Police watchdog clears Toronto officer in shooting of man in Cabbagetown

Ontario's Special Investigations Unit has cleared a Toronto police officer of any wrongdoing after she shot and seriously injured a man in Cabbagetown this past summer.

In a report released Wednesday, SIU director Joseph Martino says there are no reasonable grounds to believe that the police officer committed a crime in wounding a man who had a knife at Carlton and Parliament streets on July 23, 2024. 

The SIU report says the 32-year-old man was hit twice, once in the left arm and once in the lower right abdomen, and has since recovered from his wounds in hospital. 

"I am satisfied that the [subject official] fired her weapon intending to defend herself from a reasonably apprehended attack," Martino writes in the report. 

"Though the officer, as was her legal right, did not provide that evidence firsthand to the SIU, the circumstances surrounding the shooting naturally give rise to the inference. Simply put, the Complainant was approaching the [subject official] with a knife in hand in a fashion that could only be described as threatening," he continues.

"I am also satisfied that the force the [subject official] used to defend herself, namely, gunfire, constituted reasonable force in the circumstances."

Although the SIU did not identify the man, his family has previously identified him as Tylor Coore, an Afro-Indigenous man from White Bear First Nation in Saskatchewan.

Cheryl Maxie, Coore's mother, has said Coore has schizophrenia and was having a breakdown when police were called. She has said that guns should never have been involved. 

"My son had mental issues," she told a crowd outside Toronto police headquarters in July. "You know that there's other ways of dealing with people with mental health." 

According to the SIU, the man was sitting on the steps of a building with the knife by his side when two police officers arrived. When they got closer, he rose to his feet. The officers pulled out their weapons and told him to drop the knife. 

"The Complainant began to advance on the officers with the knife held in front of him as the officers retreated towards their cruiser," the report reads.

The man then started to run toward the subject officer, and when he was about eight to 10 metres away, she fired her gun two to four times, according to the report. The other officer discharged a conducted energy weapon, and the subject officer fired three more times. The man was hit and fell onto the roadway, the report says.

The SIU report says the officers then handcuffed the man and other officers began to apply first aid. Toronto paramedics took him to hospital.

"A complete withdrawal from the scene was not a viable option given the presence of civilians in the area. Nor was a resort to lesser force necessarily a better recourse," Martino writes.