“After this point in time I gave up speaking,” the young man said in testimony that painted a picture of one aggressor cop, Const. Adam Lourenco, and his bystander partner, Const. Scharnil Pais.
The questions, he testified, quickly led to thrown punches by one officer, who then drew his weapon.
The teen is the central complainant. That evening, he’d spoken up for himself and the others when two officers suddenly approached, saying the boys fit the description of suspects in a robbery. Fresh off a seminar where he’d learned his rights during police interactions, the teen asked the officers if he was under arrest and if he was free to go.
Nearly six years after the young man, his brother, and two friends were arrested at gunpoint outside their Lawrence Heights housing complex in an incident known as the “Neptune Four’ case, the now 21-year-old man detailed his account of the November, 2011 night at the ongoing police misconduct hearing stemming from the case.
As a Toronto police officer stood over him with a pointed gun, a Black teen who just minutes before was en route to an after-school mentorship program lay face down on the ground “very scared and shocked,” a police tribunal heard Thursday.
Both officers stand accused under Ontario’s Police Services Act of unlawfully arresting the four boys — all 16 or under — immediately after they left their homes inside a Toronto Community Housing Corp. complex on Neptune Dr. and walked toward an after-school program called Pathways to Education.
Lourenco faces two additional charges of disorderly conduct for allegedly using unreasonable force — one for punching one of the boys and for pointing his gun at three of them.
The officers have pleaded not guilty to all charges. None of the allegations have been proven at the tribunal.
Following the incident the four boys faced charges, including assaulting police. All were later withdrawn. Because the teens faced criminal charges under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, the Star is not identifying them.
According to the teen’s witness testimony, he and the others saw an unmarked black vehicle pull up nearby, then two officers got out and approached the group, yelling.
The officer he later learned was Lourenco had especially aggressive body language, young man said, and his tone was “hostile.” The cops told them there had been a robbery and that they fit the suspect description.
The witness said he told the officers they had just come from his mom’s house and offered his cellphone to call her to confirm. But he was instead asked for ID, which was wasn’t carrying — “I was 15,” he said.
He then asked Lourenco: “Am I under arrest?” Then later, “Am I free to go?” The officer did not respond, the witness said.
At this point, the witness says he began to step away, then alleges Lourenco grabbed him, pushed him away from the group and started searching him, all the while insulting him — “he was calling me a bitch, that I wanted to be a thug, a smart ass,” he said.
Then, in a move that was picked up on grainy TCHC surveillance footage, Lourenco punched him. The young man alleges the officer punched him multiple times, including once to the head, dropping him to the ground.
When the young man’s brother and friends moved in to stop the attack — asking the officer: “what are you doing?” — Lourenco pulled his gun, the witness testified. Pais, meanwhile, turned his back and stopped looking, the witness said. “I could see that he was not interested in helping us,” he said.
Officers called for backup. The witness, then on the ground, alleges Lourenco stood over him and cut his thumb on his belt, drawing blood.
“And he said: ‘You just assaulted a police officer,’” the young man testified.
The witness alleges he was kneed in the back and handcuffed; when Lourenco asked if the cuffs were on tightly, the young man said they were, prompting the officer to tighten them, the complainant testified.
When backup arrived, the young man testified, Lourenco roughed him up as he was placed in the back of the car, the officer still calling him names and saying: “that’s why you don’t play these games.”
He was taken to the police station and only then told he was facing charges, including assaulting a police officer, threatening death and assault with intent to resist arrest. When he was asked in the station if he understood the charges, he said yes, even though he didn’t.
Asked by Toronto police Insp. Dominic Sinopoli why he wrongly claimed to understand the charges, the young man responded: “You have to say yes.”
The young man said he was held over night and strip-searched, the officers all the while making “uncomfortable comments,” the witness said.
The young man’s testimony continues Friday.
keyser-_-soze on August 11st, 2017 at 17:34 UTC »
He was also busted for driving drunk twice, once in a unmarked police car.
https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2016/11/21/cop-in-neptune-four-case-drove-toronto-police-car-while-drunk.html
In May, 2008, when Lourenco was working out of 32 division, the officer was found asleep at the wheel of a car stopped in the middle of the busy intersection of Victoria Park Ave. and Consumers Rd.
According to a summary of facts contained in tribunal documents, a responding officer banged on the car window for about one minute before Lourenco awoke. The car’s engine was running, and Lourenco’s foot was on the brake.
Once awake, Lourenco “appeared to be disoriented” then attempted to put the car into gear, according to the tribunal documents. Lourenco’s blood alcohol level was nearly two times the legal limit, and he was charged with impaired driving and driving “over 80.”
Edomtsaeb on August 11st, 2017 at 16:00 UTC »
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youwantmetoeatawhat on August 11st, 2017 at 13:19 UTC »