Cowboys in Uniform

Early in the morning of Wed, 12 Jan, in Toronto, a deranged and barefoot man named Kachkar hijacked a pickup truck with a snow plow blade on the front of it. He drove up and down, deliberately damaging vehicles, until a Toronto policeman named Russell placed himself in front of the truck and fired 3 shots at the driver. Why did Sgt Russell put himself, on foot, in front of a snow plow truck being driven by somebody who was obviously out of control? He could have rammed it with his police cruiser; it was only a pickup truck. Backup cars could soon have boxed it in. He could have shot out the tires.

But Russell didn't do any of those things, and I think I know the reason: Sgt Russell was angry and he decided to kill Mr Kachkar. By shooting from in front of the truck, he could claim he was being attacked by a man with a deadly weapon. He got that right! The part that didn't work out was he missed, 3 times, slipped on the snow and got squashed. A bit later, other police boxed the plow truck in so it couldn't move or hurt anyone else. And then they shot Mr Kachkar, apparently purely for revenge, and he is fighting for his life in the hospital. If he survives, our legal system is going to try to lock him up for the next 25 years at a cost to taxpayers of over $100,000 a year.

The entire problem might have been prevented by better mental health services. If not, the rampage could have been limited to property damage, except for the bloodthirsty approach of trigger happy cowboys in uniform.