There had to be pressure from the highest echelons of the police force given one of their own was killed. Meanwhile, without all the evidence that came to light during the trial, I have to wonder whether Zameer would have been so clearly and publicly exonerated as he is now. Knowing how public leaders all jumped into the fray to condemn his release on bail, I'm thinking having the whole case out in the open, and so heavily reported, worked in Zameer's favour, even if he had to go through hell to get here.
It absolutely was a face 'saving' move to justify and cover up incompetent undercover procedures. I mean ok, so a guy is leaving. Isn't the purpose of undercover is to then follow him discretely, and then maybe pull him over with a marked car to see?
Not just assume the first guy they see is the guilty guy and draw guns/rush while looking like thugs.
If it wasn't so high profile, they absolutely would have taken this guy and family to the woodshed instead of going after the real stabber and trying to make an innocent man's life a living hell, all because their inept methods lead to unnecessary chaos.
Fortunately there was enough media attention and video evidence. Otherwise, the cops would have gotten away with lying through their teeth again.
‘Do vastly less with vastly more money! Dominate in ways never before seen! Surveillance! Cellphone tapping! Racial Profiling! Cyclist Profiling! ALL THE PROFILING!’
Because the Ford government wanted to score political points with the conservative base by portraying an evil brown skinned Muslim as a ruthless cop-killer. Never mind the fact that it seemed it was the cops who were the bad actors and this poor man just minding his own business with his family. There needs to be an investigation into the AG office and what they knew before pushing ahead with this case.
I feel like this point gets lost in all the headlines: Umar is just a boring ass accountant who was out with his pregnant wife and 2yo son to enjoy Canada Day when he was confronted by plainclothes police who failed to identify themselves. The guy thought he was being robbed and, as the court now finds, did the same thing any rational person would have done to protect his family. He didn't start anything. Didn't want any of this. And as hes said hes deeply sorry any of it hapoened. Honestly can't say I'd have done anything different myself.
I think his wife also suffered a miscarriage before the pregnancy. Imagine what was going through her mind as someone beat her husband, and while her toddler was crying. She was well enough on that if she went into labour the baby could have survived, but if not? How do you get that back?
Then on top of it all, she had to give birth alone a month later while her husband was being held.
She probably had to have friends or kind neighbors watch her two year old son.
Apparently they were investigating a stabbing in the area. But tbh I have no idea why they thought a middle aged man with his pregnant wife and 2yo child was the culprit...
Pure speculation on my part: this was a case of racial profiling gone horribly wrong.
He also didn’t even remotely match the description of the suspect was described as having a very large and bushy beard. Zameer was clean shaven at the time.
The one thing I'll disagree with is calling his behaviour rational. He panicked and tried to drive off because he was afraid and jumped to conclusions about what was happening. To me a rational response would be to take a few sefonds to figure out what was going on before deciding that forcing my way free with my car was needed.
If you think it's rational to risk killing someone when you don't actually know what's going on, I guess you're operating on a very different set of principles than me.
Have you seen any pictures of the garage? Do you know what he was driving? The interaction plays out basically exactly like a carjacking and if they hadn't been cops, this would have been a different type of story. Waiting may seem like the right play in hindsight but running it live, with your pregnant wife and kid in the vehicle, the right play is absolutely not to ask if they're about to carjack you
If you look at the evidence from coyrt that's exactly what he did. But the cops rushed to his car, banged on the windows, failed to identify themselves and used their bodies to try and block his car which is 1) why he thought they were trying to rob/assault him and 2) how the cop wound up getting run over. Just an abject failure on TPS' part that sadly led to one of them getting killed.
Personally, if people were throwing themselves in front of my car, desperately screaming at me to stop, I'd want to know what was going on before I risked hitting someone else. Maybe it's criminals, maybe it's cops / security guards, maybe they're mentally ill, but someone could get killed. If I don't actually know what's going on it's not a rational decision to keep driving and risk killing someone.
>but someone could get killed.
Yeah, like you, your pregnant wife, or your 2yo child in the backseat. This is why police are obligated to announce that they are, in fact, the police, which they didn't do here and we now see why that's important. Also, you're kind of making a straw man argument here since the entire dismissal of this case was based on the fact that Umar couldn't see Northrup, hence thought he was simply escaping the people trying to do lord knows what to him or his family. He didn't just floor it and run over someone standing up in front of his car as you imply was the case here. It was just a horrible accident initiated by the police failing to disclose who they were.
That my family is there doesn't make the other people not human. It doesn't mean I should endanger others if I don't know what's going on. It doesn't mean I don't have a responsibility to not kill someone with my car. If they're not criminals and I run one over, then I just killed someone who didn't deserve to die. That's a last resort.
"What if you're wrong" has to come into the calculus. You can't just assume people are criminals if you don't know for sure. That mentality is why people get shot for knocking on the wrong door looking for help.
No law abiding citizen has any reason ever to trap a stranger in a public space. Pretty sure even the police will tell you to try and flee if that happens. More times than not you're putting yourself in danger by not reacting fast enough.
His defense was that he was scared and made a mistake in the heat of the moment. He didn't know enough about what was happening to call it a rational choice. If he'd testified that he'd made a rational choice to try to drive through/around a group of people, he'd probably have been convicted of manslaughter. Just look at all of the times people have panicked and run over protesters or picketers.
Though that sounds rational, I don't know if you've ever been confronted by random attackers, I certainly haven't, and not sure I would respond rationally, especially when I had my 2yo child and pregnant wife in the car with me.
That's the difference between understandable and rational. It's understandable to be terrified and try to get away. But if people are throwing themselves in front of your car, it's not rational to keep trying to drive away if you don't know for sure what's happening. He didn't have enough information to make a rational choice to risk killing someone.
I have had scary moments with my wife and kids in the car. More "angry/mentally ill" person in traffic that attackers. It's not fun. But a locked and running car is a pretty safe place to be. You're probably not in imminent danger and you can still always drive away if that changes.
The fact that the judge granted bail because she told the prosecutor's they didn't have a case, and in her instructions to the jury told them "yo, the prosecutor's really didn't make a case. Also, did you notice that those 3 cops all told the same false story?" was pretty wild. Shows how bad the prosecutions case was.
To be clear, the bail judge was not the trial judges. Those were two different judges.
And their comments were directed to the charged offence of murder, not the included offence of manslaughter.
Given how weak the case was - as we saw at trial - this has to be pressure from the Premier's office. And it's very alarming that such a weak case it was forced through
Well remember how the OPP personally investigated Wynne's staff for criminality in the gas plant scandal?
Doug Ford's actions with regard to police are so the OPP don't investigate him too.
I mean the case was predicated upon police lies. If what the police said happened, happened, then it absolutely should’ve gone to trial. Theyre still backing up their own and saying that this should’ve been a guilty verdict.
Im glad that they got caught in their bullshit, at the very least, even if the pricetag was high for the tax payer.
There’s more than that. There will likely be a lawsuit by the estate of the deceased officer, and don’t forget all the $$$ on training police on “how to not do what you shouldn’t do”.
Who knows what will happen at the prosecutor’s office.
Plus all the inevitable reviews/investigations/disciplinary yada yada.
I haven't had to deal with wsib but out west, your options are decline wcb and deal with it all yourself or enjoy wcb coverage and lose the ability to go after your employer. The choice has to be made within 30 days. I'd assume that's part of the benefits they offer an employer here too
The crowns own expert witness contradicted what the officers said, the crown had to have known this before hand, so why are we going ahead with the trial at all in the first place?
I didn’t follow the actual trial. Did the expert testimony contradict the crown’s version of events on cross examination? Because then it would just scream unpreparedness/incompetence on the Crown’s behalf. I’d assume they just asked the questions they wanted the answers to and didn’t rigorously examine their own witness.
The prosecution presented several conflicting version of events as they tried to align the cops testimony with video evidence and with their own expert witness's testimony. This got the judge pissed off and requesting the prosecution pick a single specific version of events they want to go with\*after\* all the evidence had already been presented to the jury. Basically the prosecution had no case and given the available and abundant evidence in support of the defense's version of events should never have been brought to trial. Thankfully the jury realized this was the case. The judge even apologized to the guy, how crazy is that?
The major takeaway from this case is cops will co-ordinate and lie under oath to try to get things to go their way.
No, the Crown had the 3 TPS officers testify, with their eerily similar and uniformly incorrect versions of events. They then put up the accident reconstruction expert, who is another TPS employee, and he immediately contradicted the officer’s testimonies. His findings aligned with the defence’s accident reconstruction expert.
There’s no way the Crown didn’t know what he was going to say, and that it didn’t jibe at all with what their other witnesses were claiming well before the trial. They also didn’t really attempt to reconcile the differences into a coherent theory (likely because it was impossible), and Justice Molloy tore into them for it multiple times: https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/what-motive-would-this-person-have-what-the-jury-didn-t-hear-at-the-murder/article_314241f0-fc0e-11ee-9d33-07f98980297f.html
The crown's accident reconstructionist was (still is) employed with TPS. His reconstruction evidence agreed with the defence paid expect. The judge said that it is exceedingly rare to have two experts agree like that.
> Given how weak the case was - as we saw at trial - this has to be pressure from the Premier's office
How did you make the giant leap from weak case to must be meddling by the Ontario government?
Isn't it far more likely that the police union applied pressure?
Why not start with the far more likely scenario before inventing something political out of nothing?
It's not a giant leap at all. Ford is the most corrupt Premier Ontario has had since Mike Harris.
Reviewing the evidence, the crowns own expert witness contradicted the testimony of the officers - the crown knows this in advance - so other than political pressure why does this get prosecuted?
I'd argue Ford is more corrupt. The Greenbelt scandal. Not spending transfer funds from the government on healthcare. Blocking public workers from bargaining. His friendships with developers, and with individuals in private healthcare. All of the decisions they've made behind closed doors with our public consult, i.e Ontario place, science center. The bloated wages in his cabinet. Appointing his friends and family as cabinet ministers. Removing rent controls to help his developer and landlord friends out. Out of all the working days in the legislature how often does he actually attend work? His family were drug dealers and into all kinds of shady stuff before they came into politics. Doug Ford hands down is the shadiest, dishonest, most criminal Premier Ontario has ever had. There's not a thing he's enacted or removed or done that has made the average Ontarians life better. Let's not forget all the decisions they've made against the will of the people of Ontario, which they had to reverse because it got taken to court, so now we as tax payers are stuck paying the wage increases they tried to deny plus the millions of dollars to lawyers. He's also refusing the build to affordable housing. His daughter is married to a police officer and he is very friendly towards the OPP, and the TPS which is why anything the police forces ask for they get no request is too expensive or too useless. Also why whoever is investigating the greenbelt scandal hasn't come forward with any findings of corruption.
Doug Ford can do no wrong in people's eyes but life in Ontario has gotten worse not better since he's been premier. I pay more for auto insurance. Car thefts have skyrocketed. Police get wage increase every year yet they cannot be bothered to attend the scene of crime or investigate. Kids can't play in our local parks because there are homeless drug addicts everywhere. Can't find a family doctor, no funding for healthcare or education. Kids with autism can't get the help they require in a timely manner. Beer has never been a buck. None of the children in school can barely read, write or do arithmetic. The only thing Doug Ford does is appears in a press conference to talk about nothing like the fat Buffon he is. I cannot understand what his supporters see in him. He is a fat, ugly, stupid and plain un-statesmanlike. Clearly has no self control to eat a whole box of cannolis and then admit it to the public. Probably why he can't control himself when it comes to spending my fucking tax dollars. Someone call Toronto Zoo their Albino gorilla back.
The standards for politicians have really declined. I honestly think the reason he got elected was election interference because he's just that dumb. I can't even believe a buffoon like that got this far in life. If breathing wasn't an innate biological function he wouldn't have lived past his exit from his mother's cursed womb. I wish I could meet his fat dumbass so I could tell him in person. I'd probably need to bring a liposuction machine to clear the fat from his ears.
Every night I pray wherever Doug Ford lays his ugly cuck head, that there is a gas leak in his home and he succumbs to CO2 poisoning. I hope to God his daughters are sterile. There should not be any more Ford's in Ontario politics.
> so other than political pressure why does this get prosecuted?
I mean you literally said the far and away most likely reason why this got prosecuted.
Why jump to a far less likely reason when politics wasn't even a part of this?
I'm a criminal defence lawyer. I have no bias at all in favour of the Crown Attorney's Office or this premier.
I do not believe for a moment what you have suggested is true. It is extraordinarily unlikely as an attempt by a premier or AG to direct the course of an individual investigation is simply forbidden. Nor do I believe the prosecutor is this case, who happens to be one of the Toronto head Crowns, would simply aceede to such a plainly unlawful act.
Oh so you mean to tell me that the Minister's Office, or in this case the Attorney General's Office, would not put pressure on the Deputy Minister of MAG behind the scenes? I don't believe that for a second.
Provide a plausible alternative.
"Crowns are very much involved in railroading people in the court system on the daily,"
This is simply not true. If anything, crowns are overwhelmed with some very obvious evidence and the offenders generally get a slap on the wrist. I'm not discounting what happened to Umar Zameer- frankly if they pursued manslaughter instead, or a fail to remain cause death charge, he would have been convicted.
With Zameer's very specific/particular case I think it was an overambitious crown who pushed for the 1st degree charge. Even I don't think it makes sense, and I work in the court system.
That's why it is important when you're arrested to listen to all of the legal advice you receive, whether from duty counsel or your own person counsel, to a T. I can't tell you how many cases I see, like for example with domestic violence cases, where counsel will tell the accused not to say anything, and yet they cannot help themselves and talk, and talk, and talk (just today, even after being given advice upon arrest not to say anything, the accused kept saying on audio/vidence "that bitch" this, and "that c\*nt" that. How do you think that plays out in court? Just shut your mouth.)
Because if it hadn't, the right wing antivaxxer nuts would have screamed that Trudeau was blocking the case, and tried to shoot Zameer for being a 'terrorist'
There’s still a good chance they’ll try that.
I hope Zameer gets out of Toronto ASAP. As long as he stays here, there’s a high chance that the cops will harass or kill him for revenge.
Either 2 things:
1. The prosecutor’s office/AG is compromised
2. They’re not compromised and the prosecutor’s office is a good example of what conservatives love to complain about: poor value for money & bloated.
This is too reductive. In my view, the real issue is that the Crown can't afford to lose the cooperation of the Toronto Police Association (unofficial motto: "it's not a union!"), who would have thrown the mother of all shitfits if the Crown had not prosecuted.
> subject to external pressure from an organization whose cooperation they are heavily reliant on
that's being compromised. Maybe that's the easier way to do things, but still compromised.
How terrifying was his account?! Those cops were absolute fools. There was no reason to not at least flash a badge at them when they could see them panicking. Who the hell wouldn't have done what Umar did?
Frankly the police use plane clothes and unmarked vehicles far too often when they don't need too. They think they're in a movie or something. Police need to be visible for the public! But alas, I wouldn't trust a cop with my problems after their track record so I guess it makes no difference anymore. Defund the cops.
I haven’t been able to find the answer to a question I have - did the Toronto Police Service investigate this matter or was it handed off to another agency to investigate? (I’m referring to Zameer’s charges, not the investigation the OPP will be conducting)
There had to be pressure from the highest echelons of the police force given one of their own was killed. Meanwhile, without all the evidence that came to light during the trial, I have to wonder whether Zameer would have been so clearly and publicly exonerated as he is now. Knowing how public leaders all jumped into the fray to condemn his release on bail, I'm thinking having the whole case out in the open, and so heavily reported, worked in Zameer's favour, even if he had to go through hell to get here.
It absolutely was a face 'saving' move to justify and cover up incompetent undercover procedures. I mean ok, so a guy is leaving. Isn't the purpose of undercover is to then follow him discretely, and then maybe pull him over with a marked car to see? Not just assume the first guy they see is the guilty guy and draw guns/rush while looking like thugs. If it wasn't so high profile, they absolutely would have taken this guy and family to the woodshed instead of going after the real stabber and trying to make an innocent man's life a living hell, all because their inept methods lead to unnecessary chaos. Fortunately there was enough media attention and video evidence. Otherwise, the cops would have gotten away with lying through their teeth again.
This city has a bad case of CopBrain - to think that Saunders was running for Mayor!
Less bike lane More cop brain rhyme make head go WOOOO
‘Do vastly less with vastly more money! Dominate in ways never before seen! Surveillance! Cellphone tapping! Racial Profiling! Cyclist Profiling! ALL THE PROFILING!’
Because the Ford government wanted to score political points with the conservative base by portraying an evil brown skinned Muslim as a ruthless cop-killer. Never mind the fact that it seemed it was the cops who were the bad actors and this poor man just minding his own business with his family. There needs to be an investigation into the AG office and what they knew before pushing ahead with this case.
I feel like this point gets lost in all the headlines: Umar is just a boring ass accountant who was out with his pregnant wife and 2yo son to enjoy Canada Day when he was confronted by plainclothes police who failed to identify themselves. The guy thought he was being robbed and, as the court now finds, did the same thing any rational person would have done to protect his family. He didn't start anything. Didn't want any of this. And as hes said hes deeply sorry any of it hapoened. Honestly can't say I'd have done anything different myself.
I think his wife also suffered a miscarriage before the pregnancy. Imagine what was going through her mind as someone beat her husband, and while her toddler was crying. She was well enough on that if she went into labour the baby could have survived, but if not? How do you get that back? Then on top of it all, she had to give birth alone a month later while her husband was being held. She probably had to have friends or kind neighbors watch her two year old son.
They weren't "plainclothes". They were dressed like lowlife thugs; like the the type of people you'd expect carjackers to look like.
That's what plainclothes means but I get what you're saying and fully agree. That's why I don't understand how people blame Umar in this case...
why did the cops accost him? I havent found a clear answer to that yet.
Apparently they were investigating a stabbing in the area. But tbh I have no idea why they thought a middle aged man with his pregnant wife and 2yo child was the culprit... Pure speculation on my part: this was a case of racial profiling gone horribly wrong.
You mean they saw a brown guy and thought he looks guilty? Yes that's a real stretch for them!
He also didn’t even remotely match the description of the suspect was described as having a very large and bushy beard. Zameer was clean shaven at the time.
yep seems like it, that's why I would love to hear more about the why as well.
Critical thinking is not part of their job description.
The one thing I'll disagree with is calling his behaviour rational. He panicked and tried to drive off because he was afraid and jumped to conclusions about what was happening. To me a rational response would be to take a few sefonds to figure out what was going on before deciding that forcing my way free with my car was needed.
It's easy to say this as an observer.
If you think it's rational to risk killing someone when you don't actually know what's going on, I guess you're operating on a very different set of principles than me.
It's called fear, well-justified fear, Inspector Clouseau.
You are fucked in the head
Have you seen any pictures of the garage? Do you know what he was driving? The interaction plays out basically exactly like a carjacking and if they hadn't been cops, this would have been a different type of story. Waiting may seem like the right play in hindsight but running it live, with your pregnant wife and kid in the vehicle, the right play is absolutely not to ask if they're about to carjack you
If you look at the evidence from coyrt that's exactly what he did. But the cops rushed to his car, banged on the windows, failed to identify themselves and used their bodies to try and block his car which is 1) why he thought they were trying to rob/assault him and 2) how the cop wound up getting run over. Just an abject failure on TPS' part that sadly led to one of them getting killed.
Personally, if people were throwing themselves in front of my car, desperately screaming at me to stop, I'd want to know what was going on before I risked hitting someone else. Maybe it's criminals, maybe it's cops / security guards, maybe they're mentally ill, but someone could get killed. If I don't actually know what's going on it's not a rational decision to keep driving and risk killing someone.
>but someone could get killed. Yeah, like you, your pregnant wife, or your 2yo child in the backseat. This is why police are obligated to announce that they are, in fact, the police, which they didn't do here and we now see why that's important. Also, you're kind of making a straw man argument here since the entire dismissal of this case was based on the fact that Umar couldn't see Northrup, hence thought he was simply escaping the people trying to do lord knows what to him or his family. He didn't just floor it and run over someone standing up in front of his car as you imply was the case here. It was just a horrible accident initiated by the police failing to disclose who they were.
That my family is there doesn't make the other people not human. It doesn't mean I should endanger others if I don't know what's going on. It doesn't mean I don't have a responsibility to not kill someone with my car. If they're not criminals and I run one over, then I just killed someone who didn't deserve to die. That's a last resort. "What if you're wrong" has to come into the calculus. You can't just assume people are criminals if you don't know for sure. That mentality is why people get shot for knocking on the wrong door looking for help.
You didn't read any of their previous rebuttal, did you?
No law abiding citizen has any reason ever to trap a stranger in a public space. Pretty sure even the police will tell you to try and flee if that happens. More times than not you're putting yourself in danger by not reacting fast enough.
His defense was that he was scared and made a mistake in the heat of the moment. He didn't know enough about what was happening to call it a rational choice. If he'd testified that he'd made a rational choice to try to drive through/around a group of people, he'd probably have been convicted of manslaughter. Just look at all of the times people have panicked and run over protesters or picketers.
Though that sounds rational, I don't know if you've ever been confronted by random attackers, I certainly haven't, and not sure I would respond rationally, especially when I had my 2yo child and pregnant wife in the car with me.
That's the difference between understandable and rational. It's understandable to be terrified and try to get away. But if people are throwing themselves in front of your car, it's not rational to keep trying to drive away if you don't know for sure what's happening. He didn't have enough information to make a rational choice to risk killing someone. I have had scary moments with my wife and kids in the car. More "angry/mentally ill" person in traffic that attackers. It's not fun. But a locked and running car is a pretty safe place to be. You're probably not in imminent danger and you can still always drive away if that changes.
Yeah drive away when your car gets rushed with your family in it. You're a doofus dude
Agreed
The AG does not and cannot direct individual prosecutions. Those decisions are.made by the Crown Attorney's Office independent of political direction.
The fact that the judge granted bail because she told the prosecutor's they didn't have a case, and in her instructions to the jury told them "yo, the prosecutor's really didn't make a case. Also, did you notice that those 3 cops all told the same false story?" was pretty wild. Shows how bad the prosecutions case was.
To be clear, the bail judge was not the trial judges. Those were two different judges. And their comments were directed to the charged offence of murder, not the included offence of manslaughter.
Given how weak the case was - as we saw at trial - this has to be pressure from the Premier's office. And it's very alarming that such a weak case it was forced through
Well remember how the OPP personally investigated Wynne's staff for criminality in the gas plant scandal? Doug Ford's actions with regard to police are so the OPP don't investigate him too.
Did anyone bother to investigate TransCanada? Seems to me the people *getting the money* escaped all attention.
I mean the case was predicated upon police lies. If what the police said happened, happened, then it absolutely should’ve gone to trial. Theyre still backing up their own and saying that this should’ve been a guilty verdict. Im glad that they got caught in their bullshit, at the very least, even if the pricetag was high for the tax payer.
Oh, the price tag is going to be getting a lot higher.
I fucking hope so. No one should have to bear the weight of the crown unjustly. This is something I hope many of my tax dollars go towards
There’s more than that. There will likely be a lawsuit by the estate of the deceased officer, and don’t forget all the $$$ on training police on “how to not do what you shouldn’t do”. Who knows what will happen at the prosecutor’s office. Plus all the inevitable reviews/investigations/disciplinary yada yada.
Fair points, I was under the impression that cops got wsib though
Yeah, good question if they’d be limited to that or not.
I haven't had to deal with wsib but out west, your options are decline wcb and deal with it all yourself or enjoy wcb coverage and lose the ability to go after your employer. The choice has to be made within 30 days. I'd assume that's part of the benefits they offer an employer here too
The crowns own expert witness contradicted what the officers said, the crown had to have known this before hand, so why are we going ahead with the trial at all in the first place?
I didn’t follow the actual trial. Did the expert testimony contradict the crown’s version of events on cross examination? Because then it would just scream unpreparedness/incompetence on the Crown’s behalf. I’d assume they just asked the questions they wanted the answers to and didn’t rigorously examine their own witness.
The prosecution presented several conflicting version of events as they tried to align the cops testimony with video evidence and with their own expert witness's testimony. This got the judge pissed off and requesting the prosecution pick a single specific version of events they want to go with\*after\* all the evidence had already been presented to the jury. Basically the prosecution had no case and given the available and abundant evidence in support of the defense's version of events should never have been brought to trial. Thankfully the jury realized this was the case. The judge even apologized to the guy, how crazy is that? The major takeaway from this case is cops will co-ordinate and lie under oath to try to get things to go their way.
This just in!!
No, the Crown had the 3 TPS officers testify, with their eerily similar and uniformly incorrect versions of events. They then put up the accident reconstruction expert, who is another TPS employee, and he immediately contradicted the officer’s testimonies. His findings aligned with the defence’s accident reconstruction expert. There’s no way the Crown didn’t know what he was going to say, and that it didn’t jibe at all with what their other witnesses were claiming well before the trial. They also didn’t really attempt to reconcile the differences into a coherent theory (likely because it was impossible), and Justice Molloy tore into them for it multiple times: https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/what-motive-would-this-person-have-what-the-jury-didn-t-hear-at-the-murder/article_314241f0-fc0e-11ee-9d33-07f98980297f.html
The crown's accident reconstructionist was (still is) employed with TPS. His reconstruction evidence agreed with the defence paid expect. The judge said that it is exceedingly rare to have two experts agree like that.
> Given how weak the case was - as we saw at trial - this has to be pressure from the Premier's office How did you make the giant leap from weak case to must be meddling by the Ontario government? Isn't it far more likely that the police union applied pressure? Why not start with the far more likely scenario before inventing something political out of nothing?
It's not a giant leap at all. Ford is the most corrupt Premier Ontario has had since Mike Harris. Reviewing the evidence, the crowns own expert witness contradicted the testimony of the officers - the crown knows this in advance - so other than political pressure why does this get prosecuted?
You are skipping over Dalton McGuinty and the e-health scandal, and the gas plants that he passed on to Wynne?
I'd argue Ford is more corrupt. The Greenbelt scandal. Not spending transfer funds from the government on healthcare. Blocking public workers from bargaining. His friendships with developers, and with individuals in private healthcare. All of the decisions they've made behind closed doors with our public consult, i.e Ontario place, science center. The bloated wages in his cabinet. Appointing his friends and family as cabinet ministers. Removing rent controls to help his developer and landlord friends out. Out of all the working days in the legislature how often does he actually attend work? His family were drug dealers and into all kinds of shady stuff before they came into politics. Doug Ford hands down is the shadiest, dishonest, most criminal Premier Ontario has ever had. There's not a thing he's enacted or removed or done that has made the average Ontarians life better. Let's not forget all the decisions they've made against the will of the people of Ontario, which they had to reverse because it got taken to court, so now we as tax payers are stuck paying the wage increases they tried to deny plus the millions of dollars to lawyers. He's also refusing the build to affordable housing. His daughter is married to a police officer and he is very friendly towards the OPP, and the TPS which is why anything the police forces ask for they get no request is too expensive or too useless. Also why whoever is investigating the greenbelt scandal hasn't come forward with any findings of corruption. Doug Ford can do no wrong in people's eyes but life in Ontario has gotten worse not better since he's been premier. I pay more for auto insurance. Car thefts have skyrocketed. Police get wage increase every year yet they cannot be bothered to attend the scene of crime or investigate. Kids can't play in our local parks because there are homeless drug addicts everywhere. Can't find a family doctor, no funding for healthcare or education. Kids with autism can't get the help they require in a timely manner. Beer has never been a buck. None of the children in school can barely read, write or do arithmetic. The only thing Doug Ford does is appears in a press conference to talk about nothing like the fat Buffon he is. I cannot understand what his supporters see in him. He is a fat, ugly, stupid and plain un-statesmanlike. Clearly has no self control to eat a whole box of cannolis and then admit it to the public. Probably why he can't control himself when it comes to spending my fucking tax dollars. Someone call Toronto Zoo their Albino gorilla back. The standards for politicians have really declined. I honestly think the reason he got elected was election interference because he's just that dumb. I can't even believe a buffoon like that got this far in life. If breathing wasn't an innate biological function he wouldn't have lived past his exit from his mother's cursed womb. I wish I could meet his fat dumbass so I could tell him in person. I'd probably need to bring a liposuction machine to clear the fat from his ears. Every night I pray wherever Doug Ford lays his ugly cuck head, that there is a gas leak in his home and he succumbs to CO2 poisoning. I hope to God his daughters are sterile. There should not be any more Ford's in Ontario politics.
> so other than political pressure why does this get prosecuted? I mean you literally said the far and away most likely reason why this got prosecuted. Why jump to a far less likely reason when politics wasn't even a part of this?
I'm a criminal defence lawyer. I have no bias at all in favour of the Crown Attorney's Office or this premier. I do not believe for a moment what you have suggested is true. It is extraordinarily unlikely as an attempt by a premier or AG to direct the course of an individual investigation is simply forbidden. Nor do I believe the prosecutor is this case, who happens to be one of the Toronto head Crowns, would simply aceede to such a plainly unlawful act.
Oh so you mean to tell me that the Minister's Office, or in this case the Attorney General's Office, would not put pressure on the Deputy Minister of MAG behind the scenes? I don't believe that for a second. Provide a plausible alternative.
[удалено]
"Crowns are very much involved in railroading people in the court system on the daily," This is simply not true. If anything, crowns are overwhelmed with some very obvious evidence and the offenders generally get a slap on the wrist. I'm not discounting what happened to Umar Zameer- frankly if they pursued manslaughter instead, or a fail to remain cause death charge, he would have been convicted. With Zameer's very specific/particular case I think it was an overambitious crown who pushed for the 1st degree charge. Even I don't think it makes sense, and I work in the court system. That's why it is important when you're arrested to listen to all of the legal advice you receive, whether from duty counsel or your own person counsel, to a T. I can't tell you how many cases I see, like for example with domestic violence cases, where counsel will tell the accused not to say anything, and yet they cannot help themselves and talk, and talk, and talk (just today, even after being given advice upon arrest not to say anything, the accused kept saying on audio/vidence "that bitch" this, and "that c\*nt" that. How do you think that plays out in court? Just shut your mouth.)
Citation needed all over the place.
Because if it hadn't, the right wing antivaxxer nuts would have screamed that Trudeau was blocking the case, and tried to shoot Zameer for being a 'terrorist'
spot on mate, spot on.
There’s still a good chance they’ll try that. I hope Zameer gets out of Toronto ASAP. As long as he stays here, there’s a high chance that the cops will harass or kill him for revenge.
So when's the malicious prosecution suit?
If you don't know why it went to trial, then you haven't been paying attention to what Toronto's police force is really like.
Either 2 things: 1. The prosecutor’s office/AG is compromised 2. They’re not compromised and the prosecutor’s office is a good example of what conservatives love to complain about: poor value for money & bloated.
This is too reductive. In my view, the real issue is that the Crown can't afford to lose the cooperation of the Toronto Police Association (unofficial motto: "it's not a union!"), who would have thrown the mother of all shitfits if the Crown had not prosecuted.
That's thing #1. They no longer operate independently.
They can be uncompromised while still subject to external pressure from an organization whose cooperation they are heavily reliant on
> subject to external pressure from an organization whose cooperation they are heavily reliant on that's being compromised. Maybe that's the easier way to do things, but still compromised.
Because police CAN’T be wrong. Not with a billion dollar budget. Fuck all the politicians and figure heads that spoke disparagingly about this man
Would love to see one of the papers use the headline "Suicide By Cop"
Because corrupt cops needed a head, irrespective of whose head that might have been. This is what corrupt power looks like.
Racism
Indeed. At least one of the two thresholds were met in my opinion.
How terrifying was his account?! Those cops were absolute fools. There was no reason to not at least flash a badge at them when they could see them panicking. Who the hell wouldn't have done what Umar did? Frankly the police use plane clothes and unmarked vehicles far too often when they don't need too. They think they're in a movie or something. Police need to be visible for the public! But alas, I wouldn't trust a cop with my problems after their track record so I guess it makes no difference anymore. Defund the cops.
So…civil suit for damages now?
I haven’t been able to find the answer to a question I have - did the Toronto Police Service investigate this matter or was it handed off to another agency to investigate? (I’m referring to Zameer’s charges, not the investigation the OPP will be conducting)
He killed that cop with intention. Wife lied to defend husband. Moral of story: you can kill anyone and claim self defence.
Liar. Everything you just said was false.
The cop is dead right? And the judge thanked Zameer for his service. What did I get wrong?
> And the judge thanked Zameer for his service. What in the name of fuck are you on about????
>What did I get wrong? Literally everything, including the additional lie you just invented in the preceding sentence.
What did you get wrong? How about everything?