https://www.thestar.com/news/articl...-by-police-tribunal-awards-toronto-man-40-000
A Toronto police officer violated Ontario’s Human Rights Code when he pursued, then pulled his gun on, an innocent black man driving home from work in a BMW, a tribunal concluded Friday.
The Toronto Police Services Board and police officer Ryan Baker have been ordered to jointly pay Rawle Maynard $40,000 in damages “for injury to dignity, feelings and self-respect” in connection with the “harrowing” November 2005 incident.
Toronto police spokesperson Mark Pugash said the service is seriously considering appealing the decision.
“We are looking very, very closely at this for judicial review,” Pugash said.
“In paragraph 13 of the decision they say, ‘The question before me is not whether the respondents acted reasonably in these difficult circumstances, but whether Mr. Maynard’s race was a factor in their treatment of him.’ They acknowledge that there were difficult circumstances, but they say it doesn’t matter whether the police officers acted reasonably. That is extremely concerning.”
Maynard declined comment through a family member Friday evening.
According to testimony, on the morning of Nov. 25, 2005, Maynard was heading home in a black BMW at the same time Toronto police were investigating a gun call at the Malvern Town Centre. The suspect was a black male driving a black sports car.
Baker, who had been a police officer four years, spotted Maynard and began to follow him.
When Maynard pulled into his Scarborough driveway and noted the officer had parked “in close proximity,” he approached the cruiser to find out why the officer was there.
The officer asked where he was coming from. Maynard asked why he was asking. The conversation escalated. Baker pulled out his gun. Other officers arrived on scene and some took out their weapons. Maynard was forced to his knees and put in the back of a cruiser. At that time, a voice over the police radio said the suspect had been spotted. Maynard was released.
A neighbour who witnessed the incident supported much of Maynard’s account.
In his testimony, Baker denied race played a role in any of the decisions he made that morning.
Maynard told the tribunal the takedown left him “terrified … humiliated in front of his friends and neighbours,” and fearful of police.
In the 60-page decision, adjudicator Leslie Reaume concluded that “I do not believe that if the suspect had been a Caucasian man in the same circumstance, with no other defining characteristics, particularly age …[that the officer] … would have chosen to investigate the first Caucasian man he saw driving the same car at the same intersection.”
EACE:
