Lest we forget: A tally of police shootings and taser deaths of Canadians with severe mental illness
I am haunted by the 2013 police shooting death of Sammy Yatim , and the words of Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair this month that the recommendations that came out of the investigation of the 18-year-old's death won't be "left to gather dust." If only we could believe that. Blair has said versions of that before, in past years when Toronto police killed some other person with mental illness. The case of Sammy Yatim was particularly tragic, what with him being a young man alone on an empty streetcar when he was first shot nine times by the police and then tasered as he lay dying on the floor. (See the enhanced YouTube video of his death taken by a passerby here. ) But he's hardly the only sad story. One night last week I went looking for every archived news story I could find on fatal police shootings of people with mental illness, and found at least 36 such shootings in Canada since 1988. ...