Law Enforcement - The Good, The Bad, The Ugly..... | Page 214 | GTAMotorcycle.com

Law Enforcement - The Good, The Bad, The Ugly.....

Who was in the wrong?

  • Cop

    Votes: 23 21.3%
  • Dude who got shot

    Votes: 31 28.7%
  • I like turtles

    Votes: 54 50.0%

  • Total voters
    108
That never made sense either. If Forcillo was murderous with his last volley of shots but not his first a few seconds earlier, what circumstance caused him to so radically and suddenly change his frame of mind? It's absurd to me to treat his actions in each instance in isolation as if they had no bearing on each other.

There was reasonable doubt that he genuinely feared for his life and therefore the original volley was justified. It was beyond reasonable doubt that no threat was present prior to firing the second volley into his back.

IIRC he was charged for both, but the prosecution didn't win both. Also, the charge for the second volley was apparently attempted murder because the prosecution couldn't prove that Yatim was alive prior to the second round of shots and/or that the second round of shots actually killed Yatim. If they tried to get a murder charge for that volley, there would have been reasonable doubt and Forcillo would probably have walked (and remained on the force carrying a gun).
 
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Apparently his new fiance lied, and got caught, on her application to be his surety... that's not going to help him get new bail.
 
Did he not either reach for the knife and/or grab the knife before the 2nd volley of shots?


And he definitely wasn't a threat as he twitched out his life on a bus floor, with his heart and spine blown out,
which is why the "attempted murder" charge stuck.
 
No. He was paralyzed in the first volley... and shot through heart too.
Forcillo claimed he started to get back up.

Although this discussion is focused on a single individual, I think the root of the problem goes back to screening and/or training. Forcillo obviously got the red fog for some reason (we'll never know whether he was ****** that Yatim wasn't respecting his authority, whether he genuinely thought he was in danger or whatever other reason got him into that mental state). Before allowing anyone to carry a gun in public, they need to be pushed hard in stressful scenarios to see how they react. Putting a few holes in a silhouette at the range is nowhere near good enough. You need to know what someones natural instinct is (and if their instinct goes in an undesired direction, either hundreds of hours of training to fix it, assignment to a role without a firearm or removal from the program).
 
Except they WANT to hire thugs, they're easier to command.

Also true. That's why it is a fundamental problem from the top down.

There is also an interesting problem where much of police work is incredibly boring. If you hire smart people they can't take it and quit (or are insubordinate to try to change the system). If you hire grunts, they put their heads down and do the work but they are more likely to make poor decisions. The majority of most police forces are grunts. That makes the salaries even more ridiculous. Pull those people off the public payroll and see what they could make and then laugh (or cry) on why we pay them triple to shoot at us. I would rather pay them 40K and give the family $1,000,000 if they were actually killed in the line of duty than pay them all 100K+ every year to account for the increased risk of the occupation. Most don't deserve remotely that salary.
 
Also true. That's why it is a fundamental problem from the top down.

There is also an interesting problem where much of police work is incredibly boring. If you hire smart people they can't take it and quit (or are insubordinate to try to change the system). If you hire grunts, they put their heads down and do the work but they are more likely to make poor decisions. The majority of most police forces are grunts. That makes the salaries even more ridiculous. Pull those people off the public payroll and see what they could make and then laugh (or cry) on why we pay them triple to shoot at us. I would rather pay them 40K and give the family $1,000,000 if they were actually killed in the line of duty than pay them all 100K+ every year to account for the increased risk of the occupation. Most don't deserve remotely that salary.
I wouldn't go that far. I'd guess most are your average smart, capable, decent people but there's a large enough number of 'grunts' to taint them all with the label. I doubt either of us can substantiate our opinions but I think we should avoid making sweeping generalizations that are critical of a whole group without evidence.

There are surely plenty of good amongst the bad and ugly, but they don't make the news. Let's keep some perspective here.
 
I think we should avoid making sweeping generalizations that are critical of a whole group without evidence.

There are surely plenty of good amongst the bad and ugly, but they don't make the news. Let's keep some perspective here.

My evidence was a conversation with the chief of police of a regional police force. This was his theory on hiring not mine. He really wanted to put smarter people on the force but he had tried and failed. Obviously it may not apply to every police force and this was a number of years ago, so even that force may have progressed.
 
Did he not either reach for the knife and/or grab the knife before the 2nd volley of shots?

Ragingduck is ALMOST right. He was for all intents and purposes dead after the first volley. Spinal cord severed and heart shot through. You lived in a farming area. Have you ever seen an animal twitch after it's clearly dead? That's pretty much all he was capable of at that point.
 
I just looked at an article on CBC and this is a direct quote:

"The first three shots knocked Yatim to the floor of the streetcar and paralyzed him, although it was determined at trial that he attempted to pick up the knife he had been brandishing."

Tbh, I have not verified the quote but it seems to me that "he was only mostly dead", to quote Miracle Max..

If he made a move towards the knife after the first volley then I'm of the opinion that the cop has every right to shoot again. I obviously disagree with the jury.. :)


Ragingduck is ALMOST right. He was for all intents and purposes dead after the first volley. Spinal cord severed and heart shot through. You lived in a farming area. Have you ever seen an animal twitch after it's clearly dead? That's pretty much all he was capable of at that point.
 
I just looked at an article on CBC and this is a direct quote:

"The first three shots knocked Yatim to the floor of the streetcar and paralyzed him, although it was determined at trial that he attempted to pick up the knife he had been brandishing."

Tbh, I have not verified the quote but it seems to me that "he was only mostly dead", to quote Miracle Max..

If he made a move towards the knife after the first volley then I'm of the opinion that the cop has every right to shoot again. I obviously disagree with the jury.. :)


http://humbernews.ca/forensic-patho...case-details-bullet-wounds-in-forcillo-trial/
 
I just looked at an article on CBC and this is a direct quote:

"The first three shots knocked Yatim to the floor of the streetcar and paralyzed him, although it was determined at trial that he attempted to pick up the knife he had been brandishing."

Tbh, I have not verified the quote but it seems to me that "he was only mostly dead", to quote Miracle Max..

If he made a move towards the knife after the first volley then I'm of the opinion that the cop has every right to shoot again. I obviously disagree with the jury.. :)

He may not have let go of the knife when he fell.
 
Yatim wasn't a threat to Forcillo at any point in that incident. If you really believe he was.. I serious hope you don't work in a position that has you using a gun.


That call was a bit of a cluster*** from the get go. Tragedy all 'round, however...
I've run out of sympathy for the mentally ill who pose a violent threat to the community.
The government doesn't care enough to have the proper resources available for these kinds of people so... The rest of us have to suffer whenever they go off their meds or experience an "episode".
Did Forcillo go overboard as far as the number of shots fired..?
Probably.
Did it make a difference as to whether or not Yatim could have survived the altercation... No.
 
That call was a bit of a cluster*** from the get go. Tragedy all 'round, however...
I've run out of sympathy for the mentally ill who pose a violent threat to the community.
The government doesn't care enough to have the proper resources available for these kinds of people so... The rest of us have to suffer whenever they go off their meds or experience an "episode".
Did Forcillo go overboard as far as the number of shots fired..?
Probably.
Did it make a difference as to whether or not Yatim could have survived the altercation... No.

If you aren't part of the solution you're part of the problem.
 
Seems like a lot of people here watched too many cop movies and think that's how the world should work. Cops aren't allowed to shoot people unless their lives or the lives of others are in immediate danger. That's it. There's no but this or if that. Dude was trapped, alone on a streetcar with no way out. Is it a pain in the butt? Sure is, but that's too bad. Wait for him to give up or fall asleep or if you're in a hurry throw a tear gas canister in there. Then go in a taze him.

tl;dr: Cops can't shoot people for the sake of convenience
 
Seems like a lot of people here watched too many cop movies and think that's how the world should work. Cops aren't allowed to shoot people unless their lives or the lives of others are in immediate danger. That's it. There's no but this or if that. Dude was trapped, alone on a streetcar with no way out. Is it a pain in the butt? Sure is, but that's too bad. Wait for him to give up or fall asleep or if you're in a hurry throw a tear gas canister in there. Then go in a taze him.

tl;dr: Cops can't shoot people for the sake of convenience

^^exactly. I'm sure it's not always an easy job, but you have to be accountable for your actions. IMO cops should have to be held to a higher standard than Average Joe.
 
Seems like a lot of people here watched too many cop movies and think that's how the world should work. Cops aren't allowed to shoot people unless their lives or the lives of others are in immediate danger. That's it. There's no but this or if that. Dude was trapped, alone on a streetcar with no way out. Is it a pain in the butt? Sure is, but that's too bad. Wait for him to give up or fall asleep or if you're in a hurry throw a tear gas canister in there. Then go in a taze him.

tl;dr: Cops can't shoot people for the sake of convenience

This is the reasoning behind why he was found guilty of attempted murder. They could not find, within a reasonable doubt, that he did not in that moment fear for his safety. Since zombies aren't a real thing, however, they could find that a corpse could not reasonably cause him harm. You can't murder a corpse, but you can certainly try to do so.
 
This is the reasoning behind why he was found guilty of attempted murder. They could not find, within a reasonable doubt, that he did not in that moment fear for his safety. Since zombies aren't a real thing, however, they could find that a corpse could not reasonably cause him harm. You can't murder a corpse, but you can certainly try to do so.
The proof he never even consider his safety to begin with is that he tried to kill the guy a few seconds later.

Otherwise, any excuse is valid for shooting a guy who may have had a heartbeat when he was killed. It's only if their heart can be proved to have stopped that it's no longer OK to shoot him. FFS there has to be a lower threshold than that!

In fact, why should the threshold be any different for cops than the rest of us? If a citizen killed Yatim with a legal firearm while he was standing at the top of the steps through a doorway, the guy would have been found guilty of murder.
 
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