A Nation Watches A Shooting
Recently, amidst the hype of Olympic coverage, the city of Toronto, and the country of Canada with them, watched in horror as a man was shot down in their own streets on live TV. Read the news clip here.

A man went into a food court, attacking and badly injuring his estranged wife, then in front of one of the hubs of inter-city transit, took another woman hostage at gunpoint. Footage of this quickly made it's way to CBC Newsworld who broadcasted the stand-off live. After negotiations failed, the man was downed by a sharp-shooter's bullet, and the hostage ran to safe waiting arms.

This event set off a stream of discussions (and an independent investigation) as to whether or not this was the appropriate solution to the matter. For me, it's tough to call any outcome the "best" one. Who wins here? Obviously not the man laying dead on the sidewalk. The police have not won, they have only made that discussion (a very difficult one for the ultimate decision maker, as well as the guy who pulls the trigger) after their negotiations have failed. The police exist to keep us safe and to make us feel safe, but who feels safe when the unthinkable has happened on their streets? Can anyone win from seeing a man shot in the head laying bleeding on the street? The hostage didn't win. She lost as soon as he grabbed her in the first place, when her day ended she was worse off than when it began. The wife didn't win for the same reasons. The whole ordeal only creates losers.

Am I saying that they shouldn't have shot him? Nobody knows what the perfect solution would have been, least of all me. I don't know if they tried everything in negotiation. I don't know if they had been properly trained for this. Hopefully they all see that a man being shot dead, in broad daylight, with hundreds of people watching, plus the thousands on TV, is horrible, whether he be a criminal or a victim of crime.

This event, as we found later, was premeditated. He left a tape, saying what he was going to do, and why. It seems to me then, that after shooting him, hasn't he won? He knew what he wanted to do, and knew what the consequences of those actions would be. Was he maybe waiting for the shot, hoping for the shot? Can we negotiate with someone who has a deathwish? I don't know. Right thing to do or not, this is a lose-lose situation.

   [ posted by William @ 5:10 PM ]