Detective Nancy Van Veghel of the Toronto Police Service deemed my complaint to be “less serious” and chose to classify it as “unsubstantiated”. Ignoring the fact that the arresting officer, Mitchell Till, is quoted as saying: “it was unclear if he had thoughts of wanting to harm himself or others”, the detective still argued that his actions were warranted and lawful.
It is important to remind you what the law is involving my case. Here again is the Mental Health Act section17:
Action by police officer
17.Where a police officer has reasonable and probable grounds to believe that a person is acting or has acted in a disorderly manner and has reasonable cause to believe that the person,
(a) has threatened or attempted or is threatening or attempting to cause bodily harm to himself or herself;
(b) has behaved or is behaving violently towards another person or has caused or is causing another person to fear bodily harm from him or her; or
(c) has shown or is showing a lack of competence to care for himself or herself,
and in addition the police officer is of the opinion that the person is apparently suffering from mental disorder of a nature or quality that likely will result in,
(d) serious bodily harm to the person;
(e) serious bodily harm to another person; or
(f) serious physical impairment of the person,
and that it would be dangerous to proceed under section 16, the police officer may take the person in custody to an appropriate place for examination by a physician. 2000, c. 9, s. 5.
In the report, she only specifically cites part (c) of the Act, claiming that I showed a lack of competence to care for myself and that this would have caused serious bodily harm to myself. Detective Nancy Van Veghel wrote that I caused a 13 minute delay and that holding open a train door was an “extremely dangerous act” as I had “straddled the gap”.
First of all, let me say that the delay caused was not my fault and was completely out of my control. In fact, I would have loved it if authorities showed up much quicker and resolved the problem correctly. They failed to do these both.
After the train operator counselled me to kill myself, I basically held the train door and told him to summon appropriate authorities so that I can report him. When I did this he had not yet pressed the button to close the train doors and would have not immediately done so even if I stepped all the way in or out of the train.
There is a small gap…um…I can’t believe I have to explain this…anyway, there is a small gap between the platform and the train. This gap poses no threat to the public. Every train has a “Mind the Gap” sign on it but I have never seen anyone have issues with this gap in all the many years I have used the subway. The worst I’ve seen is somebody in a wheelchair get slightly stuck for a bit before having to wiggle their way out.
You’d literally need to be the size of a grasshopper to fall into this small gap. There is no way in hell it can pose a threat to you!
And the train doors are not strong enough to crush you even if the operator were to close the doors on you. In fact, it is mechanically impossible for the train to move at all if the doors are open, and the doors automatically revert to its pockets if pushed back for too long. Furthermore, if you’re a frequent user of the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) then I don’t doubt that you have at least tried one time to run into the train once the door chimes have started. The train makes a sound to notify people that the doors are about to close. Torontonians, including myself in the past, run towards the train and push their way in even as the doors are closing.
This is normal, harmless, frequent and completely innocuous. There is no way in hell that it would be considered by a reasonable and independent person to be an “extremely dangerous act”! It was nothing but hyperbolic nonsense spewing from this police detective to protect her guy in the expense of reason and justice.
Nobody, anywhere in their statements has claimed I was acting erratically, deranged, violent, uncooperative, and everything else you would expect from somebody suffering a mental breakdown of some sort. On the contrary, I was completely calm, articulate, alert, attentive, and cooperative. The medical exam at CAMH confirmed this and the audio recording confirms it too as you can hear it for yourself how I was conducting myself.
All I did was report somebody told me to kill myself as this is an illegal offence under the Criminal Code of Canada and extremely disgusting. Reporting it was an act of taking care of myself and having self-respect. I wanted appropriate authorities to take reasonable action against it. So how on Earth can they classify this as behaving in a “disorderly manner”?
Apparently, this legal term “disorderly manner” is what they call a catch-all term. Meaning it can be interpreted however way the police want. It’s a term that means everything which therefore makes it mean nothing at all.
I can tell you one thing, instinctively, that the spirit of the act was never created to include what I did be classified as “disorderly”. I peacefully modified the expected movement of that train that night, but it was for a good reason! It’s shocking how this can be distorted to make it sound criminal as I was arrested under the Trespass to Property Act initially by the TTC Transit Enforcement Officers for engaging in a “prohibited activity”. The prohibited activity being calling for assistance!
This is a dangerous precedent to set! It discourages people from reporting being harassed, sexually assaulted, and abused in any other way while on the train! Let me tell you one thing, I’ll never ask a TTC operator for help again or press any device on the train to summon assistance as I have already experienced compounded abuse by doing this.
Please note that I was never fined/charged for this supposed transgression by the TTC even though the Toronto Police Service officer placed the option on the table for them to do so. The TTC is also inconsistent on when they choose to arrest people under this Trespass to Property Act.
In less than 20 minutes after the Toronto Police arrived onto the scene, I was escorted over to the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). The Mobile Crisis Intervention Team (MCIT) of the Toronto Police has a mandate to prevent unnecessary hospitalizations. Only truly “self-evident” and seriously ill individuals are removed from the community, arrested and transported to a hospital. For them to have spent such a short time with me and took me to a hospital meant that my case was very serious.
But I already posted the justification the arresting officer used to make the arrest under the Mental Health Act. It makes no sense whatsoever and it is a stark contrast to the assessment conducted by a physician and medical student at CAMH. It’s not even close!
Obviously, upon receiving this investigative report, I poured through the contents of it and wrote up my arguments in support of a Review by the OIPRD. I submitted my Request for Review to the OIPRD two days after receiving the investigative report.
The package I sent them included a long letter, medical records, documents from different agencies and a copy of the audio recording. I tried to make it as clear as possible for them and went through everything diligently. I basically spoon-fed them.
I delivered this package in-person at their offices at 655 Bay Street. Here’s a fun fact: their office is about a 3 minute walk from the Toronto Police Headquarters ha-ha. Both figuratively and literally they are the same.
Unfortunately, just like the Toronto Police (like two peas in a pod!) they were late at getting back to me. 5 months later I received a decision from the OIPRD and a two-page letter explaining their decision. Wait until you read what this letter says!!
To Be Continued…
Abused & Depressed 