Two tragedies and “a very scary moment for policing”

Jordan: It takes a lot to force change into a large institution, especially when that institution often thinks of itself as above the law. It remains to be seen right now if policing in Toronto will actually change as a result of the past few weeks. But a tipping point seems to be at hand. First, there was total exoneration for a man who was charged with first degree murder in an officer’s death after a trial that many experts said should never have happened at all.

News Clip 1: Zameer and his family burst into tears after a jury found him not guilty of all criminal charges, including first degree murder in the death of Toronto police officer Jeffrey Northrup.

Jordan: And then just days later, four people including grandparents and an infant dead after a high speed chase that again, many experts said never should have happened at all.

News clip 2: Ontario’s police watchdog is investigating after four people, including an infant were killed in a multi-vehicle crash on the 401 in Whitby last night. The collision followed a police chase on the highway with both the suspect vehicle and police cruiser traveling the wrong way.

Jordan: After racing to defend their own officers at the expense of an innocent man in the first case, police have since announced a review into their protocols that may have led to the officer’s death. The question now following the fatal crash after a chase is if police will once again rally around their own even at the expense of the public’s trust. I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings. This is The Big Story. Patrick Watson is an assistant professor at the Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies at the University of Toronto. Thanks for finding some time for us today, Patrick.

Patrick Watson: It’s my pleasure. Thanks, Jordan.

Jordan: Well, why don’t we start with a brief refresher for those who haven’t followed the headlines that have come out of Toronto over the last couple of weeks. Can you explain what happened between Umar Zameer and Police Constable Jeffrey Northrup?

Patrick Watson: Absolutely, and what I’m going to do here is I’m going to just preface my description with a proviso that my account is derived from media coverage and statements made in court. But what we know from court is that on July 1st, 2021, Umar Zameer, his pregnant wife and his two-year-old toddler son had driven from their home in Vaughn just north of Toronto into downtown, and they were coming into Toronto to celebrate Canada Day. So they drove downtown and they parked their BMW in an underground parking lot at Toronto City Hall. Around midnight after the celebrations had wrapped up, the family were walking through the grounds of City Hall to get back to their car and they happened to cross paths with someone who had recently been stabbed. And this was a complete coincidence. There was nothing involved there on Zameer’s part at all. And at trial, Zameer testified that when he saw this person, and it raised his concerns that he wanted to leave the area with his family as quickly as possible. Now, around the same time, there was a call made to Toronto Police Service or TPS to report the stabbing, and several officers responded to search for a suspect. The suspect was described as a dark skinned man with a beard and Zameer had a lighter brown complexion and was clean shaven. So several TPS officers were dispatched to investigate the stabbing and search for a suspect, and among them were Constables Jeffrey Northrup and his partner Sergeant Lisa Forbes. Both were dressed in my opinion, what would be best described as undercover attire, although it’s been called plainclothes attire throughout the reporting of the incident.

Jordan: We’ll talk about that distinction in a little bit. I find it really interesting, but yeah, continue please.

Patrick Watson: So the story that appears to have been accepted by the jury is largely derived from Zameer’s testimony. And what Zameer told us was that two people ran up to his ban, they were bearing guns and they banged on the windows and screamed at him and his account. They did not clearly identify themselves as police, albeit the police who were witnesses to this event testified that they did. Zameer testified that he was afraid that these people were trying to harm him and his family. So he tried to drive away. He put his car into forward gear, and it was at that point that Correa and Pais who were driving this unmarked van, stopped the van in front of his car. So he put his car into reverse and he backed up to get out of the parking spot that he was in. And it was at this point that two accident reconstructionists, they both agreed that when the car reversed the video evidence into indicated that the car backed up and struck Constable Northrup and that this knocked him to the ground. The video evidence then showed that Zameer drove out of the parking spot in reverse, and as he put the car into forward gear to attempt to drive away, Northrup was in the path of the car and Zameer drove over Northrup, and that’s how Northrup was killed. Now, Zameer testified that he couldn’t see Northrup and did not realize that he’d driven over him. And Zameer’s account was supported by the defence accident reconstructionist expert witness who testified that Northrup would’ve been in the vehicle’s blind spot while he was detained. Zameer said to the arresting officers that he didn’t understand that the people who were banging on his car were the police and he didn’t realize that he’d run anyone over.

Jordan: And his trial just concluded about two weeks ago here in Toronto. What I want to talk to you about today is the police protocols surrounding all this and how tragedy can change them. But just briefly before we do it, this was a heavily politicized trial in the immediate aftermath of Northrup’s death and Zameer’s arrest, how was the incident described by police and some politicians and what was the general sense of it?

Patrick Watson: Right. So shortly after the incident, and this information was presumably derived from statements that were made by Sergeant Forbes that were later proved erroneous in court, but we had Toronto Interim Police Chief James Ramer greet reporters, and he told those reporters that the Toronto Police theory was that this was an intentional act and a targeted act. That Zameer was trying to kill Northrup by driving over him. And this was the explanation that was given to accompany a charge of first degree murder. We saw a remarkable, and I would say very inappropriate reaction from Toronto Mayor John Tory, Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown and premier Doug Ford, all of whom took to Twitter, and they made extremely dangerous and prejudicial comments about Zameer. And I really want to stress here how inappropriate that conduct was. John Tory and Patrick Brown are both trained lawyers. They went to law school, they understand constitutional law, they understand the presumption of innocence, and they both should have known much better than to make these statements on Twitter. Now, John Tory has since released a statement saying that lessons were learned. And I really want to underscore here how insufficient I find that statement that this was a person who should have known much better at the time, and I think there’s much more atonement warranted. And on the other hand, Doug Ford, who doesn’t have any legal training, yet, has been informed about the inappropriateness of his comments, has still to apologize for the prejudicial statements that he made against Zameer at the time.

Jordan: Ultimately, Zameer was exonerated completely, which is why we’re having this conversation about just how inappropriate those comments were. But I’m more interested, and especially in talking to you about this in how this whole thing might have been avoided and maybe you can explain the process here and start with the term a state-created danger. What does that mean in this case?

Patrick Watson: Right. So a state-created danger is first of all, it’s a legal doctrine that comes from the United States. And in the US it’s primarily been used in civil litigation cases where tragic outcomes have occurred and where the government or the state arguably had some duty of care for an aggrieved party, so either a victim of some tragic incident or that victim’s survivors would seek damages from the government for whatever it was that occurred. And in these cases, the onus is usually on the aggrieved party to demonstrate that the state played a negative role in that outcome that the government or a state agent deprived an individual of their rights through action of a government agent, like a social services worker or a police officer. Now have used the term slightly more broadly to illustrate how tactical decisions made by, for example, police officers place both citizens and the police in dangerous conditions and tragedy that ensues. In this case, we can make the argument that there’s a combination of both the Toronto Police service uniform policy and policies for responding to calls for service from undercover or plainclothes officers that produced a condition of state created danger. And what I mean when I say that is the Toronto Police Service themselves have a uniform policy that states that the uniform provides safety, both to officers and to the public. That at the very least, if someone comes running up to you wearing a police uniform, you should be relatively confident that that person doesn’t intend to harm you without provocation, that someone isn’t planning to rob you or carjack you or so on. Now that said, there are conditions like undercover operations where a uniform would inhibit some police investigative practices. So the TPS uniform code does say that officers can work outside of the uniform for specific functions with the permission of the chiefs. Now my understanding is that Northrup and Forbes are part of a major crimes unit, or in Northrup’s case was part of a major crimes unit, and he had permission to wear plain clothes as a result of that. Now that said, wearing plain clothes does come with some inherent risks that even if an officer in plain clothes does identify themselves, it’s not beyond reason, in my opinion, for a citizen to be somewhat skeptical of those claims. You’ll probably remember that a number of years ago there was a lot of discourse about how to respond to unmarked police cars if they were trying to pull you over and things like this. And in cases where we see somebody in plain clothes who’s also exhibiting aggressive or erratic conduct, and I can understand why insecurities and suspicions might be raised in those conditions. So when a chief of police says to a police officer of operational necessity, we’re going to ask you to forego the uniform and the protective equipment, the chief is effectively asking those officers to take on more risk and forego some of the protections that the uniform affords. And this can be argued to produce state-created danger for both the officer themselves as well as the citizens that they’re interacting with.

Jordan: How common is permission to use plain clothes and how broad is that permission, I guess. Does it mean that they can just decide whenever they like not to wear the uniform? Is it granted for only specific duties? Like what’s the protocol around it and how did it apply here?

Patrick Watson: Absolutely. So what the uniform code tells us is that the plain close permission comes from the chief and it has to have some sort of operational purpose. There has to be some function that plain clothes is serving. And as far as I understand TPS policy around plain clothes, it’s something of an operational security issue that it’s not explicitly discussed. And I have not been able to find any information that specifically relates to plain clothes deployment today. That said, in 2007 there was a report given by then Chief Bill Blair, he was responding to a coroner’s inquest for a Toronto police killing of a Scarborough teenager named Jeffrey Reodica. Now, in that report, Blair indicated that there were 1,300 plain clothed police officers and 500 unmarked police vehicles that were used by Toronto Police Services. In 2007, the annual police report showed that TPS had 5,557 officers. So that would mean that just under 25% of TPS sworn officers, which is different than civilian employees we’re working in plain clothes capacity.

Jordan: If I say that’s a lot, am I right? That seems like an absurd amount to me.

Patrick Watson: I don’t have a point of reference. Just intuitively, it seems high to me. We have to keep in mind that this includes the detective units who typically would wear plain clothes as well. But this is another issue that we’ve sort of been sitting on the outside of that plain clothes doesn’t necessarily mean undercover. When we think of plain clothes officers, we think of detectives and other higher ranking officers who are wearing sort of business or more formal attire, the suits that we would sort of be accustomed to seeing in, for example, fictional depictions. When we look at something like Law and Order Toronto, we see these detectives that are walking around in suits that are sort of formally attired and are doing work that’s not as public facing as a uniformed officer.

Jordan: So back to the question I mentioned off the top, what’s the difference between undercover and plain clothes and why were you saying that this feels more like undercover clothing, having seen the video, and what does that mean in a situation like this?

Patrick Watson: So again, plain clothes as we understand it means professional attire that somebody would be identified as being someone in a respectable position like

Jordan: A detective in a suit,

Patrick Watson: Like a detective in a suit. So you likely have a badge exposed, very, very prevalently worn on the belt or worn around the neck or so forth. There’s also other officers that we see wearing a less formal attire, but they might be wearing a vest. And I think it’s really important that we draw this distinction out because that 2007 report by Chief Blair said that TPS should develop some clear markers for plain clothes police officers. Blair noted that plain clothes are sometimes advantageous and necessary, but when responding to an emergency, police need to be clearly identifiable. So Blair made the recommendation that at the very least officers have some kind of identifying armband that they could use or a windbreaker that they could throw on so that they would be easily recognizable by the public. And I would suggest that this shows how Blair recognized the conditions of state-created danger that accompany the uniform policy and that he was looking for ways to ameliorate that danger. And it’s not clear to me why Blair’s recommendations were not fully enacted during this incident that Northrup and Forbes didn’t have something like a windbreaker or an armband that they could throw on that would’ve made them more identifiable to Zameer and his family members.

Jordan: So what happens from here? You wrote a piece for The Star about how this may spark change in policy. What are the police doing about this?

Patrick Watson: So we’re seeing that there’s going to be a comprehensive review of the TPS uniform policy, including the permissions that are going along with plain clothes officers. And I expect we might see some adjustment to emergency response that plain clothes officers might have a more restricted role in future calls for service, that when police officers are doing something like an investigative pursuit, we might see conditions where either an officer has to wear something that makes them more easily identifiable to members of the public or that those officers will simply be excluded from that type of activity from now on. And again, to echo some of your comments earlier, that 25% figure seems to be something that might be important here, that if we’re going to say that 25% of police officers can no longer respond to calls for service because they’re not wearing the appropriate equipment, we’re talking about a major portion of the police budget that would become inaccessible at that point to do the nuts and bolts policing work, the public service policing work that the city demands of the police service.

Jordan: We are able to discuss this case and the changes that it may spark with a little bit of certainty now because we have some distance from the verdict and we have responses from police in terms of what they’re actually going to do. The next thing I want to discuss is something that we have really little certainty about right now, but has certainly seemed at least so far to be the kind of controversial police action that might result in a very similar case at some point. So maybe for those who again haven’t heard, you could very briefly explain what happened on the 401 in the middle of a police chase earlier this week.

Patrick Watson: So what I understand of this incident is there was a liquor store robbery that was observed by an off-duty police officer. That off-duty police officer phoned in a report of this robbery, and that robber fled the scene in a U-Haul rental van. This van took off at high-speed. It was pursued by the officer, the off-duty officer who witnessed this. At some point, Durham Regional police officers over this pursuit. Those officers followed this van at high speed with lights and sirens on, and the van proceeded onto the 401 going contrary to the flow of traffic. So they were driving into vehicles on the 401 coming towards them. Typically, police services around North America have come to see high-speed vehicle chases as state-created danger, par excellence, and in general, police services do not engage in high speed chases. As soon as officers are able to identify the driver and identify a license plate or the description of the vehicle, typically that is the point at which the pursuit would break off. Seeing a pursuit in the wrong direction on the highway is extremely exceptional. This is not something that I would ever anticipated having seen, and I have to say, watching that video, I was absolutely terrified and not just for the people who are passing by who were in the way of these chases, but for the police officer himself or herself who decided to undertake this pursuit. It seems incredibly ill-advised and we have reporting from the Toronto start that seems to indicate that officers were instructed to stop pursuing this vehicle and that somewhere along the line either that instruction was not listened to, was not heard, or was not adhered to. It’s an extremely alarming case and extremely tragic. Police officers are asked to weigh the risk that a fleeing suspect poses to the public versus the risk that’s inherent in chasing that person. And I cannot see any calculus that would give us a condition where a police officer would say that the certainty of risk involved in chasing someone the wrong way on the highway was not outweighing the certainty of risk of somebody who was in a car by themselves in possession of a knife. And aside from driving, no threat to anyone at that point. It seems to me an incredibly dangerous action. And it seems to me that it will require a very, very strong public response.

Jordan: We to be fair, do not know every single detail yet. As you point out, we’re speaking on Thursday afternoon, but as you look at this as a criminologist, is this something we are eventually going to be seeing a in a courtroom or B, in the kind of policy review that police are currently undertaking right now regarding plain clothes officers?

Patrick Watson: I’m not even sure we’re going to need to see a policy review in this case. To my understanding, the policy is quite clear. There is a case that has some similarities and that was an incident involving three Ontario provincial police officers who were charged after they pursued an individual who was involved in a custody dispute. And those police officers from Kawartha Lakes pursued this individual knowing that the one-year-old child that this individual was the father of, was in that vehicle with them. That resulted in a collision. And three of those police officers who saw this collision then got out of their vehicles. They approached the pickup truck with both the father and the son. The son’s name was Jameson Shapiro. He was 1-year-old. And those police officers, again from the preliminary inquiry, these officers were charged. And in the preliminary inquiry we heard that they observed a gun, a gun fell out of the car, that they were notified that there might have been a gun in the vehicle through radio reports. And they opened fire in response. And in choosing to do so, they killed both Jameson Shapiro and his father. Another tragic incident that again, arguably could be attributed to state-created danger. And I say so because dispatchers in that case had instructed officers to back off. That case was charged by the SIU, and it went through preliminary inquiry. It went through preliminary hearings, and it was following the preliminary inquiry that the Crown decided to withdraw charges that they didn’t see a reasonable prospect of conviction given that the police officers said that they had seen this gun and they were reacting to the gun and that the Crown wouldn’t be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they didn’t have a reasonable fear of a person with a gun. That said, I really do believe that there were reasonable grounds here where proceeding with a trial, even outside the reasonable prospect of conviction, would nevertheless have served as the most solid public airing of evidence so that the public would understand precisely what was involved on the officer’s part there. Precisely what those officers believed, precisely what those officers were reacting to, and that there is a public utility in having that type of hearing. And I hope that we get some sort of similar type of account where at the very least we have a very thorough exposition of the evidence.

Jordan: This is my last question. It’s my attempt to tie these two incidents together. In the aftermath of the Zameer case, there was clearly as evidenced by the politicians speaking out, the police chief speaking out, there was an attempt to rally towards the side of the police, and on the police side an attempt to seek out the maximum penalty, clearly. Have the police learned any lessons from how that turned out that might be applied to what happens next with regards to the 401 incident? Or will we in the coming days hear all sorts of reasons for why they did this and it was a terrible accident, but of course you can’t hold it against police for doing their jobs.

Patrick Watson: I have a lot of thoughts on this, and it informs a lot of my research and my reasons for doing research. We are in a very tentative moment in policing or a very scary moment to be quite frank, between police and the public. This is a moment that saw spikes following the murder of George Floyd, and in my opinion, it may have gone slightly into recession in terms of public consciousness of this moment. But in terms of the consequences between police public relations, I’m not sure that we’ve moved very far beyond the 2020 protests. My concern is that the polarization between the police and the public has not diminished that the police as evidence through things like thin blue line patches, things like statements made by police representatives, police staff representatives, police employee association representatives, that there is a strong air of pitting the police against the public. Policing is a great compromise in our system. That democratic policing, as it was written in the 1820s in England where our model of policing came from, it was vitally important to Robert Peel, the person who wrote a philosophy of policing that brought about the Met police, that the police are the public and the public are the police. That police legitimacy is based on public trust and that the police rely on the public in order to adequately perform those duties. And if the police don’t trust the public, if the police believe that the public are against them, that they view them with suspicion, that they view them with mistrust, that this degrades the institution of policing and makes policing impossible, that we cannot have a democratic model of policing unless the police trust the public. And generally speaking, the public do trust the police opinion. Polling shows that the police are the most trusted public service that’s provided by government over and over and over again. That number has started to decline, but the police reaction cannot be to circle the wagons. It is vitally important to public trust that when a mistake is made, it’s recognized. And when a mistake has fatal consequences like the death of a toddler, that may result in the most serious sanctions our society saves for the people that we trust to protect us from just those types of risks. So I really hope that these incidents are moments for police introspection, that we see an accusation made against the police in Zameer, that they may have contrived evidence that magnified the degree of guilt to which Zameer could be perceived to have had. And if we see something similar here where this incident is simply blamed on the reckless actions of a liquor store robber who was a risk to society and that police had to pursue them, I really think that will be damaging to police public relations. I am buoyed by the fact that what we’ve seen in the media is many former police officers coming out and saying right away that this is not something that should have happened. And I believe that will echo public sentiment, and I genuinely hope that police executives, police associations recognize the severity of this, and the severity of the moment, and that a full public airing and perhaps the most severe consequences are warranted in this particular case when we see the body of evidence is presented.

Jordan: Patrick, thank you so much for this. That’s a very thorough answer to that question and a lot to think about.

Patrick Watson: My pleasure.

Jordan: Patrick Watson of the Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies at UofT. That was The Big Story. For more, you can head to TheBigStorypodcast.ca. You can also get in touch with us. The way to send feedback is by email at hello@TheBigStorypodcast.ca or by leaving a voicemail at 416-935-5935. Joseph Fish is the lead producer of The Big Story. Robyn Simon is also a producer. Chloe Kim is our editorial assistant. Mary Jubran is our digital editor. Diana Keay is our manager of business development. And this week, our sound design is done by Mark Angly and Kristie Chan. Thanks for listening. I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings. We got a couple of surprises in the feed for you this weekend, and then we’ll be back with a fresh big story, the conclusion of the inside story of the Greenbelt scandal on Monday. We’ll talk then.