“CANADIAN MASS MEDIA ARE ACCOMPLICES OF CRIMES
AGAINST HUMANITY” “There was
police brutality and there was atrocity, and the press was just as atrocious as
the police. Because they helped the police to cover it up by propagating a
false image across the country” - Malcolm
X
TORONTO STAR: ROUGH TAKEDOWN DIDN”T CROSS LINE! OR IN THE CANADIAN
CRIMINAL LAW: VICIOUS ASSAULT CAUSING BODILY HARM?
Here are again the Toronto Star and CP24 defending to the cherub’s, members of the
Toronto Police Academy; law enforcement officers committed “To Serve &
Protect” the Public. Most of their
courses revolve around what they call Gang Sex, Assaults Causing Bodily Harm,
tasering, thefts, vandalism, drugs, perjury and extrajudicial executions." Who
are the "Victims?" We have to ask that question. They are Co-
Workers, children, mothers, elderly tenants living in the slums of public
housing and other marginalized people. They are social activists who are
claiming by justice. They are starved mentally ill people who were and are
abused and tortured by the system. They are the people of color and other minority
groups. “They become the targets of
those who learn their lessons at the Toronto Police Nazi Academy.”Canadian Criminal Law/Offences/Assault Causing Bodily
Harm
267. Every one who, in committing an
assault,
(a) carries, uses or threatens to use a weapon or an
imitation thereof, or
(b) causes bodily harm to the complainant,
is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding ten years or an offence punishable on summary conviction and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding eighteen months.
Proof of Offence
4 · the accused used
force intentionally
5 · the injuries caused
by the assault / nature of injuries / pictures
6 · seriousness of
injuries:
Toronto police officer not guilty in violent arrest
Const. Christian Dobbs was charged
following a probe into his arrest of Raymond Costain outside the King Edward
Hotel in the early hours of April 12, 2010.
Toronto police officer not guilty in violent arrest
Const.
Christian Dobbs was charged following a probe into his arrest of Raymond
Costain outside the King Edward Hotel in the early hours of April 12, 2010.
By Alex BallingallNews
Wed., July 20, 2016A Toronto police officer accused of using excessive force during a
videotaped arrest in 2010 was found not guilty of assault by a Superior Court
judge on Wednesday.
Toronto Police Service Const. Christian
Dobbs, 40, stood to hug his smiling lawyers and supporters after the verdict
was delivered in a downtown courtroom.
“It’s been six years,” said Dobbs’s
defence counsel, Peter Brauti, outside the courthouse. “He’s just relieved that
it’s over.”
Dobbs was charged with assault causing
bodily harm for the violent arrest of Raymond Costain, a 33-year-old father of three
who works as a culinary technician at George Brown College. Video evidence from
the dashboard camera of a police cruiser showed Dobbs hammering his arm down on
Costain 12 consecutive times as he lay on the street outside the King Edward
Hotel. Costain is obscured from view by the hood of the car.
Police photos taken shortly after
Costain’s arrest show his face had been cut and bruised. He told the Star
Wednesday he still suffers from “psychological issues” stemming from the
incident.
The cop’s acquittal comes at a time of
heightened anger over police violence. A series of deadly incidents involving
law enforcement has roiled the United States in recent weeks. Police have been
attacked and killed in Dallas and Baton Rouge, La., while images of dying black
men who were shot by cops have been widely circulated online.
Toronto, too, has experienced this
tension, with the Black Lives Matter movement staging protests over police
presence at the Pride Parade and denouncing a decision not to charge the officer
who shot and killed Andrew Loku, a mentally ill man who wielded a hammer at a
west-end apartment last year.
Police surveillance video obtained by The Star.(SUPPLIED
VIDEO)
Costain, who lives in Toronto, said he
doesn’t believe race played any role in his altercation with Dobbs. “I’m not
trying to play the race card,” he said when asked. “That could’ve happened to
anyone.”
The crowded courtroom was subdued
before Justice Bonnie Croll’s verdict, with the silence broken only by the
whoosh of the air conditioning and the sporadic rustling of paper. Dobbs sat at
the front of the room in a dark suit. When Brauti entered in his legal robes,
Dobbs stood to greet him. “How are you feeling?” Brauti asked.
Dobbs quietly uttered, “Good,” and
moments later, in Croll’s reading of her verdict, it was clear he would be
acquitted.
Croll concluded that Costain’s
testimony was unreliable and contradictory, with differing accounts of how much
he drank that night, as well as his lack of memory about a highway collision
before the arrest. She added that although the “optics” of the arrest video are
“shocking,” it doesn’t prove the officer’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
“There are serious issues about Mr.
Costain’s evidence,” the judge said. “One must conclude that an oath to tell
the truth is meaningless to Mr. Costain.”
Costain said after the verdict that any
changes in his version of events over the years can be explained by the amount
of time that passed since the incident.
“I’m disappointed,” he told the Star.
“I was kind of hoping people would be held accountable.”
The legal saga stretches to the early
hours of April 12, 2010, when Dobbs took down Costain outside the historic
hotel on King St. E. Costain originally faced charges that included impaired
driving and resisting arrest. But those allegations were stayed in March 2013,
when provincial court Justice Ford Clements delivered a searing condemnation of
police actions on the night of the arrest.
Clements ruled that Dobbs used
“unnecessary, unjustified and excessive” force in arresting Costain and that
the officers who testified against Costain seemed “indifferent to the truth.”
Clements said, “This is unlawful extrajudicial punishment that will shock the
public.”
Dobbs was charged with assault three
months later.
During that second trial, Dobbs
testified that he believed Costain had tried to run down a police officer in
his car and that he may have had a weapon. Croll ruled both assertions were
reasonable given what the constable knew at the time.
As Croll outlined, Costain was stopped
by police after he parked his badly damaged car outside the hotel and tried to
hail a cab. Costain testified that he had been drinking, and that his car was
struck from behind in a hit-and-run accident, Croll said.
Dobbs, meanwhile, testified that there
was a call on the police radio that a damaged car driven by a black man was
speeding dangerously down Yonge St., Croll said. Dobbs and his partner found
Costain outside the King Edward and approached to make an arrest, Croll said.
Dobbs claimed that Costain refused his
demand to “get down” and took a swing at him, which Costain denied, Croll said.
Dobbs then struck Costain twice, brought him to the ground and delivered 10
consecutive blows, followed by a pause and then two more, Croll said. The
dashboard camera video shows the 12 strikes.
Dobbs’s defence lawyer argued this was
in line with his “pain for compliance” training, as Costain was resisting
attempts to put him in handcuffs, Croll said. Dobbs testified that he used
“elbow strikes” near Costain’s left shoulder area, Croll said.
In her decision Wednesday, Croll
rejected the Crown’s argument that Dobbs’s body would have been jostling in the
video had Costain been resisting arrest. She compared a freeze-frame analysis
of the video to “Monday morning quarterbacking,” and said the video leaves “an
evidentiary vacuum” around what Costain was doing as Dobbs rained blows on him.
Leora Shemesh, who represented Costain
at his trial in 2013, said she wasn’t surprised by Wednesday’s verdict. “The
record that was put before Justice Croll ended with a credibility contest
between Costain and a police officer,” she said. “They were really two
different trials — same conduct, but just displayed quite differently.”
Brauti welcomed Croll’s verdict and
echoed her statement that the video provided an incomplete picture of the
incident. “It showed slivers of what took place,” he said after Wednesday’s
verdict.
Several metres away, Costain stood in
the shade of some trees in his grey suit. He said he felt let down by the
judge’s decision, but admitted some relief that the case had ended.
“I’m just going to continue to focus on
my kids and my career,” he said. “It’s been a long run.”
With files from Peter Small
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