News Release
SIU Concludes Toronto Death Investigation
Case Number: 12-TCD-223
Mississauga (23 October, 2012) --- The Director of the Special Investigations Unit (SIU), Ian Scott, has concluded that there are no reasonable grounds to charge an officer with the Toronto Police Service (TPS) with any criminal offence in relation to the death of a 43-year-old man in August of 2012.
The SIU assigned five investigators and two forensic investigators to probe the circumstances of this incident. The subject officer participated in an SIU interview and provided the SIU with a copy of his duty notes. In addition, eight witness officers and three civilian witnesses were interviewed.
The SIU investigation found that the following events took place on Saturday, August 4:
• The subject officer, a trained negotiator, was dispatched with members of the Emergency Task Force (ETF) to a location on Parliament Street to speak to a man who was preparing to jump from its roof top.
• The subject officer first saw the man sitting on the top of a raised chimney on the south edge of the third floor roof top. The officer arranged to go to the third floor roof, and began to negotiate with the man. The material parts of this interchange were captured by an audiotaped recording made by one of the ETF officers. In it, the subject officer is making every effort to dissuade the man from placing himself in a position of further danger. At one point, the man asked the subject officer and one of the ETF officers to back off, and they both complied with that request. The man started to descend from the chimney top and managed to place his feet on the flat roof area at the bottom of the chimney. It appeared to the subject officer that he then lost his footing causing him to fall off the roof.
• The man landed on a deck or balcony below. He was transported to St. Michael’s Hospital where he succumbed to his injuries six days later on August 10, 2012.
A post-mortem examination concluded that the cause of death was complications due to multiple blunt force traumas.
Director Scott said, “On the basis of this investigation, there is no causal relationship between the death of the man and any culpable acts by the subject officer. It appeared that the officer was successfully using his skills as a negotiator in persuading the man to abandon a place of danger on top of a chimney located on a third floor roof top. Unfortunately, the man fell from the roof, causing his death when he impacted with a deck or balcony below. The subject officer was not responsible in any fashion for the man’s death.”
The SIU is an independent government agency that investigates the conduct of officials (police officers as well as special constables with the Niagara Parks Commission and peace officers with the Legislative Protective Service) that may have resulted in death, serious injury, sexual assault and/or the discharge of a firearm at a person. All investigations are conducted by SIU investigators who are civilians. Under the Special Investigations Unit Act, the Director of the SIU must
- consider whether the official has committed a criminal offence in connection with the incident under investigation
- depending on the evidence, cause a criminal charge to be laid against the official where grounds exist for doing so, or close the file without any charges being laid
- publicly report the results of its investigations