Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit has cleared a Toronto police officer of wrongdoing after she shot and seriously injured a man in Cabbagetown this past summer.
In a report released Wednesday, SIU director Joseph Martino says there are no reasonable grounds to believe that the police officer committed a crime in wounding a man who had a knife at Carlton and Parliament streets on July 23, 2024.
The SIU report says the 32-year-old man was hit twice, once in the left arm and once in the lower right abdomen, and has since recovered from his wounds in hospital.
“I am satisfied that the [subject official] fired her weapon intending to defend herself from a reasonably apprehended attack,” Martino writes in the report.
“Though the officer, as was her legal right, did not provide that evidence firsthand to the SIU, the circumstances surrounding the shooting naturally give rise to the inference. Simply put, the Complainant was approaching the [subject official] with a knife in hand in a fashion that could only be described as threatening,” he continues.
“I am also satisfied that the force the [subject official] used to defend herself, namely, gunfire, constituted reasonable force in the circumstances.”
Although the SIU did not identify the man, his family has previously identified him as Tylor Coore, an Afro-Indigenous man from White Bear First Nation in Saskatchewan.
Man was having mental breakdown at the time: mother
Cheryl Maxie, Coore’s mother, has said Coore has schizophrenia and was having a breakdown when police were called. She has said that guns should never have been involved.
“My son had mental issues,” she told a crowd outside Toronto police headquarters in July. “You know that there’s other ways of dealing with people with mental health.”
According to the SIU, the man was sitting on the steps of a building with the knife by his side when two police officers arrived. When they got closer, he rose to his feet. The officers pulled out their weapons and told him to drop the knife.
“The Complainant began to advance on the officers with the knife held in front of him as the officers retreated towards their cruiser,” the report reads.
The man then started to run toward the subject officer, and when he was about eight to 10 metres away, she fired her gun two to four times, according to the report. The other officer discharged a conducted energy weapon, and the subject officer fired three more times. The man was hit and fell onto the roadway, the report says.
The SIU report says the officers then handcuffed the man and other officers began to apply first aid. Toronto paramedics took him to hospital.
Officers couldn’t leave because of civilians in area: SIU
“A complete withdrawal from the scene was not a viable option given the presence of civilians in the area. Nor was a resort to lesser force necessarily a better recourse,” Martino writes.
Martino says the “stopping power” of a firearm was required in the split seconds that the officer had to defend herself.
“On this record, the first two shots the officer fired were commensurate with the exigencies of the situation. When that failed to deter the Complainant, the officer was within her rights in firing a second volley of shots for precisely the same reasons.”
The SIU is an independent agency that investigates police conduct in incidents that result in death, serious injury, the discharge of a firearm or allegations of sexual assault.
