Thursday, January 21, 2016

Forcillo’s gun use set off early alerts — but he didn’t receive possible counselling


Constable James Forcillo is an even rarer bird among Toronto police than it first appeared.

As Postmedia reported earlier this week, the 32-year-old officer’s unusual reliance on his firearm brought him to the attention of the force’s early warning system in late 2012, the year before he shot and killed teenager Sammy Yatim.

The system kicks out an alert whenever an officer points his firearm at someone three times in a rolling 12-month period.

And Forcillo, who testified at trial he’s pulled his Glock .40 calibre pistol “about a dozen times” in about three-and-a-half years on the force, apparently generated two of the alerts.

That would make him one of only nine of the average 5,285 officers deployed in 2013 who pointed his firearm four times — .017 per cent of those on the job.

According to numbers released by Toronto police in response to the first Postmedia story, in 2013 only 465 officers pointed their weapons at people even once.

Eighty-three officers did it twice, and 19 three times. The confidential “early intervention” process, as it’s called, is designed to catch officers whose conduct may be leading them towards difficulty.  (more...)



No comments:

Post a Comment