Justice For Sammy Essay

“Justice for Sammy”

Any parent would want justice for their child if they were killed. “Justice for Sammy”. This has a lot of the people in Toronto and the grieving family members chanting for the loss of Sammy Yatim for his death on July 27th, 2013. The tragedy devastated mostly everyone in Toronto who heard about it. So what did they mean by Justice? Justice means the state of moral righteousness. And everyone who this incident affected wants something to be done. On the evening of July 26th, a young 18 year old man was shot by Toronto’s very own Constable James Forcillo. It was that same night that Constable Forcillo shot three bullets into Yatim, the young man dropped and then Constable Forcillo fired another six shots (Carson & Kauri,

This shows that this is what police officers of the law follow even though it is morally wrong. Sammy Yatim may have been having a psychotic breakdown and did not actually know what he was doing. According to the rule of law ministers and public officers at all levels must exercise the powers conferred on them in good faith, fairly and for the purpose for which the powers were conferred, without exceeding the limits of such powers and not reasonably (Bingham, 2010). The protestors in Toronto would not think that what Constable Forcillo did was in good faith or fair. He chose to exceed his limits and take full power of ending Sammy Yatim’s life. Family members, friends and the people of Toronto wanted justice to be done for his death, and was justice done? Constable Forcillo at first was put out on bail hours later and was still able to remain on duty in the office and then later the courts came to the conclusion to charge Forcillo with the second degree. Being charged with the second degree means imprisonment for up to twenty-five years without parole. Forcillo is also with attempted murder. To the public, being put on bail hours later was the wrong thing to do. Just because he is of authority does not mean he should be able to get away with crimes. People were not satisfied that

My reason is because even though Sammy Yatim had a knife and was threatening passengers in the streetcar, he still had no weapon to fight back with that could go against a gun. James Forcillo could have easily figured out a different tactic instead of firing his gun nine times and to Taser him after the body was already wounded; what more could he have done while already laying on the ground with nine bullets in him? Police officers should have better strategies to deal with people who are not always in their right