Uh, did you ever do something like that?

No.

If I would have, I can guarantee you that paramedics would be scraping me off the ground, and, uh, I'd be in traction for the next three years.

It's not, it's not a maneuver that's normally taught at, uh, any police college, certainly in this country.

But it is a good example of, uh, a little bit of ingenuity.

As you mentioned, this guy was just taunting everybody.

Uh, taunting the police.

The, finding a way to bring some lightness into what you have to deal with every day.

He handled the sudden deaths of children, and often treated them as potential crimes from the outset.

outset.He was never challenged by homicide detectives.

He was never, never challenged by defense counsel.

He, his expertise was never challenged by judges or the triers of fact, juries.

If Charlie said it's A, B, and C, then it's A, B, and C.

The message after Gouge was clear: follow the evidence wherever it leads, and if the evidence doesn't give you a clear answer, don't force one.

It changed the state of mind of pathologists who saw what happened with Smith, and who realized that maybe they shouldn't be as definitive as they had been up to that point on causes of death.

And I'm not talking about somebody with a gunshot wound to the head.

But, um, when, when you, when a bust takes place like that, have you not now given up who you really are?

Yeah, for sure.

I've given it up to the bus driver and the eight passengers that are sitting [laughs] in the bus, but that's about it.

But yeah, when, when we were, when we take down the guy at the end of the day, sure, you know, the jig is up.

He knows that we're all cops 'cause he's, he's now in custody.

That's just, that's just how the game works.

It's how being undercover works, you know? You, you, you make a lot of buys where you don't make arrests, uh, that we call them prosecution buys, that they get charged with later on down the road o- once you get to the bigger fish in the organizational chart.

Right.

Yeah.

And certainly in Toronto, we all knew somebody that either had their car stolen or knew somebody that h- you know, was a victim as well.

And then there was this concerted effort, and it, and it came from a couple of different venues, from the insurance companies, um, you know, from the Insurance Bureau of Canada, from politicians, and from municipal, provincial, and federal police, and the federal government, where they all sort of put their collective brains together and realized that they have a problem.

And, and, and the way you got through this problem was funding, because, you know, the bad guys don't care whether they're in Peel, uh, York, Toronto, or Durham.

They don't, they don't view boundaries as, as a problem.

So they put their money together.

They put a lot of integrated task forces into place, along with CBSA, who i- is in charge of the ports, um, where these, you know, vehicles were all ending up with a business-class ticket to, uh, to Lagos.

I understand this as we've got gun for hire, and if you catch the gun, uh, the guy carrying the gun, he doesn't even know who hired him.

I just do you have any fun or interesting stories from your time in surveillance?

Well, you know, the police do it very differently.

There's a whole separate unit.

It's called the Mobile Support Unit.

It's part of intelligence.

And, you know, usually when we would send people out to do surveillance, we're talking about five or sometimes six or eight officers in unmarked regular cars, in plain clothes, following people, you know, 24-7.

And I always viewed it as maybe the most boring job in policing.

Oh, wow.

What do you make of the details and information that we have?

Well, I mean, it, I think it's all, uh, good news in terms of policing.

Um, you know, as, as, uh, Stacy McCabe said, uh, we've got two 18-year-olds that are now charged, uh, with, uh, two counts of first-degree murder and five attempted murder charges.

Now, she mentioned there were other charges as well, um, but she didn't articulate what those were.

Um, I'm sure we'll find out in, in pretty short order.

The interesting things that came out of that, uh, press conference, at least that I've heard so far, is that the two firearms that were in the area of where the two deceased were, uh, w- were, were not fired.

Those guns were there.

Your thoughts on that comment? I found it quite interesting.

Right

... of, of these Information to Obtains.

And we're getting a lot of information out of there.

And what we've found in the new release is, uh, essentially, uh, that conversations that had taken place through, uh, certain, certain apps like WhatsApp and, and Signal, where they're encrypted, um, have been re- retrieved from their phones and from their electronic devices.

And, you know, even though these guys think that they're, you know, they're completely anonymous and, and these things are gone, they're not.

These, they're on your phone.

Hmm.

Um, but actually on their phones, they had screenshots of the computer screen that he retrieved this.

Is- Would it be normal for the name of the other driver to be published at this stage, or is it normal that the police, you know, it's not their business to disclose that a- at this stage 'cause there's presumably been no charges? I'm not sure what normal is here.

Well, I'm not sure what normal is here either under these circumstances.

We've got a couple of things on the go here, Mark.

According to the OPP, they're not commenting and they're not releasing information because their investigation has, has not yet been completed.

So we can assume that the accident reconstructionists have, have, have examined their, their scene and the vehicles involved and things of that nature, and they're, they're putting their report together.

Um, and I can understand why they're not gonna release any information publicly, um, till that, till that, you know, collision report i- is complete.

It, it's not normal w- when we have car accidents in this city or, or, you know, pedestrians get struck in, you know, in fat- in fatality situations where we hear, you know, a 63-year-old man was run over and killed by a 74-year-old female or whatever.

Who do they normally-- Who would that report go to? Would that become a matter of public record? Uh, or like do the police then report to insurance companies? Do they give it normally to families of the victims? Who normally gets a police report that might have this name in it?

We're talking about, in the one case, a woman who died 90 years ago.

Yeah, I know.

It's pretty amazing stuff when you think about sort of the advancements in technology.

The bottom line is, you know, it's been a saying in the Homicide Squad in Toronto for as long as I can remember is cases are never closed.

And although, you know, the families may not get... closure because there is no such thing as closure if you're a family member of a homicide victim they deserve answers and in this case they did get some answers and you know you know coincidentally i i was in the office i was in homicide in in the early 90s when the the danforth case uh came about and i remember we were all sitting in in in you know one of our weekly conferences and The detectives were actually showing us pictures of what they found.

And it was a head scratcher because the body was so badly decomposed.

They had no idea who the person was, male, female.

What did you take from the appeal yesterday and the specific words?

Can you remember some examples like this?

Well, I, [laughs] I was telling Christine, I, I, I was investigating a murder, uh, early in the '90s, and it was a guy was in a car with his little son, and he went up to the Jane and Finch area to buy some crack from some local drug dealers.

The, the, the deal was made, um, then he drove away and, and thought that he was shorted in terms of the amount of, uh, of crack that he got.

So, w- like all good customers do, you go back and complain.

So he drove back to complain, demanded his money back or the extra crack.

Uh, didn't get anywhere with that, and the drug dealer jumped into this guy's car and drove off with the guy's kid in the backseat.

And sadly, he turned around and, uh, a- after about a block, and he drove over the father, dragged him and killed him.

What are they supposed to do?

And the judge said, doesn't sound like you guys had any reason to search that car and find the gun and thus find the evidence.

Yeah, I mean, the shooting that the officers were saying was part of their state of mind for, you know, looking at this vehicle and eventually, you know, stopping it and investigating.

The shooting took place two months before that stop actually took place.

And the question was that, you know, the officers said, you know, we didn't know who was in the vehicle.

But, you know, according to the evidence, and we haven't seen the transcripts, so we don't know, is that there were three people in it.

Some were black and some were brown.

according to the judge.

I'm guessing it happens a whole bunch of times where they don't find any.

Does any of this surprise you?

you?Yeah, it's sad.

[laughs] I don't know whether it surprises me.

Cops are cops, and historically we've seen situations like this come, you know, come to the, to the public light.

It's always disappointing.

And you know, you got a lot of other cops that are sitting around going, "Why?" You know, it j- it just sort of paints everybody with the same brush.

So if, if you go to the London situation, Gerry, uh, and as you rightly said, uh, there was security cameras in the underground garage.

When they see these stories, how do they react?

First, usually if Toronto police are doing something like this in Whitby, they have to let the local police know what's going down?

Well, that's generally the courtesy that you give to the parent force that you're going into.

And we don't know whether Durham was notified or not.

But, you know, this is a takedown.

They happen every day.

You can have a plan, if you will, an operational plan.

But it's hard to sort of plan for the unknowns, like two guys coming out in a scooter.

that mean? Wouldn't you run down, okay, best-case scenario? Like, what is the pre-planning? Is it like, okay, if this guy gets out in the open, this is what we're going to do? Or is it like, hey, if this guy gets out in the open, hit him with your car?

So, you know, talk a little bit about the corrections employee, et cetera, just in terms of what we thought we were dealing with a few months ago.

Well, the initial allegations involve the shooting up of a house in York Region of a manager from the Toronto South Detention Centre, which is one of our regional correctional units here in Toronto.

And what the allegations are that one of the officers had provided... uh registration information to a criminal organization if you will through other people as to where this correctional officer lived there were a couple of shootings at his house and eventually these these people got arrested in that shooting and then as you know as we often see the web gets bigger and bigger and bigger and the next thing you know we have All kinds of allegations relating to police with improper use of the computers to access this information and, you know, and other things.

There was, you know, allegations of, you know, trafficking in drugs, things of that nature.

But what's come out now? is, as you very clearly stated, was we're getting information now from the ITO, which is called the Information to Obtain.

So this is a document that the police used in furtherance of obtaining a couple of things.

One, criminal code search warrants.

But the web seems much, much bigger than a layperson like me would have even anticipated based on the original press release and announcement by the chief.

I just want to hear about work.

Yeah, I know.

I get you.

I think Tim has too much time on his hands.

That's another conversation.

I have in my days when I was in an undercover capacity, I actually played the role of a fortune teller.

Really? Yeah, during a murder investigation from another province.

I mean, how do you sit around, Mark, as an undercover officer and come up with these plans? Is it just like some creative folks that are part of the team?

Is that right? Is there more to it than that?

Well, no, you know, essentially you're correct in how you describe it.

So, I mean, if you are a supervisor and you are in charge of, say, a uniform platoon, or if you're an investigator and you have a group of detective constables with you, all of these officers get yearly evaluations.

They're done by their direct supervisor.

They're signed off by the supervisor above that supervisor and eventually signed off by the inspector or unit commander.

If somebody decides that they want to go for promotion, they have to write one series of exams to get you into that stream.

When it comes time for actual promotions, and it's not a regular thing, Mark.

Where do you learn that?

That isn't necessarily the case, even though we're having confirmation, getting confirmation that those shootings are connected.

Yeah, well, I think motive is important.

is not gonna be consistent across the board because we've got suggestions that this involves not only the US consulate, but the GFL shootings.

And I think Chief Demke also went back to the tow truck industry as well.

What we did learn publicly today is of course, that there is this group of people who are essentially guns for hire and they're in their late teens.

And they are being recruited by a middle person who has not yet been identified, let alone arrested, who is essentially brokering these events.

So if somebody wants a synagogue shut up or a GFL house or a factory or the U.S. consulate, they go to this middle man and he's got this... talent pool, if you will, of people who ask no questions, who don't care about what it is they're shooting up.

Do we know if there are a series of middlemen or do we not know that yet? And then let me lift it up another level, which is do we think it is a set of organized crime criminals? Do we think there might be multiple people? I mean, how much of a pyramid is this from what you heard this morning?

So for those who may just be hearing the news this afternoon, take us back to early this morning and give us a bit of a sense of what unfolded in the city's West End.

Well, earlier this morning, Toronto Police executed a series of search warrants related to shootings.

And in this particular case, it was related to the shooting at the U.S. Consulate on University Avenue about 5.30 this morning.

And it was what's called a dynamic entry search warrant.

In other words, they use the services of the emergency task force to gain entry to the residents and to either do the search and effect arrests.

And as we have come to find out, of course, is that when they breached the door, they were met with somebody with a firearm and shots were fired.

And during the course of that interaction, you know, Constable Penizzotto was struck fatally.

Do we know who the other individual at Sunnybrook is? Do we know anything about them?

Tell us a little bit about how they are executed, like what happens? These are, they knock on the door, they serve you, or are these something far, far more dangerous?

Well, they're all dangerous, but it's an excellent question, Deb.

There's generally two kinds.

There's the kind where the investigators knock on the door, they have a piece of paper, you know, called the search warrant, and somebody answers the door, and they go in, whether they're seizing computers, laptops, or business records, things of that nature.

But when you're dealing with things that involve guns and violence, what will often happen is that the officers who are seeking the search warrant from the justice department will put in a clause in the actual information to obtain and the warrant authorizing what's called a dynamic entry.

In other words, you don't knock on the door and wait for somebody to answer.

You know, there is, you know, the door is busted down.

How does that unfold?

Yeah.

That can absolutely happen.

Um, and he was, uh, reportedly be- uh, VSA or vital signs absent at the time.

He did an emergency run, um, to Sunnybrook, uh, to the trauma unit where he is now.

Um, there has been no confirmation as to his status, uh, health-wise f- at, at this point.

We know the family are down there.

We know the chief is, is, uh, is down there.

Right

Is it possible they knew that last week but just thought it was a little early to give the information?

Well, when we talked about it last week, I mean, everything was so fresh.

You know, the ink on the paper wasn't even dry yet.

I think we talked just a couple hours after she was located.

And, you know, and at that time I suggested there's a lot of interviews to be done.

Not only, you know, the adult that she was found with, but she was, you know, being treated by or being, you know, examined, if you will, by, you know, medical practitioners about her condition.

physical health and her mental health, things of that nature.

I Does it feel like it was an appropriate length, given what you know about these types of investigations? Surprised by the length of it at all?

Good.

I can't watch, I can't watch these shows because, you know, if, if you've ever worked at a homicide office or, or any squad anywhere, you know o- you know, we spend our lives writing notes, and we spend our lives, um, preparing search warrants and production orders to get information.

And on these shows, and I get it, it's the movies.

I understand all that, but when you watch these shows, they pull up a guy's name, and there's his picture, there's where he lives, there's where he's worked his entire life, and uh, his blood type, and also what he probably had for breakfast that morning.

And it's all up there on the computer on the screen, and life is great.

But in reality, it's a lot of legwork.

It's a lot of typing.

Oh.