We know the victims, but not the killers: More transparency needed when Ontario police kill | Metro

30.7.15

We know the victims, but not the killers: More transparency needed when Ontario police kill | Metro: Last week the Special Investigations Unit, Ontario’s civilian police oversight agency, concluded its inquiry into the death of Jermaine Carby, a young black man who was shot by a Peel Regional Police officer during a traffic stop.

The SIU concluded there was enough evidence to show Carby had produced a knife during the encounter, and that he’d approached officers after being ordered to drop the knife. During the SIU investigation, neither the name of the officer who shot Carby, nor that officer’s status with Peel Regional Police, were released.

While Jermaine Carby’s face, name, and criminal record were made fully available to the public, the name of the officer who killed him still has not been. Carby was tried in the court of public opinion, while the officer was vindicated by the provincial entity that has been damned by the Ontario ombudsman as “embarrassingly flimsy,” and which failed to get police to fully comply with more than one-third of its investigations between 2008 and 2011.