9 shots + Tazer for knife wielding teen in Toronto Street Car

[CB007]

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[ilduce39]

Yeesh, that's brutal.

Police chief is saying all the right things - not defending the actions at all. He's right when he says "your mouth is your best weapon."

Why didn't one of them have a taser before? This seems to be the exact moment it's needed.

Obviously this kid was in some state of crisis - when somebody points a gun at you - you should probably do what they say.

[CB007]

Clearly further shots were fired, so they could have been shots to disable him but hadn't worked. Add in the taser (why they didn't try that when he was in view of the door, I can't say) and he was obviously still in possession of the knife and moving enough to be seen as dangerous for officers going into the bus.

[Grapefruits]

And what happens when they still end up shooting him? I wouldn't put it by this cop. As the guy is dropping the knife, he'd probably start shooting and say he thought he was dropping the knife to pull out a gun.

[elvis15]

Ah yes, the classic CDC arguement of everyone on CDC is stupid and out of touch with reality besides myself card.

Works everytime :D

[EoH]

Cant they use rubber bullets?

[elvis15]

Cant they use rubber bullets?

[Baka]

That's pure speculation. Maybe he shouldn't have pulled out a knife in the first place and started threatening people. Lets face it, if this was in the US, he would have likely been shot by a civilian and be hailed a hero.

Maybe people will think twice before they pull out a weapon.

[CB007]

Well, that then assumes the situation was as you say, where the police were going to be able to disarm or subdue him without risk of injury to themselves. We simply don't know what the danger is in this case.

It doesn't matter how many police there are if you are the guy closest to the sharp end of the knife. If he goes to stab you, your in danger - regardless of a dozen other gun toting police officers behind you. If you saw him going at another officer and had the opportunity to shoot him, you'd take that too, again regardless of how many other officers around you.

I know as much about the facts as you do based on that video, we can't see what the guy was doing and don't have the angle of the cop who fired. The second round of shots likely wouldn't have been possible if the first rounds had dropped the guy to the floor of the bus, since he would have fallen behind the ticket machine/dash of the bus/etc. My guess is he was still standing or at least partially upright for any of the second shots to even hit him but that's just me guessing on top of a bit of physics.

I'm not saying this was a good shooting, as I said I simply don't have enough evidence one way or another. What I am saying is people are very quick to judge that the police were 100% wrong in shooting, even stating it was murder and they would have shot the guy even if he'd dropped the knife. I'd like to know what evidence they're basing that on.

No one should be spoon fed a narrative or base a new situation on an old, unrelated one. Everyone should apply critical thinking when evaluating what they see and hear.

[Imuzi]

Cops murdering. What else is new? Makes me sick.

[elvis15]

We never saw him coming at the police. As far as we can tell he never made it past the area that was blocked before the coin drop. Your argument is based on we don't have enough information. My argument is that yes we do. The facts are these:

1, He took one step forward and 4 shots were fired.

2, Since he stopped moving forward, the shots worked in either injuring him or at least scaring him from moving forward any more, or perhaps he was critically injured already. Regardless, at that point there was no further immediate threat (even assuming he was a threat before, which is highly debatable) because he stopped moving forward.

3, After he stopped moving forward, posing no threat to anyone any more, 5 more shots were fired.

4, Then the officers moved in and a taser shot was fired.

If this was stopped at point 2, we probably wouldn't have a news story to talk about. I seriously do not understand how this cannot be considered as excessive.

There are only two possible excuses for the policeman involved to take such extreme action:

1, He was scared

2, He has little regards for human life

Either one of which is enough to disqualify him from law enforcements.

[CanucksSayEh]

Im usually on the cops side as far as self defense goes, but this is ridiculous. They shot a kid, alone on a bus with a butter knife, from a distance. Every single officer there should be fired, the one who actually shot him behind bars.

[CB007]

Or 3. There was still threat for some reason.

That's just it, you're assuming he no longer posed a threat after the first round of shots, when the police - who had a much better view of the situation - felt it necessary to shoot him again and then finally taser him. I don't pretend to know their reasoning for doing so, and I'm well aware of previous incidents where force of this kind wasn't warranted (as well as incidents with people on drugs with crazy strength and endurance requiring extra force), but it's impossible for you to say he was no longer a threat as defined in the terms police would use to asses the situation.

[Amish Rake Fighter]

Dumbass probably should have dropped the knife when the cops told him to.

Probably shouldn't have pulled a knife and ordered everyone off the bus to begin with.

[elvis15]

Reason such as? What, the kid tossing the knife at him? Our perspective is different from their's sure and anything is possible, but I think once common sense and logic of deduction is applied you will realize that there are no other reasonable possibilities.

If he only has a close range melee weapon such as a knife and was no longer moving towards any possible target, then he was no longer a threat to anyone. It's actually a physical fact. Not to mention he was trapped inside the street car. If I was the officer I would not fire until he was half way off the steps of the streetcar moving aggressively towards me or others with knife in hand.

Your argument is based on your assumption that since the police shot him multiple times again, he must've had a reason to do so. You are an excellent poster so I don't have to tell you that it is circular logic and why it is invalid.

[Buddhas Hand]

For what it's worth that stereotype is about as accurate as stereotypes that cover entire races.

I have lived in the USA 23 years in a major USA city in a state that has some of the looser gun laws.

I have never seen anyone get shot.

I have never seen anyone pull a gun out in public.

I don't own a gun.

Only 2 of my friends and acquaintances own guns.

Many people do not carry guns on themselves because that requires a much harder license to get.

Those who carry them illegally don't pull them out quickly because they would end up in jail.

I have seen numerous altercations and fights even a man threatening another man with a kitchen knife on the street in center city in mid day and not only did no one pull a gun out but most people ignored it and walked past. Some called the police from a distance and a couple tried to talk the man down.

Believe it or not Americans aren't savages who applaud murdering as a first resort. In fact possible accents aside most Americans and Canadians aren't different.

As far as this situation goes though you are using the logic of a civilian who isn't expected to be able to handle these situations.

Officers are supposed to be protectors of peace and only resort to extreme violence if their is no other option.

This was a young man with a close quarters weapon who had been quarentined from the public population by police. Yes, he did not drop his weapon when he should have but it is the officers job to have experience with these situations and be able to understand what might be going on with the mans head. He could be on drugs, he could have a mental disability, or he may be a normal guy who had a really bad experience that sparked his mental breakdown. It's easy to judge when you aren't the one in the situation but people can simply be very scared at these moments feeling like something horrible happened to them earlier and now they are in a situation they never expected possibly looking at a criminal record. Under extreme anxiety people don't often think straight or rationally and can even be riding panic attacks.

When the man did not drop the knife but remained on the bus they should have tried talking to him. Find out what is going on and why he won't drop it. With each passing minute even if he was on drugs he would start to think a little more rationally before realizing the best option is just to surrender.

And that's not even considering the fact that tazering a man after he is on the ground from 9 potential gunshots who may or may not still have a knife in one of his hands is just overkill and hardly logical.

The point being if police can use such force with anyone who does this a lot more people would die everyday and it wouldn't make people stop because these people are in such an extreme state of mind at the time that they won't reason it before acting. Any person who has a breakdown becomes fair game. A guy who missed his meds, a girl who got drugged, a guy who just saw his wife cheating on him. Life is sacred and I would like to think those who can legally end it only do so when they have no other option. These cops had options.

[NikiShiz]

Tough video to watch. He should have listened to the cop, Cop should have used different means.

[CB007]

I say this often enough on here, but absolutes aren't absolute. As you say, anything is possible so even if the spectrum of possibility is pretty heavy to the bad shooting side, there's still the chance of it being justified. In the very least, there could be a partial explanation for it happening the way it did.

Why snap to judgement without any kind of qualifying statement?

And it's not circular logic if you accept that there's a possibility it was justified to begin with. Just because you're argument isn't accounting for that doesn't mean mine has to ignore it as well.

Again, this is discussion is going off course from the topic, but you must be able to see how some people are readily jumping to the conclusion that there is no possible universe in which this wasn't the police murdering a confused young man holding a rubber spatula.

[SergioMomesso]

What's wrong with a shot or two in the leg? I'm no marksman by any means but I'm sure one of those so called trained officers would have been able to pick off a limb or two and disable the kid. And to top it all off. He's on a bus with no hostages and 2 fricken exits. Where the frack is he going to go? Geez imagine if he had a sling shot? The 5-0 would have to bring in the .50 cal sniper and some armoured vehicle to take him out.

What a joke of system that's in place when it comes to hiring personnel. Any proper training would have had that kid disarmed within seconds. With no blood being spilled.

[Grapefruits]

What's wrong with a shot or two in the leg? I'm no marksman by any means but I'm sure one of those so called trained officers would have been able to pick off a limb or two and disable the kid. And to top it all off. He's on a bus with no hostages and 2 fricken exits. Where the frack is he going to go? Geez imagine if he had a sling shot? The 5-0 would have to bring in the .50 cal sniper and some armoured vehicle to take him out.

What a joke of system that's in place when it comes to hiring personnel. Any proper training would have had that kid disarmed within seconds. With no blood being spilled.