shooting of a 31-year-old man in February 2023<\/a>.<\/p>\nAccording to an agreed statement of facts, that morning in February, an\u00a0individual alerted police\u00a0to a man near Trethewey and Black Creek drives with a knife and an off-leash\u00a0dog, expressing fear he may harm the dog. As it came through to officers over dispatch, additional\u00a0details suggested the man possibly had a knife in his coat and was interacting with another individual.<\/p>\n
Police bodycam footage released in court on Wednesday shows officers confronting a man in a park, asking him to drop a knife. The man backs away, telling police, \u201cI didn\u2019t do anything.\u201d<\/p>\n
Const. Sara Richards fires a taser at the man with no effect.<\/p>\n
The man then begins to harm himself with the knife, at which point Richards can be heard yelling, \u201cOh my god, shoot him!\u201d<\/p>\n
Const. Davis then fires two shots at the man, seriously injuring him.<\/p>\n
Devon Fowlin was later identified as the man who was shot. He was taken to the hospital and treated for serious injuries. Fowlin was unhoused, living out of his vehicle and had a previous history of mental health issues \u2013 all of which police officers were unaware of at the time of the incident.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe that with this outcome there was justice for everyone in this situation,\u201d said Fowlin, who spoke briefly to reporters on Wednesday, describing the physical and emotional challenges he continues to face after being shot in the arm and chest.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need more appropriate responses to situations like mine, especially to deal with mental health crises.\u201d<\/p>\n
Davis is scheduled to be sentenced on October 2. Following that, he is set to go before the police tribunal. That hearing was stayed pending the outcome of this case.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor what our system provides, yes, this is a measure of justice, but it\u2019s not good enough,\u201d said activist Desmond Cole, who is also a friend of Fowlin. \u201cWe should never have been in this situation. A homeless person living in a park by themselves, minding their own business, should never have been attacked in this way.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know that this was an officer, PC Andrew Davis, who was, as he said today, 53 weeks on into the job. He was directed by a senior officer to shoot an individual. I don\u2019t know if that\u2019s something you turn down as a young officer. I\u2019ve got to ask serious questions of the Toronto police here,\u201d said David Shellnut, who is representing Fowlin in a lawsuit against Toronto police.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Toronto police officer has pleaded guilty to assault more than two years after a man was shot…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":101973,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-101972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101972\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}