ve ever met. It all comes down to the policy and culture within the force. The policewoman actually took her time to talk me down and they did not overreact to anything I did or said and I was a real pain in the ass at that point.

  4. Toronto Police have a reputation for being quite tough, however, when I got arrested in 1996, for being naked in a hotel ballroom, they were actually quite nice to me. OK, except for the part where they took me to the ground and handcuffed me. But other than that, they were very polite. Much nicer than the psychiatrist and security staff at the hospital. I guess I got lucky!

    • I find the whole issue of psychiatrists coercing and forcing people onto psychoactive substances, while fraudulently claiming they’re “safe” medications. Then claiming the resultant mind altering (and unexpected by the misinformed patient) ADRs and withdrawal symptoms to be “life long, incurable, genetic mental illnesses,” to be problematic.

      Of course, there’s been an explosion of “mentally ill” people interacting with police since the mid 1990’s, it’s due to the explosion of psychotropic substances being prescribed. The psychiatric drugs are causing the mind altering states / “mental illnesses” in many.

      I personally was taken to a hospital by a policeman once, for lying in Millennium Park in Chicago, looking at the clouds, bothering no one. I will confess, I was in a state of shock, as I’d just finished typing up my medical records chronologically, with my medical research along side, and was trying to mentally come to grips with finding the medical proof of enormous betrayal, not just by doctors wanting to cover up easily recognized and complex iatrogenesis, but also a cover up of the sexual abuse of my child by a religion my family had donated and made millions for.

      I peacefully went with the policeman, I was neither a danger to myself, nor anyone else. I was subjected to a supposedly mandatory physical, despite the fact I told them I was fine, and did not want any medical care. It resulted in a “medically clear” diagnosis, according to the medical records. No HIPPA forms were signed by me, since I’d politely declined medical treatment.

      I was kept against my will, then at midnight, I was shipped back to V R Kuchipudi’s Advocate Good Samaritan psychiatric partner in crime, Humaira Saiyed, way out in the far western Chicago suburbs.

      http://chicagoist.com/2013/04/16/chicago_hospital_owner_doctors_arre.php
      http://www.justice.gov/usao/iln/pr/chicago/2013/pr0416_01a.pdf

      According to the medical records, I was forcibly treated for a supposed urinary tract infection. Why are doctors shipping people to mental hospitals to be forced treated for medically provable non-existent UTIs? And how likely is it that I would be shipped all the way to the far western suburbs (not the part of the suburbs in which I lived) from the city of Chicago, to a doctor that had “snowed” me previously, if my HIPPA rights were not violated? The hospital that did that, did eventually forgive the debt, due to the fact they could not prove their intern had not broken the HIPPA laws.

      I guess my point is, I believe as a society we must get to the point we realize that it is the psychiatric drugs creating or exasperating the mind altering states, which the psychiatrists are fraudulently claiming are “life long, incurable, genetic” “mental illnesses.”