From time to time I've written here about going to court to do research for CELOS, the small non-profit group based at Dufferin Grove park. The justice system initiative I was working on is now over because of a lack of funding as well as a lack of clarity over the project's goals. However, the year and a half I spent in court has left its mark and I still find myself thinking about what I saw there.
By far the most interesting story I followed was a guns and gangs case that began with the arrest of three young men in March 2008 and ended on July 15 of this year with acquittals of two of the accused, Isahaq Omar, 27, and Keane Webb, 22 on five charges related to the discovery of an illegal handgun hidden in the back seat of their car. The third man, Ryan Rowe-Reid, 20, couldn't be in court for the very compelling reason that he is dead, killed in a shootout in Scarborough on August 10, 2008.
This case started at 3am on Sunday March 30, 2008 when 14 Division officers Ricky Benevides and Jeff Correia stopped a black Acura at the corner of Dundas and Ossington. At the trial before Ontario Superior Court Justice Harriet Sachs, Benevides and Corriea gave several reasons for stopping the car including the fact that the driver may have been drinking since he and his passengers had just left the Baby Dolls Strip club on Ossington. The club, which has since closed, was a licensed establishment. Benevides gave Webb a sobriety test, which he passed.
The officers said another reason for the stop was that the car's registered owner, Pierre Ellis of Parsonage Drive, Scarborough, was unlicensed. They said they wanted to see if Ellis was driving, but it turned out he wasn't in the car that night. The police also had information from a database that Ellis was "a known gang member" affiliated with the Empringham Crips, a branch of the Malvern Crips.
(Two weeks after the trial, I read in an August 4 Toronto Sun article that a Pierre Oliver Ellis, 22, of Parsonage Drive, Scarborough was being sought by police in connection with a string of violent home invasions. Parsonage Drive is located near Empringham park. The article said police believed Ellis was armed.)
A third reason given for stopping the car was to gather information for an ongoing investigation, the details of which weren't presented in court. The defence would argue this other investigation was the real reason the car was stopped.
After stopping the car, the officers decided to search it. When they did, Correia found a loaded gun hidden behind the armrest in the back seat next to where Omar was sitting. A police press release dated April 3, 2008 described the prohibited weapon as
a Smith & Wesson handgun, with a magazine containing five Winchester .40 calibre hollow-point rounds, four Speer Smith & Wesson .40 calibre full-jacket rounds and one Lugar .9mm full-jacket round
The gun was turned up and there was a round in the firing chamber.
Much of the testimony at the trial concerned the legality of the search. The evidence went into excruciating detail about the reasons the officers decided to conduct a search without first getting a warrant. Correia and Benevides said they made the decision because they had reason to believe there was a gun in the car. It was Correia who did the actual search. In addition to Correia and Benevides there were other officers on the scene who had been called as backup. In one of his questions, Isahaq Omar's lawyer Dirk Derstine called it a "big production" for a routine traffic stop.
Among other considerations, Correia said when he approached the car he noticed the rear passenger, Omar, making a suspicious movement. He and Benevides said the front passenger, Rowe-Reid, was wearing a medallion with a gang symbol. The police also had information from a police database that Rowe-Reid had gang ties. He had a criminal record, had been the victim of a shooting and was under a court order prohibiting him from possessing a weapon. Correia also gave as a reason the fact that Omar's pants were half-way down between his waist and his knees. This made the officer suspect Omar had removed a gun from his waistband. Correia said if Omar had stood up, his pants would have fallen down. The officers' suspicions were also aroused because Omar gave police a false name.
The defence didn't dispute that Omar had given a false name but otherwise vigourously challenged the officers' testimony and demonstrated to the judge's satisfaction that the search had violated the accused's Charter rights. Sachs said she didn't believe Correia's testimony that Omar's pants had been lowered and that Corriea's lack of credibility on this point called into question the reliability of his other evidence.
Sachs also said she was troubled by testimony from other officers that Webb had been stopped by police in Scarborough on March 26, only four days before the Acura was stopped again at Dundas and Ossington. During the trial there were several references to another "ongoing investigation", the details of which were not discussed in court. The Crown did say Omar and Webb were not the subjects of that other investigation. Sachs came to the conclusion that this other investigation was the real reason the Acura had been stopped and searched at Dundas and Ossington.
Despite ruling that the search was illegal, Sachs allowed the gun into evidence, citing among other cases R v Harrison, which the Supreme Court would overturn a few weeks later. Justice Sachs' ruling was complicated and hard for me as a layman to follow. This was a judge-alone trial with no jury. Sachs' acquitted Omar and Webb because she concluded there was reasonable doubt about whether either man knew there was a gun in the car.
The night the men were arrested they were charged with six gun-related offences (seven in the case of Rowe-Reid) and taken into custody. They then had separate bail hearings at Old City Hall and I went to all of them. Omar and Rowe-Reid's hearings were covered by court-ordered publication bans that lasted until the end of the trial. Now that those bans are lifted I can report what I heard.
Webb was granted bail though he was later re-arrested for reasons I don't know. Omar and Ryan-Rowe Reid, however, were denied bail.
At Omar's hearing the court was shown a video that had been seized when he was arrested earlier on other charges. The tape showed young black men at a party making what police said were gang symbols with their hands. There was a lot of talk about Bloods and Crips. Defence attorney Derstine argued this was just posturing that had nothing to do with real gang activity. Omar, however, was shown holding and ratcheting a gun similar to the one found in the car. As he was doing this, he made statements threatening to use the gun on anyone who got in his way. He's also heard saying "Hollow point. Hollow point." (Hollow point bullets, which expand on impact, are used by police. There were hollow point bullets in the gun police found at Dundas and Ossington.) Omar's mother, who was in court when the tape was played, left the room, something the justice of the peace made a point of noting in her ruling on bail.
Derstine challenged the admissibility of the tape. After the bail hearing had ended but before the justice of the peace had made her decision, a judge at College Park court ruled that police had seized the tape illegally and ordered it returned to Omar. When the justice of the peace finally issued her ruling denying Omar bail, she said she did not take the tape into consideration. She said her decision was based on her opinion that the proposed sureties, one of which was Omar's mother, were unsuitable. She said that Omar would be a good candidate for bail if appropriate sureties could be found. (A surety is the person responsible for making sure someone out on bail obeys the conditions laid down by the court.)
During the bail hearing, the court also heard testimony related to an August 8, 2005 double homicide outside the Phoenix nightclub on Sherbourne. Police said Omar was a "person of interest" in those shootings and that an unknown man described as a "fat Somali" had shown up at the hospital where the two victims died. The "fat Somali" was crying saying that one of the victims, Ali Mahamud Ali, was his friend. In his summation, Derstine argued that much of the evidence was irrelevant to the gun charges before the court, describing the Crown's case as a "mountain of innuendo."
I found the argument Crown attorney Kerry Hughes used to defend the inclusion of the tape at the bail hearing interesting. She said when defendants like Omar come to court they look meek and mild. In her words, they look like they "could melt butter." She said she was introducing the tape because it showed what the real Omar was like when he wasn't sitting in a courtroom facing charges.
Neither the video nor the evidence related to the Phoenix nightclub shooting were mentioned at the trial this July in Superior Court.
While Omar's co-accused Keane Webb was still out of custody, he would sometimes sit next to me on the benches in courtroom 111, Old City Hall. I remember him wearing loud brightly coloured clothing and a gold chain, quite different from the more sobre clothing he wore during the trial. I also remember him darting in and out of 111 with a cellphone in his hand.
Omar, as well as Webb, after he was re-arrested, would stay in jail until their acquittals on July 15, 2009. Ryan Rowe-Reid, however, was released on June 17, 2008 after signing a "declaratory statement" that he had no knowledge of the gun in the car. Crown attorney Hughes told the court his charges were being dropped because "there was no reasonable prospect of conviction." Someone familiar with the case told me the Crown had tactical reasons for withdrawing the charges. After Rowe-Reid died, the same person said he would let me come to my own conclusions about why Rowe-Reid was killed.
I heard about his death while standing in the kitchen listening to CFRB. According to an August 12, 2008 police press release:
- police located a 20-year-old man suffering from apparent gunshot wounds in the parking lot of 1701 McCowan Road
- the victim was pronounced dead at hospital
[...]
The victim has been identified as Ryan St. Christopher Rowe-Reid, 20, of Toronto.
The victim sustained multiple gunshot wounds to his body.
A second victim walked into a nearby hospital with multiple gunshots to the head and leg.
The men received their injuries in an exchange of gunfire with another man in the parking lot of 1701 McCowan Road.
The suspect is described as black, 6'. He was seen wearing a dark hoodie and black denim jeans.
Even though Rowe-Reid's death wasn't surprising given what I heard about him at his bail hearing, I found it shocking and it troubles me to this day. He was only 20 when he died and while he was legally an adult I can't help but think of him as a boy. I find his death sad even though his criminal record suggests he was a dangerous young man who, if he hadn't died in a shootout, might easily have killed somebody else.
I was in courtroom 112, Old City Hall when he was released. None of the relatives who testified at his bail hearing were there, but he did leave with another young man I took to be his friend. When Rowe-Reid walked out of the courtroom laughing with his friend, he looked like a boy just let out of school for the summer holidays.
I have another memory of him that sticks out. When he was still in custody, he and Omar would appear together on video in courtroom 111 while Webb would come in person. Once when Rowe-Reid came on screen, he told the justice of the peace to wait a second while he went to get his friend Omar. When he came back on screen with Omar, the two of the them were whispering to each other and smirking like naughty school boys. They weren't the meek and silent figures I had seen during the bail hearings, but they didn't seem like thugs either. They looked more like the smart-ass teenagers I see playing hockey at Campbell Park.
How did Rowe-Reid become involved with guns? What kind of environment did he grow up in? If his childhood had been better, would he have turned out differently? There's no way of knowing, but I heard things in court that make me see him as a product of his environment.
At his bail hearing, the court heard Rowe-Reid had been shot on two separate occasions, once in Toronto and once in Calgary. In Calgary he was shot during a wild shootout during a convenience store robbery. Rowe-Reid had a criminal record and had been in custody in Alberta though I don't remember if it was jail or prison.
Rowe-Reid's father had proposed himself as a surety, that is, as one of the people who would make sure he obeyed his bail conditions. Crown attorney Hughes wanted to show that Rowe-Reid senior was unfit to be a surety. Hughes asked the dad if he didn't think the fact his son had been shot twice in two different cities might be a sign his son was involved in criminal activity. The dad got angry. He said his son had been a victim of bad luck and the police were picking on him for being unlucky. In the end, the Justice of the Peace agreed with the Crown that the dad was unsuitable because he was too quick to dismiss the clear signs that there were problems in his son's life.
At one point in his testimony, the dad shrugged his shoulders and said "What are you gonna do?" A policeman later told me this had become a bit of a joke at the station and that officers faced with similar cases were going around saying "What are you gonna do?"
There was a woman in court who I thought at first was Rowe-Reid's mother, but later turned out to be his grandmother. She too offered herself as a surety. One time after court was finished for the day, she waited in the corridor to see her grandson as guards let him out of the room. When Rowe-Reid came out, the grandmother said to him "Do your reading", which I understood to mean, read your Bible. Rowe-Reid looked at his grandmother, smiled meekly and said "I will."
As I said, Ryan Rowe-Reid's record suggests he was a dangerous young man who, if he hadn't been shot himself, might well have killed somebody else. Either that or he would have ended up in prison. While the future is always unpredictable it is hard to see anything good ever coming out of his life and the public has a right to be protected from people who join gangs and carry guns. Still his death bothers me. I can't see it as a good thing. Some people might say he had it coming given his criminal history, but I can't see his death as anything but tragic. To say he deserved to die would be wrong.
Guns and gangs are a festering problem for which no one has a solution. Ryan Rowe-Reid wasn't the first young black man to die violently in Toronto and he won't be the last.
