The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.61/No.17           April 28, 1997 
 
 
200 Denounce Cop Killing In Toronto  

BY JOHN MUNORU AND MITRA SHARMA
TORONTO-More than 200 protesters, many of them young, demonstrated here at the Ontario provincial legislature on April 12 to protest the most recent in a series of cop killings. They demanded the police be charged with murder.

Hugh Dawson, a 31-year old Black man from Jamaica, was shot by the East Field command drug squad March 30, on the Easter Sunday weekend. This happened in the east Toronto township of Scarborough.

Seven cops used unmarked vehicles to box in Dawson's car, effectively trapping the Honda against the sidewalk. Rushing with their guns out they ambushed Dawson, who was alone and unarmed, and shot him several times. Workers in a donut store about 200 meters away from the scene witnessed the killing. One of them, Zafar Qaryzada, 18, told the Toronto Star that he saw "several people surround a black car, most of them on the passenger side. One smashed the car's rear window with something long while another pointed a long gun, probably a shotgun or a rifle at the passenger window."

The facts around the shooting have been spilling out daily in the Toronto media. Metropolitan Toronto police chief, David Boothby, who was at the scene shortly after the incident, issued a statement that claimed cops shot Dawson when he violently tried to seize a police officer's weapon and this allegedly led to two cops shooting him. The police and a section of the Toronto media so far have tried to portray Dawson as a violent drug dealer and an illegal immigrant. "Cop- Shooting Victim Foiled Deportation" said a headline in the Toronto Sun, a right wing daily.

Dawson's younger brother, Errol Brown, called these claims by the police baseless. "There was no cause for this, nobody's life was threatened but his," he said. "These guys wanted to plant stuff on him. I tell you these guys went to kill him."

Rick Shank, one of the cops involved in the killing, was the one who shot and killed Ian Coley, 20, another Black man, after a foot chase in 1993. He was never charged or convicted of murder. The Ontario provincial government's Special Investigations Unit (SIU), which investigates police killings and is responsible for laying charges, cleared Shank of any wrongdoing.

In the inquiry of the Dawson killing, the SIU initially focused its investigation on Shank and another cop. SIU officials now say, however, that two more cops will be investigated. So far, none have been charged. For the first several days after the shooting, all of the cops refused to talk to the SIU, although they met among themselves various times.

This is the second police killing here in five weeks. On February 20, police shot Edmond Yu, a Chinese immigrant, in a Toronto city bus. Police officers have shot 14 people in the greater Toronto area since 1990, most of them Black and some who were mentally ill. No cop has ever been convicted of these murders.

In response to the latest shooting, the Black Action Defense Committee (BADC) immediately held a press conference outside of its headquarters demanding that the SIU lay charges against the cops responsible for the death of Hugh Dawson. In reading a statement, BADC leader Dudley Laws charged that the racist cop killings in Toronto and across Canada are, identical to the actions and attitudes of Canadian soldiers who murdered Black youths in Somalia."

The Jamaican Canadian Association and the East Indian Defense Committee joined the Toronto Black Leadership Coalition in condemning the latest Metro police shooting. Also, more than 30 people from the Coalition Against Racist Police Violence met as an emergency response on April 3 to discuss and draw up a course of action. A protest public rally was held April 10 with more than 100 people. Relatives of victims of police killings were the main speakers.

John Munoru is a member of International Association of Machinists Local 1295; Mitra Sharma is a member of United Steel Workers of America Local 5338.  
 
 
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