Charging the Atmosphere with Racism

"We have the perfect ingredients for the perfect storm of controversy. The public opinion is very receptive to this type of controversial information, and there is a pressure on the collective mind -- of society -- to accept the truth. The truth here is a representation of the facts made by the people, and that truth is very subjective. It's not objective."
"It's based on individual perceptions, and we are also influenced by stereotypes as we are trying to reach some consensus in the public sphere. We are adjusting our truth as a collective along the way, and the media are acting like an accelerating factor for this truth adjustment."
"We want to inform the public [but] when we give information without verifying the truth or the objective fact, sometimes we [journalists] are making mistakes."
"Public opinion is shaped only through the media."
"In many big trials, politicians feel the necessity to heighten the social stakes, and we know politicians are not neutral. They are everything, but not neutral, but I'm not sure that's a good way to help the trial or to help public opinion."
Ivan Ivanov, former journalist, professor of journalism, University of Ottawa

Abdirahman Abdi

A Somali immigrant living in Ottawa with his family died during an arrest two-and-a-half years ago, in July of 2016. Police officers attempted to subdue the man. He had, they said afterward, astonishing strength and it was difficult to make him stop resisting arrest. Police officers had responded to a number of 911 calls about a man who had been sexually assaulting women in a coffee shop. When the first officer arrived he was in the act of assaulting yet another woman. A chase ensued, during which the man, Abdirahman Abdi, took possession of a 30-pound construction weight, swinging it about at police.

Police caught up with the man a few blocks' distance from the coffee shop in front of an apartment building where the man lived. There were witnesses at the original scene, and horrified witnesses at the scene in front of the apartment when Abdi attempted to escape from police custody to enter the apartment to get 'home'. Two police officers, one a late-comer, grappled with the man. The end result was that he lost vital signs and died shortly after.

Witnesses gave immediate responses to the event, criticizing police action. They spoke to the media describing rough treatment meted out to a man whom his family later described as having been mentally challenged. The Somali community lost no time in claiming racism was involved. A  support group of neighbours and the public came together to mourn the death of the man, needlessly 'killed' by police brutality, with obvious race overtones.

Ottawa police Const. Daniel Montsion is facing charges of manslaughter, aggravated assault and assault with a weapon in the July 2016 death of Abdirahman Abdi. Sources tell CBC News Montsion was wearing a pair of these Oakley 'assault gloves' at the time of Abdi's arrest.

Eventually there was an investigation. A coroner's report originally cited death by misadventure. Among other things Abdi suffered from was a heart condition. Following a Special Investigations Unit probe charges were laid against the second-responding police officer, of manslaughter. The coroner was prevailed upon to change his conclusion from accident to homicide. That trial is now in session. The police officer is being represented by two lawyers with quite a bit of experience in criminal prosecutions. And they have systematically eviscerated the Crown's case against the police officer.

For the most part, this has been accomplished by demonstrating that witnesses have either outright tampered with the truth for reasons of their own, or erroneously stated they witnessed something that would have been impossible for them to see. Bias, lack of neutrality, undershot with more than a little distrust of police come into play. Evidence was given that the 37-year-old Abdi had molested and sexually assaulted up to six women in and around the Bridgehead cafe.

In the first assault, Abdi confronted a woman seated behind the wheel of her car. Reaching into the vehicle he extended a hand in a friendly handshake, then saying "I need to touch you", he reached his other hand, to "grab" and "squeeze" her breast. Soon after, a regular customer seated having morning coffee at the Bridgehead Cafe witnessed Abdi sprawled atop a slight women, pinning her down and placing her in a head grip. The customer responded attempting to disentangle Abdi from the woman but the man's strength was such that "He didn't budge. He was like a rock. He didn't even flinch".

Once he managed to extract the woman, the customer followed Abdi out of the cafe only to see him approach a young woman on a bike with her infant daughter on a bike seat, hearing her shout out "don't touch her", referring to her child when Abdi grabbed the woman by her arm, her other arm precariously attempting to balance the child from a fall. A trained psychiatrist with The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health happened to be walking by.

"No, you can't do that! Don't touch her" he heard the young woman warn Abdi. Dr. Darren Courtney dialed 911, as had other witnesses. Abdi approached him, smiling, stretched  his arm for a handshake, and introduced himself to the doctor. "Keeping the peace, keeping the peace", Abdi said to the doctor. "I can't go my home." And this is when the first police officer arrived at the scene, and when he attempted to handcuff Abdi he ran as the police officer directed him to "Put it down! Put it down!", referring to the construction weight.

In front of the apartment one man witnessing the attempted arrest said "He was screaming for help. They were using the stick and they were really going at him, and he was screaming". At this point the second police officer had arrived. There was a CCTV video, however, that demonstrated that though another witness described the scene: "It was violent", and that she saw the later-charged officer deliver between five and ten punches before Abdi fell to the ground, the footage shows one punch, and no use of night sticks.

"It was violent", said another woman who had watched from her apartment above the scene. "I didn't see anyone doing CPR until fhe ambulance arrived". Paramedics attempted rescucitation and spirited Abdi away to hospital, where he died.

Attempted arrest outside apartment building; still from video

Defence lawyers for the charged police officer succeeded in having witnesses admit to 'mistaken recollections'. Brutality they were so certain they saw was something entirely else. The bystander who had described the police as "Nazis" to others in the watching crowd at the scene, admitted to a strong bias. A woman who had happened to be coming by the area and saw the altercation, described a scene she would have been incapable of witnessing from her vantage point.

To help matters further, on the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, the Member of Provincial Parliament for the area, made a speech tying that incident with Abdi's attempted arrest and accidental death to institutional racism, describing the man as a "37-year-old Somali-Canadian man with mental-health challenges who was violently killed by a police officer while trying to go home". Speaking of the "need to root out racism and where it remains, sadly, in our police force", the MPP refused to retract his statement.

The day following the attempted arrest a short clip in an interview with Abdi's brother on one of the early news items featured on the CBC quoted him as speaking of the police officers as "animals", later cited in a Washington Post report in the wake of Abdi's death. In that news feature was witness David Thyne who gave his eyewitness account to the press at the scene: "I saw that Abdi was cuffed and a police officer was hitting him, one of them was hitting him really bad".

At the trial he had to admit: "I was wrong"; the pounding strikes of a police baton he had mimicked for a television camera did not take place as he originally described it.

David Thyne said he saw police with batons beating a prone, bloodied, handcuffed Abdirahman Abdi.  (Credit: CBC)