Aggression not caused by Filipino youths

Aggression not caused by Filipino youths

(Letter to the Editor in reply to the column of Rosie DiManno.
Not published by the Toronto Star.)

Rosie DiManno misses the point in her column “Teenager author of his own fate”. The Reodica family lawyer and that of the Community Alliance for Social Justice (CASJ) came up with recommendations to the jury in the hope of making police-community relations better and avoid similar situations from happening again. If Ms. DiManno was consistent in attending the inquest from the very beginning she would be more objective and correctly weigh the balance of probabilities in her assessment of the incident. The original aggression that started the chain of events was caused by the white youths 24 hours earlier when the latter took the ball from the Filipino youths, shouted racists remarks and challenged them to a fight the next day. The racist and unfair treatment of Filipino youths made that fateful day of May 21, 2004 tragic. The white youths who called 911 were armed with baseball bats and were told by the police detectives to put them aside and hide the bats in a van. The youth who swung the bat menacingly at Jeffrey and his companions was not apprehended, cuffed or bodily searched. The white youths were allowed to go home and ate dinner with their families without being interrogated.
The Filipino youths, on the other hand, after Jeffrey was shot were herded into a TTC bus, brought to the police station, interrogated and held for seven hours without being informed of their rights, were not given counsel, food or water. Their families, except for one, were not informed about their whereabouts.

Ms. DiManno wrote about the perspective of calm incorrectly and swallowed the hook, line and sinker advanced by the cop’s lawyers. Witnesses testified that it was undercover cop Belanger who swung violently at Jeffrey with a black object hitting him on the head producing a “cracking sound” moments before he shot him three times in the back. There was no emergency situation when detectives Belanger and Allen Love arrived at the scene after responding to 911 calls. The fact that they did not bother to call for a back-up before the shooting of the Filipino teen attests to this. Did the two cops de-escalate or did they make the situation worse? Did they identify themselves properly? Obviously not! Even Detective Allen Love testified that he did not hear Belanger identify himself as a police officer to the slain youth.

The Reodica family has the right to question the handling of the shooting death of Jeffrey by the Special Investigations Unit (SIU). They are justified and entitled to seek justice in the courts of law. We cannot fathom Ms. DiManno’s cold-hearted belittlling of the grief felt by the Reodicas over the killing of their son. We believe that all parents have the right and prerogative to condemn and lash out at those they perceive and believe as the killer of their children regardless of their color.

EDWIN C. MERCURIO
Chairperson
Community Alliancefor Social
Justice (CASJ)