Would Toronto Police martial arts training have saved Sammy Yatim?

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More than a decade after he shot and killed a troubled teen, former Toronto cop Jimmy Forcillo offered his rather bizarre recommendation on how to avoid similar police shootings in the future: Jiu jitsu.

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“After I was charged, I learned some jiu jitsu. I tell you if I had that kind of confidence when I was working on the road and I would have had those techniques, I would have been more apt to handle it without resorting to a use-of-force option,” he told the long-delayed inquest into the shooting death of 18-year-old Sammy Yatim.

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“I believe, honestly, every frontline officer working on the road should have a minimum of two hours a week of jiu jitsu training and if you can’t do it, then you don’t deserve to be on the road. I think it would drastically change the outlook of use of force in this province.”

So martial arts are his best answer? Luckily, he’s not a cop anymore.

Forcillo explained that he and his partner were first on the scene on July 27, 2013, for a male with a knife on a streetcar that had been emptied of passengers and its operator. Less than a minute later after repeatedly shouting at Yatim to drop the knife, Forcillo fired nine bullets at him.

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A jury would acquit Forcillo of second-degree murder for firing the first three shots that ultimately killed the young man, but convicted him of attempted murder for the next volley he unleashed just over five seconds later as Yatim lay dying on the streetcar floor.

You’d hope he’s thought long and hard about firing his gun and killing a beloved son who posed no threat to anyone at that moment. Granted full parole in 2020 after being sentenced to 6 1/2 years in prison, Forcillo was a highly anticipated witness at the long-delayed inquest.

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But his testimony was frustratingly brief.

Coroner Dr. David Cameron reminded the five jurors and the legion of lawyers of the inquest’s narrow focus and they weren’t to question Forcillo about the night in detail or tarnish his reputation — he already admitted at his parole hearing that he didn’t follow his training and should have tried to de-escalate the situation and wait for a supervisor.

Instead, they were to concentrate on issues of recruitment and screening, police training and monitoring officer job performance. That left only questions from the lawyers for the Yatim family.

Ed Upenieks, who represents Yatim’s father and sister, asked Forcillo only if he’d ever been advised by Toronto Police to slow down or be less “brusque.” He said he hadn’t.

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Asha James, a lawyer for Yatim’s mom Sahar Fahadi, asked all of the remaining questions — beginning with the five times he drew his firearm to arrest someone between April 5 and Dec. 22, 2012. Forcillo told her he’d filled out his use-of-force paperwork and then “never heard about it again.”

There was no debriefing, no counselling. Why did no one follow up?

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Asked if any supervisor checked in with him about his stress or mental health after he’d been involved in five lethal-force incidents in eight months, he replied: “Absolutely not.

“Police officer’s mental health isn’t something that is ever brought up cause if you express that you’re not doing well, they’re going to take you off the road, right?”

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The police culture at the time was to not talk about your feelings. “You bottle it and you push it down and everything’s fine.”

Now Forcillo agrees that was unhealthy — as was being a workaholic who would sleep at the station between shifts.

“It was encouraged — work as much as you can,” he recalled. “At 14, we were the busiest in the city. They called it the flagship. They took pride in being the busiest in the city. ”

He agreed with James’s suggestion that frontline officers should have an annual or biannual well-being check-in with a professional.

“You see some atrocious stuff on the road,” Forcillo explained. “You see babies die. You see people struggling, people beat up. It’s awful. It’s like a meat grinder. And absolutely, being able to check in with somebody to (ask), ‘How are you doing? How are you handling all this?’ Absolutely that would have been super beneficial.”

That — and jiu jitsu.

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