I wonder what this portends for China's one child policy. As a result of the Chinese preference for male offspring, the gender imbalance is now around 115% males to 100 females. That is millions of Chinese men who will never have an opportunity to marry. We could see a lot more episodes like this one.
5
It must be hard being a young, male "incel" (Involuntary Celibate to you, thank you). Driven mad by internet pornography and natural hormones, infuriated by "strong" women who reject him out of hand, what's a guy to do? At least he didn't use an AK, which would have just made matters worse.
5
Count me as one of those people who feels Toronto is more vulnerable now; more vulnerable, I would argue, than other big international cities because this city is so docile. I have lived here for over 40 years, and was several miles from where this attack when it happened. Contrary to the electricity on Manhattan streets, here it feels like people are sleepwalking. We are vulnerable because of that; because we EXPECT to be safe -- its central to our identity -- and because we routinely indulge in euphemisms to avoid unpleasantness, especially now. I heard one official say the van drove "over" the people. Really? How about, the van PLOWED into them? Canadian officials are notorious for never really taking a stand on anything. I get so infuriated by Canadian news coverage I read the New York Times or watch MSNBC to find out about something in my own city.
4
A tragic case. What to do about the thousands of young men who do not have the social skills to be successful in social life, particularly romantically?
Our society talks a lot about the right to "social inclusion" on the one hand and of having a good sex life, on the other, and encourages people to blame "society" and rebel when their life does not live up to some minimum standard, so it should be no surprise that those who cannot meet that standard blame "society" when they feel excluded from that good life because of who they are, i.e. socially inadequate.
I feel sorry for the parents, who have had a terrible 25 years trying to get him to a level where he could at least get a job, and now this...
We need to do a better job helping desperate young men like this. We promised them "social inclusion" by putting them in regular schools, but can't deliver in society.
12
Many comments have pointed out that the cop who apprehended Minassian didn't shoot him. One reason could be that he and his colleagues are not conditioned by a rampant gun culture to automatically expect that he had a gun.
23
So the first category of men who should not be allowed to own guns or rent vans is "incel" - social misfits who for whatever reason attribute their inability to form normal social, emotional, and sexual bonds to evil women. This makes them victims in their own eyes who can retaliate by mass killing sprees. I think this motivation can also occur in women - for example the recent Iranian immigrant 39 year old woman who shot up UTube headquarters in San Mateo, Califoria - almost killing five people and then turning her gun on herself. This seems to be a fairly narrow and clear way to identify potential killers in advance. Could they be removed from society and treated by psychologists? Treated by professional sex workers? Obviously, both Mr. Manassian and Ms. _______ were both from loving families who cared about them but had been unable to help them. If there were a system for treatment perhaps these families could have contacted the government before their children committed these horrendous mass murders. This inability to fit into any supportive social group appears to be common to all these non-political, non-religious mass killers. And maybe it is even at the heart of the religious killers.
11
Fellas, here is a friendly reminder: Your mere existence does not mean you are entitled to a woman's body, or her time, or her attention. No woman anywhere owes you anything. Full stop.
57
Extraordinary as most cops are usually videoed behind their vehicles, where as soon as a suspect flinches he is shot multiple times and we find out later the suspect was unarmed. It's one thing to be in an academy and another to be pointed at during a mass random murder. Officer Lam could have acted selfishly and killed the suspect and it could be justified.
3
Honestly, it is astonishing to me that in this day and age people initially think, when observing a moving vehicle on the sidewalk, that its operator is in cardiac arrest.
2
This is where anti-woman rhetoric leads. This is where the subjugation of women by use of draconian laws to legislate female bodily autonomy leads. This could happen here. This is where the language used by the Christian Right and their Republican controlled government leads.
Ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment is long overdue, I’ve been waiting since the 1970s. The amendment was originally introduced in 1923, that’s 95 years ago!
What’s the holdup?
http://equalrightsamendment.org/
27
"The Christian Right" as you label it has never tried to subjugate women. Real Christians follow Jesus, who gave women unprecedented respect for his time. If you are referring to opposition to abortion, the killing of unborn human babies, -- yes -- people who care about the rights of women and all people are against that. Included among those who oppose baby killing are people of all religions and no religion at all.
4
I'd like to know what if any intervention there was for this young man who in high school displayed very odd behavior.
" had several tics and would sometimes grab the top of his shirt and spit on it, meow in the hallways and say, ‘I am afraid of girls.’ It was like a mantra.”
People who are so socially awkward and isolated need to be given attention. Too often, they are simply ignored because they are seen as "harmless".
15
As a former sped teacher I can tell you that these students get a lot of help and support. They are not ignored. If there was an easy solution it would have already been found.
15
I am also proud that the police officer did not shoot. Now Canada gets to spend a lot of money to keep this mad man in prison. Canada, oh Canada.
4
I commend the police officer in the way he arrested the suspect. He must have been terrified but he did not shoot. This should be used for training all police.
16
Fewer guns in civilian hands in Canada = less chance of a police officer being killed there than in the US.
5
So, ladies, I guess one of us should have slept with this guy. Maybe the government should start a draft - an updated Joy Division. My guess is it’s not going to work as a volunteer women’s army corp.
14
I want to vomit at the idea that a man thinks he can hate half the population and kill ten people because he can't get a woman to have sex with him. I mean, is this for real? And these "incel" losers are not even harmless. Honestly, they should be labeled terrorists.
24
If this is not terrorism then I don't know what qualifies as.
27
There does not seem to be a terrorist ideology or motive here. A copycat crime?
4
Copycat crime in that he copied the millions of men who abuse and kill women every day? It's much more than that. There is a hate crime here, someone who hates half of the population.
12
I have thought about this. I would say that this could be called an act of terrorism targeting all men and women who find pleasure in conjugal relations. Just as religious and political terrorists divide the world into us and them and then seek to do violence to the “them”, this person considered himself part of a larger group of “incels” and he was apparently targeting “Chads and Stacy’s”. This is actually so dumb and pointless that it helps to highlight how dumb and pointless all terrorist acts are. If the point of terrorism is to change the behavior of the whole group by inflicting pain on a small subset, than obviously, this does not work. People are not going to give up enjoying sex with each other (“not tonight honey, I don’t want to get run over”)just to avoid getting run over by some nut-and they sure ain’t gonna sleep with him for that purpose either. Similarly, people do not change their religions or politics due to terror-induced fear. This guy is obviously pathetic-but the 9/11 guys were just as pathetic, though perhaps less obviously so.
7
Oh so he's an incel (involuntary celibate)....a man so into his own fantasy and crying about his own unmet needs that he fails to recognize women as part of humanity, instead they are a problem, his problem. Like all murderers his grip on reality is "light" and he is a poor problem solver (his solution has been to murder his problems). Too bad for all of us that he didn't get help to adjust his thinking before murdering the women.
Dear incels, women are part of humanity, get over it.
36
Today, I learned a term I had never heard before and a new movement: Incel-Involuntary Celibate. And I wonder, could this be the reason for so much mass murder, this rage at women , this feeling of not being selected by the feminine race. Could that be the real reason, this bottled up anger, exploding into sudden violence. Paranoia sublimated into violence. I didn't even know places like 4chan existed, I know nothing of the dark web, but apparently theses killers, the long list of killers were clued into it, and these dark communities egg them on. Working women are more selective these days, and this radical change in American life, especially in big cities might be producing a toxic brew. I can't say that is leading to something terrible, because we have already arrived at that point, we are seeing a mass murder spree once a week, sometimes twice a week. We are seeing the American dream turned inside out, fueled on by a violent nation and its violent culture and easy access to guns and glorification of mayhem. They become the leading stars in their own fantasy movies right down to the scripted death scene, creating a chain letter of mass murder, with the previous killer emboldening the next. The media exposure the killers get only creates a template for the next to follow.
Is this the reason for all the mass killings rocking our nation in 2018? it just might be. Remember this: The Parkland massacre happened on Valentines day..that was no coincidence.
14
If that is why then I suggest MEN start policing other MEN. Women owe men nothing. We don't owe them sex so they don't shoot people. Why should women have to bear the emotional baggage of men who are unable to deal with reality? You have basically said that women being selective is causing violence. Well, guess what...women have every right to be selective. Men categorize women at will. They put women in "screwable and unscrewable" categories instead of looking at them as people.. Men are afraid women will laugh at them and women are afraid that they will kill them. Hey fellas, just get it together....especially your peers.
27
Maybe legalized and regulated prostitution would provide an emotional outlet for these people that are rejected by others. Sometimes, engaging in a sexual relationship can be therapeutic, even if the interaction is paid for, similar to how a client will pay a psychologist.
8
the "feminine race?"
There are more outlets for sexual gratification these days than any normal person needs. These "men" were misfits for a very long time and once they reached puberty they "chose" to blame it on women probably because women make them feel inadequate. It's really about men who feel like failures blaming others whether it's women, immigrants or Nancy Pelosi. This is about them not about women. We are as usual just a target.
19
American police forces should take a look at how the Canadian police handle such incidents.
24
My guess is they aren’t calling it terrorism yet because they haven’t linked it to a formal terrorist organization—a group trying to coordinate and direct violence against civilians to advance a political agenda.
I highly doubt they’re saying, “Hey, don’t call it terrorism, he’s white.”
9
maybe, but i think they're wrong; there are plenty of "lone wolves" that aren't members of a formal group that we have no problem identifying as terrorists; this "movement" of woman-hating, violence promoting trolls definitely qualify as terrorists to me
27
What exactly would be the significance of labeling it terrorism vs. deranged mass-murder?
4
His punishment should be life imprisonment...in a women's prison.
8
Yup. For sure.
That would just punish the women.
14
Incredibly sad - and then proud: the police officer who didn't shoot. Somewhat stunned by puzzled pedestrians walking along sidewalk behind the 'take down.' What a difference a border can make.
14
Maybe the Canadian cops got better vision than American cops. American cops see cellphone that morphs into gun. Canadian cops sees cellphone that is used to trigger "suicide by cop."
9
I guess he had a bad childhood experience with an overbearing and abusive mother. He should have read the Drama of the Gifted Child. Worked through his anger issues with a professional. Thank you.
5
Excellent resource. The author is Alice Miller, a highly regarded Swiss psychologist. She authored several books on parental child abuse.
1
I’m afraid I’m going to have to stop you there, pal. What makes you so sure he didn’t model his behavior on a remote or even abusive father?
Now we know why SB ‘couldn’t’ vote for Sec. Clinton. Anything you say from now on is suspect.
Thank you.
17
Itsmildeyes,
I'm a retired nurse who has witnessed too much. In cases of parental child abuse it is most often the mother. It's about access. Since the majority of child care falls on women, they are often the abusers.
"• Of those children who were victims of maltreatment in 2012, in 36.6 percent the mother was the perpetrator, in 18.7 percent of the cases the father was the perpetrator, and in 12.0 percent of the cases someone other than the parent was the perpetrator. "
https://www.childwelfare.gov/topics/systemwide/statistics/can/can-stats/
http://victimsofcrime.org/docs/default-source/ncvrw2015/2015ncvrw_stats_...
3
I used to be friends with an Incel. He talked nonstop about how bad women were. He was not attractive, had bad manners, a disaster of a house, was a tightwad, and wore terrible clothes but he was intelligent and made loads of money. He expected to only date beautiful, young women. He was angry these women never said yes to his advances. Never pointed the finger the other way and did some inner work. I got terribly bored with him, all his friends slowly drifted away, too, and now he is a "loner".
39
At school in sex-ed boys and girls should be taught how to approach each other, how to small-talk and how to date someone they like, with role-playing sessions. If virginity is such a problem for shy boys, sex workers should be available to chat and, if wanted, show them how pleasant sex can be. Nobody is owed sex.
20
I admit that the video of the take down started a tear reaction. The thought occurred 'noble law enforcement is real'. In the report, a local acknowledges that residents of Toronto happily compare themselves to Switzerland. There is difficulty comparing most of the US with Toronto. However, I don't know of any power group that would go out of its way to insure that the public got to see videos of such take downs here, in those cases where it operates courageously and honorably.
20
There was a previous misogynist attack in Canada; I think it was 10-20 years ago. Why were they surprised it happened again--online porn, Reddit...
8
Indeed. I think it was in the 90s, a guy shot up a tech school over anger at women.
5
On December 6, 1989, Marc Lepine shot and killed 14 female engineering students at the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal.
16
Other “signs of sympathy for misogyny” ?!? That’s just misogyny, call it what it is. We will never get anywhere with solving the problem of violence against women if we keep using these asinine passive phrases.
53
So basically, this guy’s motivation was sexual frustration. Yeah, I don’t know why he couldn’t get a date.
When my husband died and I was left without a partner, it never occurred to me to rent a truck and mow people down.
Just sayin’.
45
40,000 men who join together in their hatred of women!? Dear Lord, what a world we live in.
34
Oh I think there are far more than 40,000 men in this thought camp. Otherwise, domestic abuse and murder wouldn't be the greatest danger for women world wide. Eclipses any disease, epidemic, starvation, accidents, everything.
11
But 40,000 who join a club/group for it? To promote it? That's a whole new level of nasty.
3
Can someone explain why the Canadian government decided that this was not a terror attack? There's pretty clearly a lot of terrorized people in Toronto right now.
Honest question. What's up with that? Is it as simple as "He's not a Muslim?"
13
This has been explained over and over again in the media.
Terrorism does not mean just "terrorized people", it means for some defined political, religious, or ideological aim, not just some personal issues.
5
The fact you would PREFER it to mean "anyone who commits mass murder for whatever reason" does not make it so. That would make it meaningless. It has a specific meaning, whether you like it or not.
1
Do terrorists only come in the form of arabaic-looking men who may or may not be muslim? He sounds like a terrorist to me- intent in revenge and murder on innocents to make known his political personal views. Substitute here - women/the west/jews/catholics/sikhs are evil.
20
Why isn't his race or religion mentioned in this article?
11
This did not happen in America. Most of these comments are either about American ways of handling things such as our police shooting people or our love affair with guns. The instant labeling of mass murderers or whatever you want to call them by religious group and race is also apparently part of the American lens through which we see everything.
9
Because it's not germane.
7
It's part of the American lens when the person doing the killing is either not white, muslim, or an immigrant. If any of these are present, it becomes part of the story whether or not it contributes to the cause.
2
Violence against women can also be terrorism.
42
This was an act of terrorism.
21
It was an act of social evil, not terrorism.
7
It was terrorism.
9
One reason the police officer reacted with restraint is because guns are less common here than in the U.S. When American officers approach someone for a simple traffic stop, they are always afraid that the driver will pull a gun on them. Given the omnipresence of guns in American society, it is completely rational for police to be in constant fear that they will be shot by a citizen and to react badly.
12
D. Schreiber: we've certainly had our share of police killing civilians, mostly with mental health issues, the most horrific example in Toronto the overkill shooting of Sammy Yatim by Constable Forcillo.
5
Shades of the 2014 Isla Vista CA massacre and Euro-terrorism which has visited US as well, a copycat crazy who begged the officer to help him commit Blue Suicide, a demand that was declined. Tough professional call, especially if the perp had a detonator which . .. he didn't.
4
It's almost like there's some kind of pattern here.
Elliot Rodger had similar ideas, so do many mass shooters/killers.
Isn't there a term called "incel?" Standing for "involuntarily celibate?" Kind of says it all.
3
Who says the death penalty, handed out arbitrarily is a good thing? Sometimes life imprisonment is worse than death… Slow and torturous life, ugh!
2
They're a waste of resources is why, they forfeit their lives and rights the minute they choose to deny others of the same.
Why are Canadians and Europeans in general such cowards in modern times? You rely on your governments for literally everything and *still* you have no utopia and no protection from invaders. Why are you not capable of self-protection or self-reliance?
Americans do just fine with our rights, especially regarding firearms. What you hear and read in the media is simply an over-amplification of the most tragic stories of the day.
There aren't nearly so many tragedies on a daily basis as the news dictates their is. The business of media is sensationalism and tragedy, and that's what sells the news.
Wow, not many connecting this atrocity to Facebook.
2
Another very ill person for whom no help was offered or given! Mental illness needs to be addressed when seen but we have not yet figured out the protocols to do so. Here in the USA we say that a person's individual rights prevent us from helping, indeed restraining, an obviously disturbed individual. Look what just happened in Memphis! We who are rational are more the problem than the mentally ill.
3
All these posters here commenting on terrorism, misogynist leanings and the like should read the story in the Toronto Globe & Mail for some background on the perpetrator. This guy is autistic and has serious mental issues which seem to be mainly responsible for his actions. He is not a terrorist, he is just severely mentally ill.
13
I'm autistic, but I'm also a woman. Not once in my life, not even as a child, have I had any misbehaviour or weirdness on my part excused because of my autism. I am held responsible for my actions. I was severely abused and have PTSD too, but in a woman that's "daddy issues", not an excuse.
Also, the men and boys in the "incel" groups think autistic women don't exist, that we are lying, and we should be murdered all the same. I'm disinclined to give them any leeway because they're autistic.
What is wrong with these people is something more than just autism.
(And when was the last time you heard autism being used to excuse a female mass murderer?)
26
Stop using mental health as a way to dismiss misogyny. This guy can be autistic AND STILL HATE WOMEN. He can be "severely mentally ill" AND STILL HATE WOMEN.
Now, if you want to have a conversation about misogyny as a mental illness unto itself, we can do that. But stop (seriously, stop) removing misogyny from the conversation because a person has mental health issues.
Every missed opportunity to confront hatred of women head on is just another chance for a privileged, entitled (almost always) straight/cisgender white guy to act violently because a woman won't date him, or won't sleep with him after a date, or was promoted over him, or didn't smile at him on the sidewalk, or didn't sit with him at lunchtime, or moved away from him when he was crowding her on the train, or kept her headphones in on the bus, or...
30
Which came first: the chicken or the egg. I will bet that if you examine every person who "hates/wants to kill or hurt" some group of people--be it women, blacks, gays, etc.--that their primary problem lies within: an abusive childhood, neglect, awkwardness leading to ostracism, all of the above. It's irrational to hate a group of people. Not that all people who are mentally ill or had bad childhoods will be killers/haters but all if not most haters/killers have personal issues. The problem with making these crimes about the hate is that you are barking up the wrong tree and will never get to the bottom of the problem, plus it makes the targeted people feel badly when it really has very little to do with them. Plus, it gives the perps a more noble bearing than they should have.
That cop is superman. Wow.
10
Sounds like terrorism to me. Terrorism against women.
26
When a guy gets slapped down every time he asks a woman for a date, who has the problem -- the women or the guy?
3
From the article it seems this guy never even asked. He was afraid of girls and women and ran from them. Doesn't look like he gave women the chance to reject him. He has serious mental problems and fixated on women as the source of his woes.
9
Slapped down-nice phrasing.
1
Judy,
What do you mean, exactly? Is saying no to a man whether it’s a date or sex mean women are deserving of rage against us or rape? Are men supposed to wear us down until we say yes? If we go on a date, does that automatically mean we’re agreeing to sex as payment for dinner? Need I go on? The answer is no to all of the above. All of this also applies when women ask men out. Whatever happened to mutual respect?!
2
What did women do to him to make him this way?
The article reported that some girls in school tried to befriend him but he rejected their attempts at friendship. It seems that he did this to himself.
4
What did women do to him to make him this way?
Nothing. It is not any woman's fault or blame, it was his, and the group of *men* who similarly blame women for their own inability to cope with normal life.
4
I'm not sure how many people are aware of the cess pool of toxic masculinity that thrives online. Communities of misogyny and fear of women. Of rape threats, harassment and trolling. Reddit. 4Chan. YouTube. Twitter. I'm not surprised one of them acted out a sick fantasy.
From these communities come many in the ranks of the alt-right and rightwing extremism. In addition to misogyny they also trade in racism and anti-Semitism. Though marginal in the mainstream, they have a significant presence in online culture. The media ought to do more to inform the public about these guys.
31
Interesting how many of the most recommended comments completely ignore the killer's motives in lieu of talking about guns, or the actions of the police officer.
Is misogyny really that hard to talk about?
22
It’s hard to believe that people from tiny towns in Texas (church shooting last year) to major metropolitan cities in Canada still think “this sort of thing couldn’t happen here”. Unfortunately, these tragedies can happen anywhere.
4
Canadian cops have had their issues with overreaction too as reported in this newspaper. They took steps to deal with it though and it appears to be working. Still, I'm amazed the cop who made the arrest put himself is such a vulnerable position unless he determined some how the suspect did not have a gun. Where the heck is the back up?
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/23/world/americas/canada-toronto-van-ped...
2
Officer Lam arrested the perpetrator within 7 minutes of the first call to police, more than a mile away from the start. He was the first officer at that scene. He had the perpetrator in handcuffs within minutes.
He has been trained to tell the difference between a cell phone and a gun. It was broad daylight on a clear day.
What do you think he did wrong?
3
At what point will violence towards women or out of hatred of women be considered terrorism?
24
My guess is never, because to do such a thing would condemn most religions as terrorism.
18
Your comment implies that "most religions" teach or promote violence, hatred, and terrorism toward women. What world do you live in -- what religions are included in your "most"? I am a Christian and have read and studied the Bible through and through and find that women are created in God's image, are to be partners with men, are praised as businesswomen, in one case is praised as a military leader, and are given respect -- even by Jesus who went above and beyond the bounds of his culture's customs to defend and associate with women.
3
I’m not sure why the Canadian police are withholding information about where the suspect was born. When the terrorist shot 50 people at the Orlando nightclub, the police tried to sell an absurd lie that the shooter was a closeted gay man, not a terrorist. Here we are five the Story that the driver, like the Sandy Hook shooter, was autistic.
2
There was a case similar to this, at the beginning of April in Germany, when a mentally disturbed 48-year old German, with no terrorist links, drove his mini van into pedestrians in the city of Münster. He killed two peple and injured several others, then shot himself in the head.
A few days before, he'd talked about committing suicide in a spectacular manner. He had previously attempted suicide, at least once.
The Canadian case seems to echo the one in Germany, in that we now see mentally disturbed men, using tactics they've learned from watching terrorist attacks. The purpose being, to end their own miserable lives, while killing others in the process.
10
The perpetrator in this case appears to have modelled his attack on one that happened in California in 2014 where a similarly twisted man killed 6 people.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/24/world/canada/incel-reddit-meaning-reb...
There have been no links reported to any interest he may have had about attacks in Germany. His internet searches seem to be focused on American atrocities.
1
Mr Minassian apparently was a socially inept person with few friends, and no history of violent behavior. But with the advent of Internet socializing, Mr Minassian found a 40,000 member Reddit group of kindred spirits that evidently shared his women oriented social phobias. In this sense he was no longer a loner, rather an "incel" in a sea of incels. As an incel the "Chads" and "Stacys" were well defined antagonists.
So, as what he thought would be the final act of his life, he rents a truck and mows down Tracy's and Chad's. Would he have done it if he was still a loner? That's for the experts to figure out.
12
Mentally ill and religious fanatics have had access to automatic weapons or vans and trucks for decades. That is not why overnight this surge in public killings is plaguing our society.
Law enforcement is abusing surveillance tech and harassing people relentlessly. Law enforcement can't use revelations and data captured from surveillance against a target in a court of law- but they can use it extra-judicially to taunt and harass a target until they break.
The west did not just go from approx. 10 public killings a year to approx. 350 public killings a year overnight! Something is happening which is causing these events to occur.
People need to understand that surveillance by the state is being abused and it is wreaking havoc in our society. We need regulation against police-stalking.
Editor’s note: This comment has been anonymized in accordance with applicable law(s).
1
And then the three shoppers casually stroll by the scene with shopping bags oblivious to the drama playing out only a few meters from where they are walking...
5
These are such sad times on so many fronts. This again is a case of a copy cat attack and therefore preventable. There is academic literature that backs spate in copy cat suicides in teenagers with increased media reporting. Onus is on the media to take responsibility on how they handle such situations in 24x7 breaking news world. Secondly, instead of expressing anguish, I was moved to first check if it was a Muslim. Let's condemn such actions for what they are...these are barbaric incidents like the ones in Sandy Hooks or Las Vegas or elsewhere and condemnable as any terrorist attack. Rather than seeking refuge in comprehending such incidents by demonizing groups based on religion, we must seek to prevent such incidents on multiple fronts....smart policing, responsible media reporting and working to build bridges between communities. My heart and prayer reaches out to this beautiful country. Canada is a beacon to the world.
2
We in the United States filter police applicants to make sure, in their psychological profile, that they will have no regrets if they kill someone. Then we train (or poorly train) them to protect themselves at all costs by shooting at a suspect if there is even the faintest glimmer of a possibility of being harmed themselves (video after video of unarmed, and even subdued suspects, being shot, beaten and killed). Then we fail to winnow out racially biased applicants, and do not properly train officers to temper overt or latent racial and ethnic prejudices. Finally, we throw in the current gun culture terrifying all citizens, including police officers, and we have a mix that causes civilian carnage on a daily basis. That police officer in Canada showed us how it could and should be done. Brave man, professional police officer, rational gun laws.
14
One of two men with a grievance against women posting on social media is something along the lines of sharing. However, 40,000 of them forming a group and echoing and reinforcing each other's hatred of women is almost certain to lead to one or more of them acting on this hatred. When 40,000 of people join together for a positive purpose it encourages positive behaviour. The same is true for a group joining together in hatred. One magnifies the positive feelings in the group while the other invites negativity which can spill over into violent actions. If people want the internet to be open to all no matter what their views then we must accept the risk that comes from angry, troubled or mentally ill people expressing themselves and being supported in their anger, hatred and even their mental illness. I have no idea which applies in the particular case this article addresses but in general, as we learned recently with Facebook, social media really needs to be looked at both as a good and a very real evil.
6
Regarding the motivations of the murderer, just yesterday I read an article describing the huge imbalance between males and females in the populations of China and India which has already created a large percentage of males who will never find wives or partners. This motivation for violence is not going to go away any time soon. It may also be a part of the political changes we are seeing world wide with the growth of authoritarianism and religious fundamentalism extending the reign of male priviledge. It doesn't bode well for the future.
21
Every single Police Officer should be shown the video of how restrained, in control and how professional the conduct of Officer Lam was.
America has a lot of work to do so that it's Police operate and react in relation to the carrying out of their jobs in relation to their role, duty and conduct in a way that is considered acceptable and resulting in the best outcome possible which often is neither considered nor taken.
21
You are assuming that what the police did in Canada was correct.
I disagree.
Maybe if they had used force he would not have killed 10 people.
Maybe he had a gun and would have used it to kill more people.
The fact he didn't kill more people is not proof that the cops were right not to shoot him,
I feel that they were taking a chance that they should not have had the right to take.
If they had an opportunity to shoot him they should have done so.
2
@stone: Minassian had already mowed those people down before he was confronted by the police. I don't understand your argument.
He pointed an object at the police officer and told him, "I have a gun in my pocket." The officer quickly and correctly surmised that if the suspect had a gun he would have drawn it already. Minassian urged the officer to shoot him in the head -- clearly seeking "blue suicide." The officer bravely and wisely holstered his gun and approached the suspect holding a baton -- and the suspect flung away the object and surrendered.
No additional people were injured. Minassian was apprehended alive, which should be the goal of every arrest. Now we have the opportunity to learn about motive.
The officer showed tremendous courage and superb judgment. He's a hero in my book.
10
The police officer deserves high praise for his courage and restraint. But, although it is always nice to hear my country praised, sadly the Toronto police have acted in exactly the same way American police do.
Most notoriously in 2013, a police officer shot and killed an 18 year old Syrian immigrant who was on a street car, holding a pocket knife. He had let all of the passengers off and was not threatening the driver who remained on the car. A police officer arrived on the scene and within a minute had slaughtered this young man. He fired when the man did not drop the knife and seemed to be moving towards him. He fired one round which put Yatem on the floor and then after a short pause fired more shots and then for good measure the young man was tasered.
The outrage was such that the officer was charged with murder but oddly enough was only convicted of attempted murder. My guess is the the jury divided on the murder charge, but felt that the slaughter could not be ignored altogether. He was sentenced to 6 years but was given bail until his appeal could be decided.
This is not the only time Toronto police have unnecessarily killed people, but it is the worst. That day I was ashamed of my old hometown and of Canada.
It may be that the Toronto police are receiving better training and, if so, Sammy Yatim's death was not only in vain. And the public outrage and conviction of the officer speaks well of Toronto and Canada.
But we are not perfect here.
8
First just like in your country you should realize that police sometimes are right and sometimes wrong.
Most cops in the USA have never used their gun to shoot someone.
You are therefore wrong to suggest that the cops in the USA need better training.
Even if I accepted your opinion that this officer in Toronto was wrong to kill this man why would you be ashamed of your home town because of the actions that one cop took.
You should not blame all the cops when one of them did something wrong or praise all if one cop has done something right.
If you believe the cop was right this time it should not be a reason to praise all cops as another one might have shot and killed this guy.
Is Alek Minassian, another man who thinks that he has a God-given right to sex with women and that, if he does not receive it, it must be because he's being unjustly deprived of his due by uppity feminists and other conspirators?
75
Why are you talking about this? He drove his van into random PEDESTRIANS, he did not target women specifically (which he could have easily done if he wanted to).
2
Yes, he appears to be an "incel" -- involuntary celibate -- a dysfunctional young man who blames all women for his own lack of social successes. If you link to the other articles here, there is a whole underground internet community of such men.
2
Having watched the amazing video of Constable Lam's courage and professionalism on display in the most challenging situation imaginable, it is impossible, sad, but impossible not to think that in the United States the first officer on scene would not have either avoided contact completely and called for back up or simply opened fire in the first possible moment. Obviously, that was what the suspect was expecting, hoping for and planning on.
It's almost impossible to express the appropriate admiration for Constable Lam. Critics of police tactics in the United States don't misunderstand the danger of the job, they just question the attitude behind it. "Shoot first and ask questions later!" is an attitude appropriate to Sixties television shows, not 21st Century policing in the most heavily armed country on the planet.
The difference in attitude between the United States and all the other English-speaking advanced democracies is that the police officer's first duty is to protect life - including the life of a suspect - in any situation. The police officer expects to accept the risks involved in not using deadly force until it is a clear necessity. The priority of saving an innocent life is higher than the priority of sparing the police officer injury or death at any cost.
When an unarmed person is shot to death by police now, it represents a catastrophe in policing standards and attitudes - and official priorities. It's not training, it's attitude - to saving innocent lives.
55
Yes the priority of saving innocent life is higher than the priority of sparing the police officer.
I think you meant possible innocent.
The police in America do not purposely kill people who are unarmed.
At the time they shot they did not know that.
For every individual who the cops have killed that was unarmed there are many more who have been armed.
If the cops wait to shoot until they know without question the guy they think has a gun has one that bad guy will use his gun before the cop has used his.
He may kill a cop and or some other innocent person.
It is a decision that the cop have to make to use or not to use his weapon and you only hear about the times when the weapon was used when the wrong decision was made and a unarmed person was killed.
You never hear about the times when the right decision was made when a armed guy was killed before that guy could kill others.
You do not hear about the times a wrong decision was made not to use a gun and the bad guy escaped.
The truth is that most cops have never used their weapons and when they do they have right to do so.
That video should be mandatory for every policeman in the US. That shows the training and steadiness of that officer. Good job Toronto Police department!!!
69
Bravo to the Canadian police. In the US, this guy would have been shot dead instantly. The American police departments, with their shoot first and ask questions later mentality can learn a lot from their Canadian counterparts.
40
Kill 10 people, get taken into custody alive, even after pointing an object at police and claiming to have a gun.
Must not be the US.
I don't understand why US police are so incapable of doing their jobs without a massive body count.
41
Because in Canada, Guns are not so ubiquitous. Gun sales are restricted.
In the US, choose a spot, and draw a circle of 100 miles around it. You would be lucky of there isn't a store selling guns, in the circle..try it.
Now imagine yourself being a cop in this kind of country..as a cop in Canada, your default assumption is that the suspect may not be carrying a firearm..in the US, its opposite. Imagine spending 9 hours every day on duty in the US, as a cop. What would you do after 5-6 years, when you face a suspect, with something looking like a weapon?
Cops everywhere are the same. Its the ground conditions that tune their reactions.
2
Possibly USA police recruitment from military has lead to our country 's shoot to kill tactics.Canada may have a different career path and training.
1
What if that guy did have a gun and used it.
If that had happened what would you think.
Canadian mass murders are rare but share an odd penchant for killing women. recall the Polytechnique massacre of women in Quebec a while back.
21
1989 is more than 'a little while back'. I don't think Canadian women are in any greater danger than American women. We have 1/10 the homicide rate per capita that you do and it is mostly drug dealers killing each other.
1
Never in a million years would that guy be alive in the US after begging to be shot in the head by the apprehending officer as he pointed what looked like a gun at him and after murdering 19 people with his truck. What is the training that the Canadian officer received that made him react and corral this suspect without injury to the suspect or himself. I find it amazing, incredible and enlightening.
39
What many commentators in the press have missed is the mature and measured response by the police...no shot fired with perp alive and in jail.
32
You mean "exactly like the apprehension of Nikolas Cruz, the Parkland school shooter"?
2
i want to make 2 points. 1. Current sentencing for 1st degree murder in Canada..premeditated murder...life sentence..can apply for parole after 25 years. Some never get parole. Things were changed with previous govt. There used to be something called THE FAINT HOPE clause where murderers could apply for early parole...I forget how many years early and sentencing was the same even for multiple murders. Now for multiple murders people can be sentenced for consecutive 25 year life sentences. This guy will never get out.
2. Re trucks as weapons...I believe I read that Germany with their advanced technology have invented a braking system for trucks that if they crash into something the truck automatically stops. This is a simple advance of todays car technology. Probably expensive to require it for all vans and trucks but possible.
18
Similar to air bag technology, but instead it applies brakes or shuts down vehicle.
Expensive but if truck rental firms are sued for not doing something perhaps not too expensive.
16
There was a time when people who had mental health issues were locked up and treated for their illnesses. Now they are out on the streets as mental health is in the too hard basket for financial and pc reasons in all western democratic countries surely there has to be some middle ground as hundreds of innocents die every year or is just a price we now have to pay for crimes committed by people with mental health issues.
17
Please provide evidence of the "hundreds of innocents" who die because of the mentally ill. Because this guy was a violent misogynist does not mean he was mentally ill. Most of the mentally ill never hurt anyone. People kill for plenty of reasons that have nothing to do with actual illness. Anger, resentment and fear kill far more people than delusions and hallucinations.
4
I can't speak for Australia, but in the US.....liberal groups like the ACLU SUED the government and states for keeping mentally ill, violent patients confined in mental hospitals. Their belief was that such people would do better living in the larger community and that they had "rights" to do stuff like live on the street. So the states had no choice but to let such people go. There was no basis to keep the hospitals open, and they are all closed down now.
In the case of Nikolas Cruz, the Parkland shooter....the "system" fell over backwards to treat him "fairly" and give him dozens of "second chances", and of course, with kid gloves because he was "hispanic" (in reality, he was not, but his adoptive father had a hispanic surname). So even when he manifested clearly dangerous behaviors -- threatening neighbors, torturing animals, putting violent threats on the internet -- everyone felt helpless to do anything about it.
3
A lot of praise in these comments for the police officer's handling of the confrontation with the suspect, and deservedly so. But a detail jumped out at me in the beginning of the accompanying article describing it. It said he pointed a gun like object at the officer and said he had a gun. Most of us assume an American police officer would have shot him then and there.
I'm guessing the availability of handguns is much less in Canada, giving the Canadian officer much better odds that the suspect was bluffing, and allowing him to de-escalate rather than shooting first and asking questions later.
The proliferation of guns in this country has created an arms race between law enforcement and criminals, leading to a trigger happy, shoot first attitude by police, for all intents and purposes out of necessity. The resolution of this horrible incident in Canada shows it didn't have to be this way.
53
In my experience, the people who blame the opposite sex for their failures in life are usually so incompetent with social interaction that they wind up alone and unhappy. A well-adjusted man or woman can spot one of these basket cases from a mile away, and they avoid them like the plague. It's a shame that we don't have effective counseling for the social pariahs. It's inevitable that a few of them will go off the deep end, unleashing their frustrations on innocent people.
41
A. 40,000-strong group that openly espouses hatred of women? I wonder how many harbor these feelings secretly? Judging from the avalanche of revelations of men habitually abusing women, previously with impunity, I suspect its many more than we know.
62
i hope officer lam has the necessary support and assistance needed to come down from what would have the most harrowing, mind-snapping situation in anyone's life. commend his heroism, to be sure. but, remember that man experienced more stress in those few minutes than most of us will experience in several lifetimes.
kudos.
38
Regarding the actions of the policeman, what many American readers may not appreciate is the non-existence of handguns in Canada. It is very difficult to obtain handguns in Canada, if not impossible for the general public. Only if there is a very valid reason to own or carry a handgun, such as armoured car personnel and I believe, some collectors, can you obtain the necessary permit. The only handguns in Canada are the illegal ones that are smuggled from the US Given that Mr Minassian needed a truck to engineer his carnage, the chances that he might have a handgun as well were slight to non-existent. That does not lessen the bravery shown by the policeman while dealing with an obviously unbalanced and still dangerous individual.
60
I’m from Toronto and you are spot on.
23
Your analysis is exactly correct! The terror that American police feel in even simple interactions and that drives them to shoot people absurdly often is a product of the right wing propaganda machine driven by the NRA and vile politicians who vilify minorities for political gain. Without the mountain of guns available to every troubled individual in the country, the US might be capable of this officer's steady and brave handling of the situation. I know who I blame when suicide by cop is a credible option.
2
When a person who drives an armoured vehicle is in sight my spouse and I often whisper “they have guns”. That’s how unusual it is for someone to have a gun on them in this country. It’s a remarkable thing.
1
Thanks a lot to the New York Times for noticing and praising the fact that the Toronto policeman did not fire his gun at the murderer. I really hope the police in my other country, the US where I was born, take notice as well. In one way, it's kind of sad that a policeman from Toronto gets accolades from people in the US for not firing his gun. When I was growing up in the US, the police didn't pump unarmed assailants full of 5, 10, or 15 bullets and then claim their lives were threatened because the person was holding a cell phone or a toy or some such thing. Possibly it was always happening — to black people — and white people like myself may not have known because the newspapers didn't find police shootings of black people newsworthy. But until recent times, really, I never heard of police getting scared and literally riddling an unarmed and often completely innocent person with bullet holes. Relatives must hardly have anything left to bury. Something is really wrong with police training, recruitment or accountability in the US. There is very rarely any conviction on police killings. It's necessary, welcomed, but on reflection, sad, that the innumerable police killings of unarmed men in the US, black or white, has made this Toronto policeman noticed as a hero. He certainly is a great role model. He should become the poster man for principled and courageous law enforcement.
108
We in the U.S. own more than one gun for every man, woman and child. In comparison, Canada severely restricts gun ownership. A Canadian officer can assume, safely, that a suspect is not armed. An American officer has every reason to assume a suspect is armed and ready to shoot. Twenty-five hundred officers were assaulted with a firearm in the United States in one year --2016 -- and 62 of them died. In contrast, 122 Canadian officers died in over FIVE DECADES between 1961 and 2009. Even accounting for the difference in populations, the contrast is remarkable. I completely agree that our officers need exceptional recruiting, training, and accountability. And I am not so blind as to believe there aren't plenty of racists among them. These people must be screened out and removed. But let's be clear -- we've armed police officers with shotguns and handguns against bad guys with military-style, rapid-fire, high-velocity weapons. Wouldn't anyone be frightened and trigger happy in the average cop's shoes?
5
Had the police officer not immediately noticed he had a gun, then he should have shot and killed him. Being patient to see if a guy may or may not have a gun that he's threatening people with, is something a policeperson should be fired for. The suspect had given up his rights of protection if hes threatening those same rights of others.
4
Might is simply be some mistrust and WAY too many guns on the street?
Thank you NRA for both.
7
A terrorist attack generally must have a specific target, and we've already had some media outlets insinuate that the protagonist is Muslim, yet this is false; in view of his Facebook diatribes against women when he couldn't get a date, he was a misogynist terrorist except for one thing---he didn't exclusively target women as Marc Lepine did in 1989. As I posted earlier, too many people ardently desire to point fingers, and find facile scapegoats. It seems that some people, regardless of political following, aren't too keen on understanding what happened.
27
He expressed anger at women and was afraid they would hurt him. Perhaps this came from his upbringing or parents.
14
Pure, and cruel speculation. He may have had the most loving family imaginable, who for most of his life watched him struggle with disabilities and mental illness and were unable to help.
Please think before you post things like this.
6
Jean, it is sensible speculation. If they weren't able to help they should have gotten him locked up and the key thrown away.
Except that is nearly impossible, not just due to the legal system but also the cost of hospitalization and the vanishingly small number of institutions that actually confine people anymore.
3
Anyone who hurts their spouse, partner or children are seriously damaged human beings. More attention should be paid towards those who violate the physical lives of others. It should be considered severe violence when a man beats a defenseless woman or child, not DOMESTIC violence. How often do women die at the hands of men? Or murder their entire family then kill themselves?
Violent men must never be tolerated, ever.
65
Brilliant police officer. Maybe he can train US officers? Brave and smart.
79
Not smart if he didn't know if it was a gun or not.
He put himself, thus his partners, and everyone else in danger by waiting to "be sure".
1
right. imagine a U.S. police officer behaving that way!!
2
I noticed pedestrians on the sidewalk behind the suspect during this confrontation (surprised me that they weren't running away). If the police officer had shot at the suspect, a bullet could have struck one of them. THAT would be putting "everyone else in danger."
7
Why can’t people off themselves and call it a day!
45
Dave Rideout, they do. All to often. Look up the statistics for suicide. Especially among people the age of this murderous man. For every one of people like Aek Minassian, there are (guessing here) 50,000 who simply commit suicide. But, Dave, those suicides have a horrific effect on the families and friends of the person who commits suicide. It is not headlines. It is not "the news". It is quiet, but the devastation is the same.
Maybe there is nothing to be done. Or that can be done. But there is a mental health epidemic amongst young men.
15
But no epidemic among young women. This "epidemic" appears limited to white males (of all ages), and it seems inextricably linked to their perception of lost unearned privilege, lost overwhelming social dominance, and lost consequence-free violent control over all women and minority men. Too bad.
4
There is an epidemic of suicide among young people, including young women.
Your words are unkind and unsympathetic.
That attitude of accusation and uncaring does not help anybody, any of us.
Amazed at that police officer. That guy would have had so many bullets in him if it was in US.
Props to Canadian police using their brains not just their guns.
79
Yes, he deserves praise for courage and restraint. He was also policing in a country where most people don’t carry guns. In a city of 6 million these deaths are homicides 18 through 27 for 2018.
8
This is especially disturbing in light of the article in today's NYT "Where 8-year-old was raped and killed, Hindus rally around suspects." The article also quotes a prominent Hindu lawyer: "She is a girl. How intelligent can she be?' No surprise that misogyny is rampant (as is Islamophobia). While the US is far less misogynist than India, our leadership isn't exactly pro-women.
95
I noticed last night watching the video that the officer didn't just open fire...how un-American!!!
My family had a cottage in Algonquin Park, so I've been vacationing in Ontario since I was 3. Toronto is like my 2nd city. And having lived in Detroit, I also know the words to O Canada. When people said "we have to move to Canada" when you-know-who was elected, I was dead serious when I said I'm going.
There is just so much wrong with the American way of training the police, and some of the comments below reflect that. Shoot first and ask questions later is just nonsense. And officers who feel justified in using excessive force -- James O'Neill, are you reading this? -- is just nonsense. I'm terrified around cops, and I'm a 50-something white boy from Greenwich! It's not just Black Lives that Matter -- its ALL lives. And a cop's life is not more valuable than anyone else's.
Good work officer, you assessed a difficult situation correctly, and showed the world How It's Done.
72
Misogyny acted out in a violent manner IS gender terrorism. This monster cited the Santa Barbara killer as inspiration, but there is also the 2009 Collier Township PA shooting, where the man targeted women at a gym and played the "incel victim" card. And Canada also had another awful gender terrorism attack way back in 1989 - no jingoistic labels then, but the killer left notes detailing his hatred of women.
77
Who doesn't have some kind of anger against women, is that reason for us to run each other over in a van, this guy has deeper problems than women....
5
None of the men I know have 'some sort of anger against women'.
6
You're being sarscastic - at least I hope so. I suspect there are plenty of people don't have "some kind of anger against women." Do you, There?
5
You mean anger toward women is normal and understandable? Why? What a bizarre and disturbing statement.
3
He’s a card carrying member of the alt right. His now deleted Facebook hints at such affiliation by his usage of alt-right and MRA codewords. This is a terrorist attack plain and simple.
60
There are many more countries killing thousands of more people than Canada and the United States, why else would thousands of people be flocking to the states in droves, it's not because were the worst place to live in the world, every American here needs to grow up, get on their knees and thank God that they live here.
If you do feel otherwise, and that could be the case, we have the luxury of thousands of beautiful airports spread all across this wonderful country that can take you to where ever you'd like to go (and stay).
Part of being free is that you can go wherever you want, no one is keeping any American citizen here.....
5
It's so true There, many countries have a serious violence problem, more serious than the US or Canada.
However, comparing Venezuela, Honduras, or Myanmar to the United States and Canada is a pretty low bar. It's not surprising that people think Ohio is better than Kandahar- it would be pretty bad if they didn't.
There are also many countries that have far less violence than El Norte. Pretty much all of Western Europe, for instance.
But I would like to point out that:
A. Those nice countries often have immigration laws, so you can't just show up and live there, EVEN if you are American (shocker!), and
B. The US doesn't have thousands of beautiful airports- the US has thousands of inadequate, superannuated, and decaying airports and a very few beautiful ones.
Given that, I think people will just stay in the US and try to make it a better place. And annoy you.
11
Part of being an American is the right and responsibility to shine a light on the imperfections of our society. Seems you missed history and civics class.
Signed,
a proud naturalized citizen.
16
In every country I've ever lived in they all think everyone "needs to grow up, get on their knees and thank God that they live here". Every country uses this argument to shut down any criticism.
By qualifying this as the “deadliest” attack, the bar has just been set for the next person with a grudge and a blaze of glory who comes along. God help the poor innocent next one beyond that needlessly had to die thanks to the overly psychoanalytical, statistically hyperbolic competitive press coverage of this massacre. Crazy people probably kill people every day only without a mention. It’s tragic and details not make it any less.
3
This officer's behavior is exemplary, but it cannot be expected in every similar situation. It looks like by some lucky break, zen-like ability to disregard adrenaline, or maybe just excellent eyesight, the officer immediately determined the object in the suspect's hands was not a weapon. At that point, the officer was in control. He was constantly re-assessing the threat and even had the presence of mind to turn off his siren, mid-confrontation. This is one of the finest pieces of police work I've ever seen. Cheers to you sir.
38
It may be of some help that Canadian police do not expect firearms at every scene they attend.
5
Canadian police should be commended for apprehending this guy alive. If he had been a black man pointing a gun at police in a US city, he would be dead now. Perhaps American police departments could learn from this. After all, the next guy who points something that looks like a gun at somebody may not be a murderer.
27
I can't help but wonder if in the US the police would show so much restraint in not shooting the perp. I don't mean that as a criticism, but more as a symptom of too much violence and too many guns in the US. The stress we put on police officers (especially via rampant gun ownership) is so high that knee-jerk self-preservation actions are more likely to occur here.
27
Agreed. It is hard to compare between the two countries as the US has over 300 million guns floating around and more importantly so many more homicide with guns (volume and percentage) that this situation would be looked at differently even if training is the same. I'm not sure if this officer,Ken Lam, if he were in the States, would be as sure that the suspect would not shoot or did not have a gun in his hand or back pocket. Not taking anything away from his courageous action but we can't demonize the police in the US.
1
So when will start addressing the real issue?
Men obviously have severe issues with violence.
All of these serial murders, sexual assaults, etc, are at least at 95% done by men.
When do we start talking and acting about that fact?
What in our society makes it that way? Could we try enhance more positive behaviors in our men? The models our society foster through men’s idealism and “manhood” ought to be rethought. Because it is not working.
85
Hmmm ... bit of a logical flaw here. The fact that most of those who cause violence are men is not the same as saying most men cause violence. See the difference between the two statements?
Not saying there's not an issue, but if you don't diagnose properly, you won't find the cure.
1
One More Time, what are you willing to do to address male issues which may lead to violence?
Because my experience is that if you say "Hey, men are facing issues X,Y, and Z," the response isn't "How can we fix those issues?"
The response is typically "Male privilege! Women have it worse! Men control everything!"
Which means, of course, that nothing gets done to address the issues, aside from incarceration etc., which does nothing to address root causes.
3
I don't think that is the real issue but it is one of may problems..
Very few men have acted badly towards women but you are right that when it does happen one of the reasons it happens is that individual did not have the moral compass most men do have and that society could have done something
to correct that but wasn't done because this individual is a male and this behavior that can lead do violence isn't frowned on.
I believe though you know very little about how and why men behave badly compared to how women behave.
It's not popular to say in some circles,
Men have a predisposition towards violence compared to women.
It's biology.
It's in our genes.
It should be expected that compared to women men would behave badly.
Thoughts and prayers with the loved ones and families of the victims. I am most impressed by how this particular officer handled the situation. Had it been in the US -- and in particular a black man -- he would have been pulverized by at least 50 gun shots, and the officers would have explained that he pointed a threatening object, and everyone would have called it a day as "reasonable" use of force http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2016/08/ho... . THANK YOU Officer, for your reasoned professionalism. Maybe this officer should teach a mandatory course in crisis intervention handling at police academies in the US. Now we can hopefully get more information from this suspect to better understand the psychology of these types of action.
13
Can someone please explain this sentence as written:
"Mr. Alce, for his part, went to see whether he could help, rolling over some of the victims to determine whether they were alive, and administering CPR."
As described previously, Mr. Alce "was waiting at a traffic light at Yonge Street and Finch Avenue on his way to the park to enjoy a sunny day off..."
The article never mentioned whether Mr. Alce was a pedestrian waiting at the light or was he in a vehicle waiting at the light.
Therefore my confusion regarding the sentence above.
They do things differently in Canada.
5
Does it matter?
To conspiracy theories these details matter a lot.
Another hero: Two in two days: Mr. James Shaw Jr. who stopped the Waffle House shooter; and the police officer in Toronto who showed incredible bravery and judgment capturing alive the suspected murderer of ten people.
We need to celebrate and reward these heroes who walk among us with humility and selflessness, love and compassion.
50
And both did it without firing a shot.
10
From an article attempting to explain Trump supporters, which sounded perfect here: "...weren’t driven by anger over the past, but rather fear of what may come. White, Christian and male voters, the study suggests, turned to (Mr. Trump) because they felt their status was at risk...". This guy, obviously not up to snuff mentally or socially, still thought he should be considered superior due to his gender.
31
Sex, not "gender" That word means nothing concrete.
Google can appeal yet another merit of self-driving.
2
The suspect was suspected of treating women poorly. Are women equal or not? The Celtic women of Europe through the ages fought alongside their male partners to the death. You go girl.
7
"Mr. Alce, for his part, went to see whether he could help, rolling over some of the victims to determine whether they were alive, and administering CPR."
The author should review this statement. If it is correct Mr. Alce should be in jail.
3
Perhaps he moved then from lying face-down to lying face-up to assess if there was breathing or any movement... Rolling them over. Not running over them.
2
What for? He rolled the victims over to see if they were alive. Reading comprehension.
1
Why?
Is it a crime to administer help to victims of a crime and possibly save lives?
Perhaps you should review your statement or worse, your laws...if you are correct!
1
I don’t know if this is to be considered but the restraint shown by the policeman can it be due to gun control? There’s not a proliferation of guns in the city or in Canada, with that in mind does it help the policeman show restraint?
17
Yes. The policeman's response reflects the fact that guns in general are less common in Canada than in the US. But maybe even more important it reflects the fact that Canadians in general do not see the use of deadly force as a desirable solution to problems while Americans often do. The lack of gun control in the US (in fact the proliferation of carry and stand your ground laws which do the exact opposite of limiting gun possession and use) and the amount of both civilian and police violence is caused by a distinctly American cultural attitude that glamourizes the use of deadly force in many circumstances. Remember the mythical "good guy with a gun" is still a killer. Having lived my first 49 years in the US and the last 8 in Canada, I'm increasingly aware of how different American and Canadian cultural attitudes toward the use of force are. That's one of many reasons, I've decided to apply for Canadian citizenship: universal health care over universal gun ownership is about as clear a contrast as you can get.
1
Whether or not a guy like this is labeled a terrorist, a misogynist, a racist or a sociopath, they all seem to have one thing in common, i.e., taking innocent lives as part of a perverse suicide plan. The cowardice is as stunning as it is obviously motivated, at least in part, by a desire to publicize the perpetrator's malignant mental state by aimlessly destroying lives.
35
Anger at women is just another way of saying, anger at people
14
How true. He joined the Canadian Forces last year and ended up leaving as he had difficulty "adjusting to military life".
Every so often you meet someone who manages to just not quite fit in with everyone. I was thinking about this and recalled three woman I'd met over the last 10 years or so who fitted that description.
Could these people go into therapy and "learn" how to socially fit in? I don't know.
6
No, actually he seemed to have women-specific anger, and many others do too.
[Especially young male computer nerds.]
It does indicate diss-function with people in general but appears more specific.
12
but women don't end up fatally injuring others usually.
7
It's shocking to me that everyone is shocked every time something like this happens!
This is the new normal, this is news just like where the stock market closed or where interest rates are going, where was the latest shooting, what country, how many people were killed and who did it?
We are all already immune to this, it's tiresome that all of us need to act shocked when we see the weekly shooting, just accept it as where we are going, degenerating as a society and people.
We are violent, we are one dimensional and we are self-destructive.
I'm certainly not saying we should be happy about it, these are horrible acts and we live in a horrible time, but to be shocked, that's a bit of a stretch at this point.
6
As an American women, I can't speak for Canada. We hear wonderful things! I don't know that there is an underlying fear or hatred or need to control women in Canadian society as there is here in the US. As with many things in my country, I wonder why these signs and signals are ignored.
20
You extrapolate from one maladjusted young man who made one (?) post on facebook.
The man was not being "watched" because he'd not committed any acts to draw attention to himself, unless, of course, you feel the police should be monitoring everyone's facebook posts.
7
many years ago there was a shooter at a college in Canada. He let all the men out of the classroom but killed all the women. I may have the details not quite right, but I'm remembering his hate of women right.
12
de'laine,
American women are doing very well, judging from many statistics: Women live longer than men. More women graduate from high school than men. More women graduate from college than men. More women get advanced degrees than men. The number of women who are self-made millionaires has risen over the last century and continues to rise. The number of women who are self-made billionaires has risen over the last 25 years - total of 18 now, and rising. Women start and successfully run their own businesses, from construction to fashion to entertainment.
I am woman, hear me roar..........about the progress of women in the USA!
3
What an awful thing to happen in such a beautiful city. My sincere condolences to the victims and their families.
23
If a man who hates and fears women and belongs to an online group which hates, fears and imagines violence against women goes on a mad, public killing spree, how is that not terrorism?
142
This man apparently had a longstanding diagnosis of Asperger's Spectrum Disorder. Judging from the descriptions of his behavior from classmates and professionals who knew him, he was quite high of the autism scale in that his condition seriously impacted his functioning. ASD is not, technically, a mental illness. It is a developmental disorder., due to inherited genetic defects. It cannot be cured with medication or therapy, altho certain educational experiences can help a person with ASD learn to deal better with social cues and conforming their behavior to an acceptable norm. The incidence of this inherited condition is almost 5 times more common in males than females. In describing this terrible incidence as terrorism, one might question whether the suspect could form the requisite intent to commit an act of terrorism.
17
I have ASD, something I was not told about until I was in my sixties and the diagnosis was made when I was five. When I found out it explained all the things that had gone wrong in my life because I always felt 'wrong' and that others 'spoke in code' and that I 'did not fit'.
However, I would like to think my family and my doctor did the right thing as treating me as 'normal' not someone with a developmental disability. Without the label I have had a good education, a successful career and ended up in a great marriage.
I sometimes wonder at the logic of all those people who use ASD for not achieving or for not knowing right or wrong.
It is not ASD that is the problem but the lack of real insight into providing opportunities for the individual to grow out of it.
12
In my experience, autism, Asperger's, and mental illness are 3 clearly different disorders; I've taught multiple kids from each category.
Violence is possible with all three of the disorders, though certainly not probable unless the person is sociopathic (I've taught a few of those, too, and they relish causing emotional or physical pain in a way that makes the hairs on your neck stand up even though you are an adult and they are not).
Sadly, none of the disorders enable you to rule out violence.
4
This atrocity in Canada is heartbreaking! However, I have a hard time accepting all this fawning over Canadians as being friendly and warm people! On a visit to Montreal several years ago, a few friends and I had dinner at a tavern in the French section! Once they heard our Brooklyn accents, we were taunted and verbally bullied by a bunch of French speaking lads, dressed as lumberjacks! We scadadled out of there, real fast!
17
Yeah, Montreal is a different beast than Toronto. Yours isn't the first experience I've heard of this.
15
Ridiculous generalization. Been to Montreal many times and never experienced this
14
I am an Anglo-Canadian who lived in Montreal...once I was no longer a broke and very involved student, I loved it. The only hostility I encountered was from the Quebecois intelligentsia types. The ordinary people were great. I think there can be a chauvanistic trend there..look at their laws banning religious symbols which they had to walk back. I left because of family illness...I wanted to go home. I often reflect on the road not taken.
7
I would like to point out that this is an act of terrorism as defined in definition 2b of the Oxford English Dictionary: "instilling of fear or terror; intimidation, coercion, bullying." The headline identifies this terrorist's target, women. To reduce terrorism to acts committed by members of minority is to say "white" people, although that is generally "white" men, should not be seen as terrorists. And yet, this is the group which has terrorized people around the world over the past 500 or so years. As a "white" woman, one of the most terrifying ideas is 40,000+ "incels" promulgating misogyny because a woman had the temerity to reject them as sexual partners!
122
Dictionaries have limited use, and the use to which you put this one is inappropriate. Many words have more than one definition in a dictionary. The terrorism relevant to our situation can be defined as the following (and I did not look in any dictionary; dictionaries are not revelations from God): committing indiscriminate violence against civilians in aid of a political or ideological cause, especially if one is part of a group or movement. If there really were an "incel" group or movement that was trying to bring about a change in society and viewed its violence against civilians as something that advanced that cause, then maybe this person could be called a terrorist--simply as a matter of the application of standard usage. Generally, it is of some interest whether a bomb was set off by the IRA, Basque separatists, Islamists, or other group--or whether the violence was caused by a lone individual for personal reasons. This seems to have been a person who was extremely socially inept, which gave rise to problems in his relationships with women. His deep personal problems gave rise, somehow, to the idea of going out in a blaze of murderous glory. It would be good to understand how that process worked, psychologically. But it would be stupid to call him a terrorist. Just because you cause terrorist, it does not make you a terrorist--except by some secondary definition provided by some dictionary.
9
Paul -- You and Humpty Dumpty, "When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean."
6
The fact of the matter is, society as a whole wants women dead and always has, and anyone who says otherwise is a liar or in denial. That’s why men like this will never be considered terrorists.
3
That video is incredible - American police officers who shoot at suspects as soon as they are mildly threatened have something to learn from the how this officer handled this situation and successfully arrested the perp without even touching him.
71
I do not blame American police if they shoot quickly. The likelihood of a suspect being armed with a weapon or more particularly, a handgun, in Canada is far, far less almost infinitely so, than in the United States. The Toronto officer would have known this as he considered the situation.
12
His name is Ken Lam. He’s a true hero
13
But U.S police shoot child with toy guns, people unarmed who act "weird", anyone refusing orders, and if you are of color risk of getting shot multiplies.
There is no considered thought going on with police here, just reflex and assumption.
6
Wow, that is one brave, smart, and perceptive officer!
77
"While Canadian officials were not characterizing the van rampage as terrorism, it raised fears about Toronto’s vulnerability to a terrorist attack."
Yes and the US Gov't has brought it to our shores. We fought with you willingly in Afghanistan as we stood with you during and after 9/11. Then you entered Iraq and we refused to go to an unjust war (mind you our military did send special forces in from time to time).
To mar a city with barriers and fences is a wartime narrative, and how long will they stay.
We are a nation of peacemakers, not warriors.
22
Yes, now, but most certainly not historically.
3
Thank you.
My Grandfather crossed over border from Buffalo NY to join British Army in WWI, he was too skinny for Americans [ha ha now].
So he survived and had warm memories of his fellows.
I grew up just outside of DC and all the anti terror barriers still strike me as offensive, it was worst after 9/11--and to be met in my home airport with solders armed with machine guns!
I would love to leave for Canada but rather old--Ph.D. and French help?
4
Tell that to the First Peoples of your nation.
1
If he had been in the US the police would have shot him 300 times for getting out of the van with his hands in that position.
Congrats to the Canadian law enforcement who continually assessed the scene and handle it gently for all.
80
The "US response" would have been preferable, actually.
4
How would it be preferable?
In Canada we do not have laws that allow people to be executed on the spot by law enforcement. If they are found guilty of a crime, after having a trial they will be punished.
Is that not what you are supposed to do as well?
We do not have capital punishment.
7
As a teacher, I'd like people to understand that there is almost always a reason loners are loners.
It's not because the other kids are mean or bullies or hateful; the other kids simply have finely-tuned survival instincts that have been honed over thousands of years. The other kids generally pick up very quickly on unstable kids and they rightly avoid them.
I have a seemingly wonderful, bright student who is generally tolerated by other kids even though he is very odd, but he is definitely "left out". Recently, he just hauled off and punched another kid in the face right in front of me. There was zero provocation on the punched student's part.
The hitter made up some excuse for why he hit, but he was 100% lying because I was standing right there.
The kids who have been to school with him for years have seen this behavior before, so of course they avoid him.
We ignore these clear and early signs of instability at our own peril. "Odd" is not just "odd"; it's often dangerous . Look at how this guy's classmates described him. Stop blaming kids and schools and "bullies"; start addressing these troubled kids.
135
Agreed! (I am a teacher and principal)
7
I'm really troubled by this victim-blaming attitude, coming from a teacher, of all people.
Only a small minority of the time are bullied people "troubled". Most of the time, they are merely different - poor, foreign/immigrant, different religion, have an unusual physical feature, have (benign) learning disabilities, or unusual intelligence.
How can any decent teacher EVER support stigmatizing innocent people?
By all means, support mental health resources for the truly troubled children, but don't encourage children to harass people who are different.
21
Thank you for this insightful and thought-provoking comment. I think that your ideas get to the crux of the issue and suggest a starting point for at least a discussion of potential preventative measures. Far more enlightening than the inane quibbling over the definition of the word "terrorist" throughout the comments posted, as though that will solve anything.
8
In the US the cop would have killed the suspect, no question. The Canadian officer was able to subdue the suspect without gunfire. Hooray for Canada. Big difference in gun mentality.
39
That is not true, and provably so with several recent high profile cases -- most notably the Parkland shootings, where the suspect was apprehended without any struggle or violence, despite having semi-automatic weapons on him.
1
Tragic as this story is, the fact that the police did not shoot (and kill) the suspect, shows something about Canada. Unexpected humanity in the face of brutality. Kudos to their police for a job well done.
82
I'm seeing a lot of people posting gargably-gook garbage about this. The fact is he is an "Incel" that hates women because they don't give him the sex he thinks he deserves. It was a terrorist act by a rampant misogynist who worships the likes of Elliot Rodger. Just like the Nashville shooter, they are both white boys; THAT is why they've been apprehended alive and aren't being called terrorists.
195
"They," apprehended alive? Sorry, but Rodger killed himself while his latest incarnation tried Blue Suicide as a way out but was unsuccessful, as the officer holstered his pistol, and proceeded to apprehend the perp, nightstick in hand. So, who else can we blame: Pres. Trump; the NRA; raging, unfulfilled testosterone; social awkwardness; a mother who didn't raise him right; an absentee, alcoholic father; whoops, I have run out of characters. Your turn, please.
5
You certainly take off on one sentence of this comment, Aprille, but miss the gist. Not sure where the hyperbole comes from, but the misogyny as motive is a cogent point, especially given the groups and "ideology" that has formed around it.
4
This guy is an Armenian by the way. If you are going to go off on white people here you should know that white people murdered tens of thousands of Armenians in the 1910-1920s.
I've done some research and Armenians are not white people. They are Christian Arabs and therefore POC in today's lexicon. I personally think Arabs are just as white as Jews and Europeans but I guess they aren't considered white.
Besides I dont think his race had anything to do with him hating women of all colors. If anything NYT readers should be talking about misogyny and not the whiteness of the terrorist. As for calling him a troubled computer scientist, that seems to be exactly what he was. What do you want, the NYT to label a drug dealer who kills a client a "troubled pharmacist attempting to collect a debt?"
15
I am Armenian. Armenians are Caucasian, and majority are Christian. Armenians are not "Christian Arabs." I am not sure where you are getting this information, but it's incorrect.
67
Regardless of how some might classify him, he's white looking. It doesn't matter about classification in brief interactions. If he was visibly a POC he'd probably be dead.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/inquest-jury-rules-toronto-...
11
POC in today's lexicon is false. Armenians are white, or to use the scientific term, Armenians are Caucasians. Caucasians are generally called white because their skins are lighter than other people, not brown or black or yellow/ivory. Caucasoid, Negroid, and Mongoloid is the original classification of the peoples of the world, but some influences have begun to change the classifications.
"Although Caucasian / Caucasoid and their counterparts Negroid and Mongoloid have been used less frequently as a biological classification in forensic anthropology (where it is sometimes used as a way to identify the ancestry of human remains based on interpretations of osteological measurements), the terms remain in use by some anthropologists."
What you see in "today's lexicon" is the use of POC to include people whose skin is white, who are also Muslim. But Islam is a religion, not a race. The move to "today's lexicon" is based on the desire to have a religion treated as if it is a race.
That's false. The perpetuation of the false use of POC has a purpose, however, and it's likely financial.
6
We are in the 21st century and, generally speaking, nations like Canada and the United States have, relative to all of time in human history, great and amazing benefits, including ease for living as well as access to education at levels that become “higher” in sophistiction practically every new year. One would think that the likelihood of mass murder and otherwise harmful behavior toward anyone or anything, eg, the environment, would, at least in these countries, become less not more, as seems to be the case. This young man from Toronto of 25 yrs is surely accountable ... though maybe not responsible in the formal sense ... for what he’s done. Yet there is good reason by now, I think, to consider that the advancements we celebrate, work unwittingly often to tragic disadvantage. Something’s wrong with this young man; but that doesn’t mean that there’s not something more basically wrong with what we in this day and age consider “good.”
5
It seems more and more as though Facebook is a good place to look for troubled, hostile people, but even when they are identified we have no process for anticipating violent acts and forestalling them.
13
Well, we certainly have the evidence of how brutal these antifa groups are. There's the massacre at the Charleston church - no wait. There's the church massacre in Texas - no wait. There's the woman run down in Virginia. Oops, sorry again.
What were you saying again?
The priority question after such incidents is not "what motive?" That is a perpetrator's pride. Instead press to know "what pathology?" Perhaps giving incidents such a less flattering focus would seep into the remaining self-consciousness of some contemplating mayhem.
8
There are no easy answers to explain acts like this. If humanity can ever figure out the broad issues involved and get to the bottom, there will be multiple root causes that will need to be fixed.
Think of the human traits that overshadows qualities that are considered universally good, I.e. greed, bias, selfishness ..,.
2
Why do so many of these mass murder/ shooting perpetrators have a history of domestic violence or anger toward women.
88
Did anyone get the part that he challenged the police to shoot him and they didn't. After running over these people, he got out of the van and challenged the police to shoot him and they didn't.
Let me repeat that. After running over these poor people -- horrible, devastating -- he got out of the van and dared the police to shoot him -- said that he was armed -- dared the police to shoot him and they did not.
This most definitely did not happen in the United States.
97
The Toronto Police force has developed a programme, and undergone specific training to address a propensity to shoot first and ask questions later. One such victim was a disturbed young man who was wielding a knife on a streetcar. They safely evacuated the passengers, leaving the young man in the empty streetcar alone. An officer demanded he drop the knife, and although the group of cops were at a safe distance away, and could have just let him tire himself out, or talk to him, or negotiate, or anything else, one of the officers open fired and killed him, with multiple shots. So no, we're not immune to these things here.
I do applaud this officer's actions, who did receive this training, and can only hope that it will open up new ways of defusing dangerous situations, instead of just shooting to kill.
That said, we can be certain there are times when deadly force is necessary to protect innocent lives.
43
Seriously? It was broad daylight, a few feet away which is why the cell phone was seen and not mistaken for a gun.
7
73% of American cops have never fired a weapon during their entire careers.
7
I hope his prosecutor is female.
41
Why? Do you think a female prosecutor would behave differently than a man? I think you are insulting Canadian prosecutors. They do their jobs based on the evidence they have.
Do yours do things differently?
1
This was terrorism. I am sick to death of authorities' refusal to label any acts by white men as terrorism.
208
This was one mentally ill person who acted from self-hate.
He had no political agenda. His agenda was simple: he hates himself and he wanted police to kill him.
16
Paradigmatic terrorism is indiscriminate violence against civilians carried out by a political or ideological group (or its members as members) in the furtherance of its cause. There is a fuzzy boundary, but a psychologically disturbed person who wants to go out in murderous glory is not a terrorist--according to standard, informed usage. In there were an incel movement and this act was calculated to advance it's political goals, then it could perhaps be called terrorism. There is utility in determining whether an act of violence was politically motivated and connected or not. We have a problem these days of paradigmatic terrorism being carried out by Islamists. It is a specific problem--related to immigration. It needs to be dealt with rationally. And perhaps the problems of this person are an argument for the legalization of prostitution. There may be a lot of incel rage being pent up.
3
Ontario's single payer health insurance plan does not cover visits to a psychologist or mental health counselor. So I suspect that most people with mental health issues in the province don't get the help they need. Even where money is not an issue, some people do not get the help they need because of the stigma of seeing a "shrink". While I was in high school (in Toronto) many years ago, two siblings of one of my classmates committed suicide over two or three years. Their ancestors had been living in Ontario since the days of the United Empire Loyalists (who left the US after the American revolution). The parents were well educated and held down professional jobs. Mental illness can hit anyone.
Armenia became a Christian country while northern Europe was still population by pagans. At the time of the Armenian genocide (about 1915), much of the area was under the control of the Muslim Ottoman Empire. Many of ther stores in the area where the Toronto massacre took place, have Arabic or Farsi writing on their store signs or windows.
6
I’m not sure why this man’s actions are not categorized as terrorism? Is it because he only expressed “hatred at women” and not a “political” ideology. Don’t most Islamic terrorists also express hatred of women. Isn’t one of the mainstays and a foundational tactic of Islamic terrorism about keeping women out of schools, work, or any public sphere by brutalizing them and instilling fear and terror in them so they return to their domesticated servitude as wives and mothers and or kidnapping them as sex slaves, ie Taliban, ISIL, Boko Haram, etc...
Perhaps it time we called all violence towards women a form of male dominated terrorism!
This type of terror that women face is 100% political. Because the personal is political and the political is personal. Times up!
179
Well, one answer to your question may be that media generally seems to reserve a "terrorist" label for a person or persons who acts out of a political, racial, and/or religious motivation. That does not exclude someone who is mentally deranged if they also fall into one of those categories. But for reasons that escape me the media (in general) hesitate to call an act of terror as "terrorism" if committed by someone who is assumed to be simply mentally ill..., although I believe the distinction may well be lost to any victims. Another answer may that the media may be acting prudently (never really their strong point historically) in attempting not to mischaracterize the perpetrator (s), before all the facts are in (although a good many seem not to care especially if it plays to an editorial bias ) and avoid a public back lash against any specific group associated or identified with the perpetrator (s). Then again, the media may be either lazy, a bit too PC, or hedging their bets. You pick.
1
“He had several tics and would sometimes grab the top of his shirt and spit on it, meow in the hallways and say, ‘I am afraid of girls.’ It was like a mantra. He was an odd guy, and hardly mixed with other students." Former high school classmate
Rather than rushing to label what happened, I'd prefer investigators be given more than a day do their job. Just because we live in a 24-hour news cycle doesn't mean the answers come immediately.
6
Causing terror is not the same committing an act of terrorism. There is a word for cases of indiscriminate violence against civilians in furtherance of a political or ideological cause, especially by a group. It's "terrorism." There are other sorts of bad things that can be done are not covered by this word. For example, when the National Socialists put millions of people to death in their concentration camps, they were not engaging in terrorism. But in the inapplicability of this word does not let them off the hook. And it doesn't let other non-terrorists who commit violence off the hook either.
2
Is this guy not a terrorist because he is Canadian? I mean, seems to me like the dude had an ideology that he wanted to spread. Hatred towards women. Spreading ideology through violence against civilians is terrorism.
This guy is a terrorist.
75
If he really thought that by his action he would advance the cause of the so-called incel movement, then he would have some similarities to a terrorist. But I don't quite understand the desire to force things under the rubric 'terrorism'. But I guess I do. If you can make stealing a kiss come under the same term as violent rape of a stranger ("sexual assault") you can exaggerate the significance of small violations. Conversely, if you can bring loner, non-strategic violence under the same rubric as indiscriminate civilian violence by a member of a political or ideological group, you can thereby diminish the seriousness of the latter when carried out by immigrants who engage in politically or ideologically motivated violence against random civilians.
1
OK, so it turns out the Toronto terrorist was a sexually frustrated white male (I didn't know about the INCEL movement before) - and the Tennessee Waffle House shooter was a white male - and 3 white militia members in Kansas were just convicted of plotting to bomb a mosque - maybe it is time to consider more scrutiny of these white male radicals and their influences?
167
The article doesn't mention any psychiatric treatment for this person, something he clearly should have had. Perhaps, if he had been followed by a clinician, there would have been an alarm set off by toxic thoughts this person might have communicated. In The U.S., clinicians are mandated to report passive danger9us behaviors. Now, people like Mr Minassian can go on line and find lots of sympathetic virtual friends. There are plenty of others in need of treatment who are not receiving it. I do not know the answer to how the public can be protected and still keep the civil liberties of potentially dangerous persons.
12
When in the world can we recognize the red flags here: a social awkward individual, resentment toward a specific group, anger, few friends, a lack of social success. There is a clear need far more sophisticated psychological evaluation tools to help identify and get assistance to these troubled individuals.
25
@Matt
And you love your Greenhouse Gas producing pollution device which is killing our planet and now innocent people walking on the street
And why?
Because you refuse to accept the fact that there are perfectly reasonable restrictions on car rentals that could possibly prevent these types of occurrences.
1
Nice try, the reason more people aren't dead and why he did not shoot the cop are because guns are hard to get here. 7 min in that park with a gun and more would be dead. Think before you post, you literally proved my point for me.
Toronto is the home of clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson. Dr Peterson has spent his life studying alienated young men. I am eager for the videos even as I mourn the loss of innocence.
Toronto is mourning but there is a balance it is showing why it is always one two or three in the best large cities in the world in which to live.
5
Unfortunately the alienation of men, while the source of many problems in the world, cannot be solved by turning over more power to women. That would likely only exacerbate the problem. All societies need to work harder on inclusion and tolerance, and stop turning their (our) backs on lonely troubled individuals. This could have happened anywhere. On the bright side, our local nuclear armed troubled guy didn't tweet that this was a terrorist act last night. Self control is possible.
8
Jordan Peterson doesn't "study" alienated young men. He incites them. Fuels their anger at women with his comments about women who complain of sexual assault and sexual harassment.
Peterson recently tweeted to over 253,000 followers: “With all the accusations of sex assault emerging (eg Louis CK) we are going to soon remember why sex was traditionally enshrined in marriage.”
A lot of young men are listening to his garbage. He's part of the problem.
15
Absolutely Larry! The feminists of today have made the alienation of men even more stark in today's society. The constant male bashing in the media has created a resentment among young males. MGTOW is definitely a thing these days.
3
I don't think knowing his motives and his mental health issues will do us much good for preventing such attacks in the future. What we could learn, that would be of enormous benefit to many American citizens, especially those with mental problems and their families, is how police can deal with suspects without killing them. If American police were all like that Toronto cop, not only would a lot of Americans be arrested alive to face justice in court and prison, but race relations would improve greatly.
44
If the Toronto cops had shot this criminal earlier, fewer innocent people would have died.
1
Jane, what exactly would they have shot a law abiding Canadian citizen for?
The police have already stated that he was not known to them.
Your comment makes me thankful I live here.
10
The Toronto cop was extremely brave and kind. He didn't even shot the guy in the legs. I would not blame a cop for shooting that guy. It takes intention to get your vehicle onto the sidewalk then drive along it. Vehicle rental businesses should ask "What are you going to do with this vehicle?" Mentally ill people will probably tell you their mad intentions.
If the car rental agency was required to run a background check on this individual and there was a 7 day waiting period for Van rentals
Just saying...
11
A background check would have turned up absolutely nothing, as police have already stated that he was not known to them.
2
I'd there is a 7 day waiting period to rent a truck I say freedom is dead.
1
The usual stupid argument. Guns are made to kill. It isn't a secondary risk of the purpose of the instrument. Cars are made for transportation. Knives are made to cut food for cooking or eating. A hammer is made to drive a nail. That is why there is a need for special laws concerning guns, not my wine corkscrew.
9
As i suggested this morning, we must practice caution before passing judgment on what transpired yesterday. What's more, the objective here is to fix the problem, be it mental illness or whatever, rather than point fingers and fix blame. Sadly, this happens too often, and to no positive effect.
10
"fix the problem, be it mental illness or whatever".....
I understand your wish to 'fix the problem'. However, fixing mental illness problems is not only not a simple fix, it is often a can't fix.
We tend to think of mental illness as 'get them on the right medication". But the medication treats - it doesn't fix, it doesn't cure.
20
You can't "fix" mental illness. All the drugs and therapy in the world can't prevent such senseless, violent acts from happening. Furthermore, not every person diagnosed with mental illness is/will be violent, and not all people who commit violent acts are mentally ill.
11
Passing judgement? He deliberately murdered 10 people and attempted to murder 9 more in a most cruel way.
5
"The attack did not appear to be an act of terrorism." Terrorism is exactly what it was. It was a deliberate, massive assault designed to sow terror among a randomly situated population of totally innocent people who had done the perpetrator no harm.
It does not require the Islamic faith or bilious bigotry for an act of rage-induced violence to be defined as "terrorism." It does not need to be inspired by political ideology or by religious fanaticism.
We Americans know something about this, even though we remain incapable of doing anything constructive about it. But we use assault weapons; they're much more efficient than trucks or vans.
58
I am so sorry this American affliction has infected Canada.
22
Sorry, but these kinds of attacks using a van or truck are not particular to the U.S. One happened in Nice. One happened in Barcelona. One happened in downtown NYC.
13
Canada has their own crazies from all walks of like too. The world doesn't automatically get better the minute you leave the states. Please don't apologize on behalf of all of us when this was an isolate incident and not at all a trend.
13
Poor memory? Or an American who is anti-American?
Nice, France: 7/14/2016, 80 murdered
Berlin, Germany: 12/19/16, 12 murdered
Munster, Germany: 4/17/18, 2 murdered
There are many more examples but I believe Nice was first.
Don't apologize for me - but please do get help for the anti-American affliction that seems to have infected you.
13
I wonder if the media would open with a line like "socially troubled computer science graduate" if the perpetrator had been Muslim or a POC. For some reason white people always seem to have mental health issues while non-white people are fueled by hate or terrorism.
294
Ashutosh, baseless inflamatory comments like this fuel hatred. First, in the case of terrorist attacks, the perpetrator typically affirms by conduct and words that he ( or she) is planning or making a terrorist attack in the name of a terrorist group. Often, that group expresses support for or even takes credit for the attack. I have never seen an act that has been determined to be terrorism without overwhelming evidence in support of it. So, regardless of ethnicity or religion, an act is rarely termed as " hate or terrorism", as you state in your comment, unless the srrounding facts demonstrate, almost beyond dispute, that it was in fact terrorism.
Next, apart from acts of terrorism, the overwhelming majority of mass killings and serial killings are made by white men. So, there is no evidence to compare their treatment with people of color, because, for whatever reason, white men have the shameful distinction as almost exclusive perpetrators of such atrocities.
Please, try not to let your own hatred blind you to facts, and cause you to inflame racial and ethnic relations.
7
You making this about race when it is decidely unrelated to race is laughable and just shows that racism isn't strictly a white institution.
Why do you seem to think whites get better treatment in the media? Maybe Fox News, sure, but I don't see any indication that a distinguished and historical pulitzer prize winning LEFT LEANING news organization like the NY Times would ever say that any minority was fuelled by hate and terrorism without having all their facts straight, double-checked and verified before publishing.
Your little racist quip is just about your own personal vendetta and bigoted narrative. Decent people don't blame their negative experiences on anything but the cruelty of life and the enigma of the human condition, and they certainly don't blame the actions of an individual on the entirety of a group they might not even identify with.
Go reflect on the complexities of life and don't comment on race again until you're ready to be fair, truthful and honest about such a complex and sensitive issue.
16
If you're trying to score points for your favorite "ism" off of this tragedy, sexism would be a more appropriate target.
14
" anger at Women ". Isn't that Special ??? No, it's extremely common. Along with a history of Domestic Abuse AND easy access to Guns, it's the greatest single factor among ALL these Killers. If he had an automatic Weapon, the death toll could have been in the dozens. Or More. What's it going to TAKE, Men ??? When will you police your Gender, and actually do something about this ??? Are Dead women and children an unfortunate collateral damage, just something that happens??? Get your collective act together, or go live in Caves. Seriously.
221
For some reason, men seem to think they are entitled to the company, flattery and body of a woman; some expect a particularly pretty one or more than one woman, even if they're uneducated, a slob, mean, broke, or one sandwich short of a picnic. Women, on the other hand, tend to blame themselves; their looks, their clothes, their charms, or their lack thereof, when they don't have a man.
29
Excellent comment.
5
Gender terrorism is still terrorism.
348
Name the agents: males. This is male violence against women.
4
Strange, I've never heard of a man angry at a woman before.
17
Listen to the GOP and its current head of the executive branch. There are none so blinds those who refuse to see.
15
Maybe because when you hear about a man taking his anger out on a woman you automatically believe she must have deserved it?
Or this is just sarcasm and you forgot to add the /s
7
I notice that the guy kept repeating “shoot me in the head.”
I believe I would have tempted to reply “No, we are not going to do that.
What we are going to do instead is throw you into a dark hole
in the ground and leave you there for the rest of your miserable life.”
This business of accommodating cowardly killers by allowing them
to choose death-by-cop as their easy way out needs to stop. It only
encourages other cowardly killers to imitate them.
Congratulations to the cops who didn’t take him up on his gutless request.
74
legalize suicide.
5
You'll notice that even when he said he had a gun, the cop said he did not care. Can you imagine in this gun drenched nation a cop saying I don't care if you have a gun? I can't. These Toronto cops make US cops look like the Cowardly Lion.
26
But if Mr. Minassian had pulled out a gun, or a cell phone or wallet that looked like a gun, I expect he would have been shot.
The Toronto cop was playing a mind game and he won.
But he would not have played the mind game if he had seen something that looked like a gun. He would have used his gun and shot Minassian.
3
Crossposted and rewritten from answer to early AM notes about US Waffle House shooting, one writer insisting Reuters claimed unnamed US expert said driver was Muslim out to commit terror.
A name like ‘Minassian’ means the driver’s patralinial relatives were probably from one of the former Yugoslavian states, perhaps Serbia or Croatia.
If so, given the name, his male ancestors were most likely Christian.
The horrific act may have been done as an act to incite terror - of a particular man seeking 15 minutes of fame and looking to end things with a “suicide-by-police,” something Toronto ‘s police do not provide as willingly as their southern neighbor’s.
In that nation, personal handguns are few, especially in the @30 mile strip north of the US border where 90% of Canada’s @30 million people live - with a radically different culture masked by an externally common language where words carry very different meanings.
People reading the web will ”upgrade” an info source to one held more accurate and, accept quote or easily altered photos & video on Facebook & the like as direct from the named source.
They still believe anything on the ‘net as they once did TV and newsreel images over newspaper stories of things witnessed by a reporter, and will explain by watching a recording, they “saw” it happen.
One of these folks told obvious lies about recent presidents. “Don’t give me [fact check sites], just Google it - insisting the NUMBER of sites carrying the same lie made it true.
3
Oh, but Christians are also adept at terror for eons... and, lately we see plenty of terror right inside their churches...
7
Mass killings perpetrated by people who reportedly suffered from Asperger's syndrome:
1. Sandy Hook elementary school, Newtown, CT, December 14, 2012
2. Umpqua Community College shooting, October 1, 2015, near Roseburg, Oregon
3. Stoneman Douglas High School - February 14, 2018, Parkland, Florida.
4. Toronto van massacre, Apr. 22, 2018
Of course not everyone with Aspergers is dangerous. But there is clearly a level of risk, especially for young males (late teens through twenties). Many of these men are social outcasts who experience episodes of rage they can't control. The psychiatric community is helpless in terms of understanding, assessing, and mitigating risk in these cases. I know. My son is one of them.
71
John,
Toronto is home to Dr Jordan Peterson an expert the field of clinical psychology especially young alienated males. Dr Peterson has the celebrity and the youtube audience that may lead to a broader understanding.
Now is a time for mourning and reflection but tomorrow holds some promise of understanding rather than looking to anger hate and revenge.
5
Interesting. My daughter is on the Asperger's spectrum, and while she gets upset, it's not like that.
2
The time to talk about how to mitigate issues directly caused by young out-of-control men is right now. We should not stop talking until action begins and outcomes change for the betterment of society. Period.
14
other sites have shown convincing evidence that the driver is a violent misogynist and the attack was fueled by his hatred of women
31
The policeman's response should be required viewing by all American police officers.
236
Please watch how the policeman apprehended the suspect! Impressive! No shots fired and both policeman and suspect alive.
142
It's Canada. But miraculously the same thing happened to the Nashville shooter just now and who thinks anyone but a white perpetrator would have been captured so professionally?
8
Fortunately, the arresting officer wasn't a woman.
"While Canadian officials were not characterizing the van rampage as terrorism, it raised fears about Toronto’s vulnerability to a terrorist attack. "
Please stop with the fearmongering!!
5
If this were in the US, the police would've shot him 10 times before asking him to surrender.
40
He is white so he would have been taken alive. The police also would have purchased a meal for him at Burger King (paper crown optional) as they did with Dylan Roof.
10
Both justice and police leave a lot to be desired I'm many lands
And the cops would've been right to do it, he just ran over 10 people, nothing wrong with shooting him
The guy is charged with murder? Imagine that.
2
I hope the US president had the decency to extend condolences to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for what happened in Toronto. Expressing sorrow would be better than to politicize and demonize people for this awful rampage.
13
Wait - you're referring to Trump and decency in the same sentence?
2
Canada can be rightfully proud of how it trains and hires police officers. The lesson for Americans is how that lone Toronto officer subdued the driver, despite his aggressive movements, without firing a shot. I want his name published so we can praise him for his restraint, patience and public service.
181
His name is Const. Ken Lam.
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2018/04/24/cop-who-faced...
9
The advantage of policing by consent (based on the Peelian Principles) rather than by a militarized police force becomes abundantly clear in circumstances like these.
10
His name is officer Ken Lam a true hero
1
In Canada, a 9-person murder spree is a national disgrace; in the U.S., it's 'Wednesday.' Canada hasn't had a double-digit shooting spree since 1989. When anyone says "You can't stop crazy" or "it's not America's guns, but American TV and Movies" or "people kill people, not guns," Then show them the fact -- the fact - that Canada has gun control and still has hunting, target shooting and free & fair elections. In Canada, this lunatic has access to a truck; here, it'd be an AR-15. This is tragic, but in Boston, in Chicago, in Orlando, in L.A., it would have been 100 times worse, and that's on America's idiocy, gunlust and greed.
257
The salient point here is that a mentally deranged individual used a vehicle instead of a gun to kill and hurt people. Same tragic outcome that 10 people were murdered and more severely injured. Would he have used a gun if he had access to one? Perhaps, but the point is that a determined or deranged individual will use equally deadly means other than a gun to achieve their objective. Maybe it is time to have a waiting period or conduct a background check before renting vehicles given the number of times rented vehicles have been used in attacks.
The US needs to enforce existing gun laws and have much better coordination between jurisdictions to prevent criminals, mentally unstable and other disqualified individuals from buying/owning guns. The US also needs to address mental health and be less PC about either treating or institutionalizing people who have overt mental health issues.
3
No city is immune to crazy.
17
There are all kinds of people with grudges and angers from all works of life. That is not the point. This is:
Main streaming of the mentally ill: one of the greatest crimes of the Twentieth Century - A crime whose consequences we are all living with today in the Twenty-First Century.
As mankind become more electronically connected and as technology becomes more compact and powerful the risks of death to hundreds, thousands, millions grows and grows and grows.
But to no avail - certain manufacturers of certain products and certain politicians won't accept even reasonable restrictions on their products; in addition, an army of psychologists, social workers and counter-culture people refuse to face the reality of human behavior. To them abnormal behavior is just a healthy route to originality and creativity. They believe that to be a “genius” you must be sick and twisted and different! They feel that if someone does not give full acceptance to the mentally ill in all aspects of life, that person must be bigoted and backward.
For further guidance on some of these issues, please watch the film, "Forbidden Planet".
3
From NEWSWEEK, 05/28/2014:
"Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho, for instance, stalked and harassed two female students well before carrying out the worst school shooting in American history. Columbine killer Dylan Klebold wrote extensively about his romantic loneliness and a girl he had a crush on in his private diary. Adam Lanza, who murdered 20 children and six adults at Connecticut’s Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, had a Word document on his computer explaining “why females are inherently selfish.”
Even Timothy McVeigh, who carried out the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, complained about his sexual frustrations and a woman who had rejected him.
Misogyny—and the sense of entitlement that comes with it—kills. Sometimes in private, in acts of domestic violence that occur every week (women are six times more likely to be killed by their partner than men, a recent study found), and sometimes in public, in harrowing explosions of mass murder."
328
Yet it continues...
4
They don't stalk and harass and hate women because they are normal. They do it because they are crazy.
It literally has nothing to do with women.
7
So why pick on women??? It must therefore be a special kinda crazy.
There was a similar event at a college in Montreal on Dec. 6, 1989 when a misogynist murdered 6 female students. Nothing new under the sun here folks.
There has always been, and remains, a need to spend the time and energy and money to help the sick among us. It may be expensive but consider the alternative.
It is profoundly sad and distressing that no one effectively pushed to help this individual before he coldly murdered innocent people.
21
rocky,
The University of Toronto is the home base of Dr Jordan Peterson whose life work is the study of alienated young males. Dr Peterson may not be totally correct in his analysis but it sounds well reasoned and has alienated both liberals and conservatives.
Dr Peterson has worked with those on the edge. We can never be completely safe. Now is a time for reflection but tomorrow maybe we can start listening to what the experts are telling us.
3
Handicapped are universally shunned; mentally ill are viewed as parlays in many quarters...
What happens from here on in, nothing will bring back the (now) 10 who were killed.
Alek Minassian could spend the rest of his wretched existence in a cage...but where’s the justice? What about the badge-wounded survivors who may have to learn to do so many things again—like walk...or wave to a loved one...or simply smile.
To say that he’s charged with murder is almost an obscenity. I understand that it’s a legal necessity but it’s left—with me, anyway— a hollow, empty feeling inside.
This man is not worth getting into the gutter and hating for...but he’s left huge holes in the lives of innocent others. What of their voices from the grave?
2
Whew! Relieved!! Thought it was a terrorist attack. Glad my thoughts were corrected by the "authorities".
2
I wonder why he wasn't charged with terrorism. Oh I know why.
5
Because at this point there's no evidence of it being a terrorism incident.
1
As with the lady who shot up the Youtube facility,
there are reams of articles written on the subject but
no mention of where they worked.
Did either receive money from the Canadian or US government?
1
This guy knew what he was doing, but it's a miserable life when you can't kill yourself but you wish the cops would kill you. My heart goes out to everyone who lost someone. The guy who did this had real mental issues, sounds like Tourette's, which is a terrible, unforgiving condition. Not an excuse at all, just a fact. No reason to kill people. I worry that we have so many young men in this world so frustrated and enraged.
6
misogyny kills. angry men are the leading source of violent death for women
168
Angry white men are leading source of random and targeted violence and murder. Full stop.
3
I hope all noticed how the policeman dealt with the driver, who was egging him on to shoot him. Apparently the policeman determined that the driver wanted to die by police fire, and that whatever it was in his hand presented no danger to the cop. Had this evenet been going down in the U.S. there would of been a full magazine emptied into the driver.
15
Why are we talking about guns here?!
1
Perpetrator will spend 7-25 years in prison for his horrendous act of violence.
No detailed description of the driver's background, no commentators lamenting white racism as with the pizza parlor shooter.. allows one to conclude the driver wasn't a white citizen.
How different the reports of the pizza parlor shooter and this driver... when they are both probably insane.
We have had quite a few mass murders committed in Canada (many of which are domestic violence related). However three stick out because of the sheer devastation on the Canadian collective consciousness 1) the Montreal Massacre 2) Yonge-Shep Murders 3) the Quebec City mosque shooting. All of these were committed by white males fueled by hatred of minorities and women.
Canada has a white male problem. The time to act is now. If we don't implement a white male ban now, these people who have no respect for civility of western society, will continue to attack us. #whitemaleban
We need to send them back where they came from.
Sorry to be tongue in cheek about such a tragedy, I just think an American newspaper is the place to politely point out how horribly they treat Muslim Americans after tragedies occur.
28
The guy is mental. He'll get off. Pity.
It doesn't work like that (at least here in Canada).
Isanity doesn't get a person "off" from consequences. Should a person be found not guilty due to mental defect they are immediately remanded to a secure "forensic" psychiatric institution and held there "at her Majesty's pleasure.". That means indefinitely until one is assessed no longer a threat. Even if the person clears that hurdle, all manner of lifetime conditions apply: report daily to authorities; all prescribed meds *must* be taken; approval from authorities regarding where the person lives; approval prior to any travel; and so on. Any single failure to comply can lead to immediate detention, again, "at her Majesty's pleasure" (i.e. indefinitely) with no additional process or proceedings.
A person who is not insane and found guilty at least has a sentence of predetermined length. A person found not guilty due to insanity faces a long commitment to an institution and, should they ever be released, has the State's sword of Damocles hanging over their head for the rest of their days. I don't know where this idea that crazy people 'beat the system' and walk free comes from.
19
I'll say it: The ONLY use for a Gun is to Kill, or incapacitate by wounding.
Unlike vehicles. It you can't understand that difference, you really ARE stupid. Seriously.
40
>> “He had several ticks
That should be TICS, not “ticks.”
16
Oh come on NYT. Who cares? The guy is nuts, everyone agrees on that, even his family and friends. Do a story on the victims family's, you know, a human interest story. Remember those? "He expressed anger toward women". Get real.
6
And why is this not terrorism? I believe if this guy was brown with a Muslim name we would have already gotten a trump tweet about it.
14
NYT... What doesn't your' headline read, "NOT A MUSLIM EXTREMIST ATTACK!"
3
Yet another generic misogynist.
20
No, So Crates. They are ARMENIAN orthodox Christian.
And severely pathologically homophobic, just like the Georgians.
Hence, hostility toward women when you cant be who you are.
7
It’s not about guns, cars or terrorism it’s just about one goofy looking blockhead who couldn’t find some body to have sex with.
I submit that most terrorists probably share a similar affliction.
7
The men I know (husband included) tell me it's not about sex -- if it was, he could see prostitutes.
They tell me it's about being viewed as good enough to have someone want your company (in addition to sex), to simply like you, a woman to hold your arm walking down the street -- which confirms your desirability to the community at large.
7
Raping women for money will not solve the epidemic of male violence. WOMEN ARE NOT FOR SALE.
2
"Government officials have said the attack did not appear to be an act of terrorism."
Why not? Oh, that's right. Because he's white. That the government (of both the U.S. and Canada) and the NYT continue to have this double standard is shameful!
Of course it was an act of terrorism!
9
This boys early years ?
What do we know ?
Young males with deviant influences spells problems
3
Let's take a moment to recognize the skill and professionalism of the Toronto officer who arrested this guy without shooting him. The driver made repeated gestures to indicate that he had a gun and stated that he had a gun but the officer never fired and backed away when the driver approached him. When the officer realized the driver wasn't armed he put away his firearm and pulled out a baton and then completed the arrest. If he'd killed the driver they may never have found the reason for this attack.
If that had been done in the US the guy would have been shot and possibly killed and an investigation would have cleared the officer even though there's a non-lethal way of completing the arrest. US officers should start using Toronto's training manual.
458
Canada does not keep accurate records of the number of police killings but it has been estimated that there were 65 in 2017 compared to 987 in the USA as reported by the WAPO. Considering we have a population ten times that of Canada our rate to be comparable would be around 650-700 but our country is far more racially and ethnically diverse. Also, consider that between 1961 and 2009 133 Canadian police officers were murdered in the line of duty (less than 2.8 annually) according to Statistics Canada, whereas 46 American police officers were murdered just last year which is considered one of our lowest years for officers murdered in the line of duty! Our rate should be only about 25 based on population. So while the number of police killings in the U.S. is disproportionately higher by about 50% the number of officers killed is almost double. So maybe it is a little easier in Canada for a police officer to assume that a suspect will not really try to kill him when taking a threatening stance. In the U.S. that assumption is twice as likely to result in your kids having one less parent.
6
If they had killed him wouldn't the text of his Facebook postings be unchanged? The idea that we need to delve deep into this guy's mind to find out the important reasons for his attack, seems wrong.
3
In 2016, a West Virginia officer was fired for trying to talk to a suicidal man with a gun. There's no way this guy is alive if this was in the US.
4
I don't see how this is not considered to be terrorism. Canadian law states that terrorism is an act which is committed "in whole or in part with the intention of intimidating the public, or a segment of the public, with regard to its security."
I'm pretty sure women are a segment of the population who would be intimidated by this.
http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-46/page-12.html
152
Yes, it is chilling to think that a lack of 'success' with women, and or prior domestic violence usually against women, tends to precede mass killings. And the online communities he seems to have been a part of are very misogynistic. As a woman it is very disturbing to learn that misogynists are being radicalized in online communities.
23
And yet somehow misogynist terrorism doesn't exist - even for this reporter.
There is often, when white men especially, do something this horrific, reporting about their status of a "loner" or "being awkward" in school and, I think, an implied link that lack of social connection is a building block for these kinds of rampages with the additional implication that if the kids around him reached out more this could have been avoided. I can say that as a girl in my school years, I often did reach out to kids, often boys, who sat alone or who were awkward. Many times this resulted in regret on my part--they, being socially awkward, did not have much emotional intelligence or boundaries and I would have to extricate myself from the "friendship" or be endlessly bothered or harassed.
I don't think there is a person alive who did not feel lonely or left out sometime during their schooling years, but always reporting about how the person (man) was "lonely" or "socially isolated" in school indirectly places blame on the other students, often girls. The cliche of the "snobby cheerleader" who often gets what she deserves (humiliation) in almost any teen movie or show reinforces this. Often times, children stay away from or shun other kids they know are dangerous. This is different than bullying and is an adult problem to be handled by professionals. Kids should not be held responsible, directly or indirectly, for the actions of a classmate.
351
Exact same experience for me. Then I’d regret my kindness because their over the top responses often became a kind of harassment. Kids want to help other kids, but we need adults to help us do it right.
15
Yes - in fact, most women I know made this mistake when we were young. After all, every teen movie has taught you that the sensitive weirdo loner is the hero of the story and is owed the love and devotion of a pretty girl. And that girl saves him and solves all his problems. They also tell you that the girls who reject the scary weird guy are mean and deserve a comeuppance.
But of course, as you point out, these guys are socially isolated for a reason. They often have (big) issues with boundaries, appropriateness, emotional reciprocity, reading other people's emotions (like discomfort or fear), and with aggression and inability to regulate their emotions. So when you engage with them, well, congratulations on your new stalker. And of course, it's your fault for "leading them on" and also you are "probably overreacting" because he's "harmless."
I had a high-school friend who died this way. She tried to reach out as a good, sheltered Christian girl to the scary weird guy. He stalked her for five years after graduation and then shot her in her head in her own driveway.
Girls, listen to your instincts. If your gut is telling you to stay away from a guy, that is exactly what you should do. You don't owe anyone your time or your charity or use of your body.
147
Thank you for saying what you did. Excellent insight and spot-on. I would add that... I truly believe, as I've heard others say, that... society has lost something as a whole, with the proliferation of social media...with people losing their way...not understanding 'what truly matters in life'...solely focused on attainment of goods by way of making money....countries such as the US put no value on (public) education, and any education here that IS well-executed is typically prohibitively expensive. Families think they 'must' have a car for every family member, and a private bedroom for each kid. Any sharing of rooms and of cars has gone out the window. So that means both parents must work. Parents then have no time for the kids, and hand them an iPad or iPhone. Families don't eat together at home, and if they go out to eat, everyone is staring at their device. No one watches TV together anymore. All 'TV' viewing is self-curated and done alone. Our 'friends' now number in the dozens to the hundreds, and can often be halfway across the globe. Yet, we don't even know our own next-door neighbors. Wanna meet a friend for dinner or a coffee? That means a text or FB message, and then a wait to see if or how they might reply. Daily travel on the subway always includes seeing numerous homeless and mentally ill...far too many for any one of us to realistically save. So the only realistic option is to walk on by. I could go on.
But net, net, we have lost our souls.
12
The hard reality is that if someone is very determined to kill people, there is very little one can do to prevent it. The method by which they decide to do this can vary, whether by guns or by car or fire or by bomb. Unless they appear on police radar (and most don't) we will continue to have events like this happen. Most have a history of being 'strange' or 'loners' or socially isolated or have some kind of mental health history. You can put up bollards everywhere, you can have strict gun laws, but unless they are locked up to begin with, these kinds of mass incidents will continue to happen. I feel for Toronto, but sadly, this will not be the last episode of this type of killing spree.
3
No motive? Why not just ask the man who is still alive, why he did it rather than tell us you don’t know the motive. Seems a bit cunning to pretend as if this is some unreachable mystery. Ask him the reason then when you are off your coffee break then tell us. Thanks in advance.
4
The perpetrator of this horrendous crime must serve 7-25 years before parole.
Contrast the police action here with the case of the Arizona cop who shot multiple times a man (Daniel Shaver) who was on his knees with hands in the air literally begging for his life in a situation completely under control by a whole team police. That, to me, was the worst case of police shooting I have ever seen. Here in Toronto, the police showed incredible patience with a deranged individual who actively threatened the police. I tip my hat to the Toronto police.
353
And the shooter had on his rifle an engraved plate that said « you’re F#ckrf ». But this was not allowed to be mentioned in the trial.
8
The shooting by officer Slager in South Carolina might have been more egregious, but it seemed to me that the cop in AZ was having fun toying with the (innocent of anything) man's life.
Generally though if you fully comply with police commands in the US you won't be shot (even if you're suspected of killing police). Agree though the restraint of the Tronoto officer was impressive (although it hardly seems worth saving the killer's life).
2
We love Toronto, and we love Canadians. Their grief is our grief. And we all must do better at recognizing the potential for violence that perpetrators like this one leave as clues in our midst.
14
I love that city. So sad....
4
Put this story together with the recent story on the surplus of young men in China and India, many of whom will lack reasonable chances of marriage. If part of this killer's motivation, or that of Elliot Rodger, whom he admired, was rage about failure to find women (the so-called "incel" phenomenon), it may be that those societies have some nasty surprises in store for them.
26
I thought about that too
3
Alek Minassian is of Armenian heritage which is predominantly Christian orthodox. They have a large and active community in the northern metropolitan Toronto area who have lots of social opportunities for their members. It is very surprising that Alek should have developed such a violent and anti social mindset.
16
Socially troubled? How about autistic? Oh, wait, wait, that violates equality standards.
3
I'd love to know the definition of "terrorism." Does it include only those from other lands, of other religions, and of other races? Or does it also include white citizens who cause others to feel terror? As a woman I avoid going out at night, check my car for strangers before getting into it, lock my doors and check them twice at night... the list goes on. I feel terrorized, too, as part of a targeted group. Can we acknowledge that before going into the sad details of this murderer's life?
36
Think of 9/11/2001: that was terrorism because there was a political agenda.
Terrorism always has a political agenda. The murderers who hijacked planes and flew into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, who would have flown into the White House or the Congress if those brave souls on the fourth airplane had not stormed the cockpit and took the plane down into the field in Pennsylvania had a political agenda.
There agenda was simple - to them: they hate the Western World, they hate people they call 'infidels' and believed they would be rewarded after death by killing those they hated.
1
The government regulates motor vehicle operations, including specific ownership and education (licensing) requirements. Drivers must be licensed and insured,, and their driving record (tickets/arrests etc.) are instantly accessible by police, insurers and rental car dealerships. Funny how none of that regulation prevented a nut case from getting a van and plowing into a crowd. This should give pause to t he gun-control advocates. No system of mere laws will stop someone bent on killing people. The solution is a human one, not a regulatory one. Society must return to a system where the dangerously mentally ill are not allowed to roam the streets.
3
So we should don’t require drivers to be licensed or insured?
7
By your argument, let's toss all of our laws into the trash bin, since 'criminals don't obey laws anyway'. Seriously??
The solution is actually a multi-pronged one.
1
is it just me, or is this sickness getting contagious, it jumped the border into Canada. Now they are using Cars and Vans, and how can you stop that. It's a form of public suicide, and has all the ingredients of a suicide, rage, sadness, helplessness, etc.
When a gun is used, there is a hope to make some good out of a horrible situation by banning guns, but look what happens, Ban guns and they use cars. It's not the method of murder that should be the focus point, but the reason for the murder. A person driven over the edge is going to kill, we have to find out what is driving these people to murder, because nothing like this has ever happened before, we can't go a week without reading about a massacre of innocent people. Maybe there was one mass murder in the 1970s, maybe 2 in the 1980s, 3 in the 1990s, few in the 2000s, but somewhere around 2015 we began to see waves of these killings, and now in 2018 we are seeing one a week, and you get the feeling this is leading up to something so terrible we may not be able to bear it.
It's a mental health issue, but since we know republicans do not fix things, they just send out condolences and blame other people, so we can expect, if anything...an escalation.
5
It does seem to be a mental health issue but look back at the movement by mental health 'professionals' who agreed that the vast majority of mentally ill people could live out in the community, with their families or in group homes or apartments.
So we have thousands and thousands of people whose poor families can't handle them, who live on the streets, and thousands and thousands who do live with their families or group homes but who sometimes erupt in rage. It was said that we "warehoused" them....but some people need to be kept in institutions.
Next for mental health issues - the number of babies whose mother delivered drugs of all types to them while they were in utero, babies born addicted to cocaine and marijuana and heroin and a huge number of other drugs. The numbers are enormous. What happens to these babies? You can spot fetal alcohol syndrome babies, but you can't do anything to treat them. Few studies on these topics.
Then there are the babies who were born normal but who mess up their brains by taking drugs.
Add the internet and people who are nuts can find other nuts.
We have a perfect storm.......the timeline indicates it began with drugs, accelerated and made popular when a professor at U.C. Berkeley said, "Turn on, tune in, drop out".
3
Also the Republicans banned the CDC from doing any type of research on gun mortality and many states have banned doctors from asking parents and kids about guns at home.
It is intentional willful ignorance of science and facts and stats by the right wing and the NRA lobby that supports them.
My Father was a member of NRA, had many longstanding records, trophies in basement--back when it was SANE.
He shot targets in the basement (through holes in the walls).
As children we were taught gun safety from early age and I shot often in safe environments as child and young adult.
What is wrong NOW with NRA?
How do children EVER get the idea to take a gun to school?
We need to take OUT the NRA and see what happens when the money DRIES UP and Senators and Congressmen need to answer to their consitiuents, not to the NRA.
2
One can only imagine that had he been an American with access to semi-automatic weapons what might have occurred.
9
Toronto is one of the most culturally and racially diverse cities in the world. This is the result of Canada’s leadership in welcoming newcomers who are willing and able to contribute to making our country an even better place.This horrible and unspeakable crime should not be used as reason to change fundamental Canadian values. And we mourn the tragic loss of so many innocent victims.
38
I haven't even read about the arrest of the waffle house suspect yet, and now another horrific attack? What in the world is wrong with these men?
13
Thank you for pointing out the almost universal common denominator in these terrible attacks. They are perpetrated by men. One has to wonder why that is so. There certainly are women who murder and there are even women who are serial killers. But they are much less common than male killers. I don't have a solution but I think the observation is valid.
20
"Government officials have said the attack did not appear to be an act of terrorism."
What is an act of terrorism then? Is it a useful classification? Or just a political one. If it's a non-Western person killing Western people, it is often called ideological or political. Why not the same for a man with a grudge against women?
28
"Government officials have said the attack did not appear to be an act of terrorism."
Sounds pretty terrorizing to me.
11
I have been following the aftermath of this tragedy closely, listening to and watching the CBC coverage online. One thing that struck me is that statements made by Canadian law enforcement and government officials seemingly shy away from using the word "terrorism", as I'm sure their counterparts in here in the US would be very likely to do. Rather, they use the phrase "a threat to national security". Yep, I know, cynics will be quick to call this "political correctness", but I applaud the Canadian government for using language that tamps down mass hysteria and has the potential to reduce possible threats against certain groups of people, Muslims in particular.
22
I’m just waiting for the speculation that the mental health system could have stopped this— perhaps someone will also bring up that the killer had autism and that autism explains it!
I’m a psych social worker with 15 years experience working with individuals in acute psychiatric crisis and I’m also the parent of a child with autism. Can I take this moment to clear a few things up?
1) The “mental health system” cannot force someone into treatment involuntarily for more than a few days on an inpatient unit, except in rare court-ordered situations. Mental health care isn’t like surgery. It can’t simply be “done to” people to “make them” better, it consists primarily of talking openly, which someone must be willing to do, and/or taking medications, which they also must be willing to do. Someone planning a mass murder is extremely unlikely to seek help for that because they WANT to do it. They may not drop any clues that would allow others to intervene.
2) Autism does NOT mean “lack of conscience” or “not valuing human life.” People with autism may struggle a lot socially and feel isolated, but that doesn’t mean that autism predisposes someone to murder. Quite the opposite— most people with autism have a very strong moral code and sense of right/wrong.
In the end, we may not know what drove this unfortunate man to murder. I would start with his susceptibility to toxic messaging from hate groups, though.
36
Why isn't part of this story the fact that the policeman who confronted the driver DIDN'T SHOOT him despite having what would have been seen as sufficient cause. This officer displayed courage and patience beyond what anyone could have reasonably expected. He is a hero in the true sense of the word. I am also left to wonder if any officer in the U.S. wouldn't have emptied his gun into the driver.
30
I was struck immediately by the same thing: the officer said "Don't care" when the van driver said he had a gun. Stunning, thoughtful courage.
13
Into the driver ... and a few dozen bystanders. This sounds like a 100 round scenario in most cities in the US
5
please stop offering details about the murderer. why not treat these incidents with the same anonymity as cases of rape? As it stands the media makes this into a competition. The next lunatic is tempted to get famous for out-killing the last.
we get it! some defective human killed a bunch of people. we don't need to know how many, and we don't meet to see his dating profile.
1
Why is it not terrorism, especially if he was targeting women? Perhaps not religiously or politically motivated, but still terrorism. Women have been dealing with terror since the beginning of time.
46
As much as everyone in Canada likes to say "this sort of thing doesn't happen here," it apparently does... No country is immune to mental illness, and this is a wake up call to the government to invest more resources into helping people like this.
6
When Islamic terrorists are removed, all the shooters and vehicle drivers involved in these mass killings could literally be the same person. This lunatic could be the one from Parkland, Florida; or Sandy Hook; or one of the Columbine shooters; the whack jobs in Isla Vista, Aurora CO, etc. Most had numerous run-ins with mental health and/or the judicial system and nothing was done. It will not surprise me when we find the same in Canada. A very small number of people are so mentally ill that they should not be on the street, period. Whether genetics, PTSD, too many drugs for too long, the cause does not matter. Before attacking gun-owners, demanding ever more cameras and police everywhere, etc. it is time for the West to dial back its 1960's fantasy of any behavior goes, and corollary fantasy that the mentally ill can live in a complex, tension-inducing urban society without coercive monitoring and when necessary, removal to a work farm in the country for some, and incarceration for a few others. Removal will reduce crime, homelessness, drug abuse, and so long as the work farms are properly staffed and managed, provide a "safe space" that the mentally ill need. I am not talking about slave labor - these can be organic farms that sell product at high prices and the workers are paid as well as sheltered. Just a different kind of sheltered workshop. Political correctness is the only barrier to a policy that is kind, just, and maximizes freedom for the largest number.
2
"Nothing was done". I am a psychiatrist. People have to want to get better in order for psychiatric treatment to work. You talk about providing "safe space". First problem - how would you pick out who should go to the "safe space"? Judicial commitment? What if someone gets committed who truly doesn't merit this sort of forced segregation? Second problem - who pays for "safe space"? Under your criteria, I would probably have been consigned to "safe space" in my 20's - the same years that I attended medical school (graduate class of 1980). I suffered my first episode of major depression at the age of 17. I think pushing all of this violence into the realm of psychiatric disorders is a comfortable way of saying "someone else's problem". But in my opinion it is more of an issue with our societal norms - men should be "winners" and when they are not "winners" they get mad - then people die.
11
Autism is a neurological disorder, not a mental illness. This man was not known to police, has no record of violence, and, as far as we know, he didn't have a psychiatric history either. Since graduating high school, he worked and attended college. So on what grounds do we lock him up?
When looking at the handful of young men who have committed mass murders in recent years in Canada, the common denominator isn't a criminal or psychiatric history, and certainly not autism. All of them were radicalized and encouraged by on-line hate propaganda.
Coincidentally, there have been meetings of G7 security authorities happening in Toronto right now, and on today's agenda was a meeting with internet companies like Google and Facebook et al about cleaning up their act and not allowing their platforms to be used for publishing incitements to hate. Most countries (except the US) have laws against publishing hate speech, and the internet companies know they have to do better or else governments will continue to move towards tougher content regulation, as they already have in the EU with their new internet privacy laws.
With all my horror, sadness and deep sympathy for the victims,
This is a mental health issuse, period. The law enforcement system should have no business beyond arresting the situation, this is not north Korea! I can picture on the other hand the sustained direct and indirect bullying this person was served over the years, and his sexual life is definitely non existent.. When I was is Germany I witnessed some programs for the handicapped like him, and for the elderly or all the socially challenged individuals to receive sexual services, an mature approach like this will never materialize in North America with the sex negative culture from both the religious far right and the far left. But we sure know how to jail then all..
1
Good thing that nature has zero tolerance for faulty products, only people indulge opposite.
How often are we seeing hatred of women, or abuse of women, framing acts of violence, regardless of other factors? Misogyny is the new (and old) hate.
36
No information about who this person is or what his motive may have been....nice coverage!
3
From the police example, I hope other forces can see the value in assessing situations with a view to preserving life. By talking to the man who did this we can better understand how to help people before they act in this way. But this event is about the victims — let’s hear their names and life stories in addition to the suspect.
3
No city is free of hateful people or violent acts but some cities are not known for these things and Toronto is one of them. Toronto is a peaceful and safe city compared to most and people should be proud to live there. The motto of Toronto, “Diversity: Our Strength.” stands for a city which respects all cultures, religions, ethnic backgrounds, which means you are respected no matter who or where you're from. We know this is not everyone's experience and we must always be striving to do better but as the fourth largest city in North America Toronto is setting an excellent example. I hope this tragic incident will encourage us to respond with our better selves and strengthen our communities rather than deteriorate into fear and hatred. Toronto is a better city than that.
11
Toronto and its people are wonderful. The way their police handled the situation is exemplary. My heart goes out to the victims and their families and friends.
We probably need to install concrete barriers every few feet between sidewalks/ bicycle lanes and traffic lanes, and barriers where the sidewalk meets an intersection walkway. This form of terrorism isn't going away.
On a related note, no one can deny that the evil actions of a minority of our fellow humans (who are very sick and disordered) always ruin the freedoms the rest of us enjoy... it changes the way our society functions.
But one thing I know for sure is that not doing anything or ignoring the problem is a mistake. First we must prevent (or make it much more difficult to do this type of terror). The safety and health of the many must be a priority, even if that means that we all lose some of the entitlements or rights we want (but don't need).
We want free sidewalks, but they're no longer safe so we have to install safety barriers. In America some people want to drive a vehicle while texting, but the don't need to drive and text. And since texting while driving is a hazard to society, we don't allow it. Some people want automatic guns, but they don't need them. Guns are a menace to society, so we shouldn't allow citizens to own them.... It's just common sense. Why can't we just be rational about these things? :(
5
The general public doesn't yet know the perpetrator's motives but we all know his modus operandi - use of a vehicle as a weapon.
No doubt he got the idea from TV or web news on other such occurrences.
Detailed reporting on terrorist or otherwise violent incidents isn't necessarily a good thing. It can infect the wrong people with bad ideas. responsible journalists have to come to terms with this.
1
The Toronto officer's command of and self control in an extremely dangerous situation is commendable and inspiring.
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“This is not something that happens here,” she said. “We always think we are insulated from this kind of thing. We like to think we are like Switzerland.”
And so like an American suburb rocked by a mass shooting, someone inevitably makes a statement that implies tragedies like this only happen in other places. Perhaps the fact that these things happen in places not typically considered dangerous is worth noting.
3
Gender-based violence taken to a mass assault level, again begging the question: What exactly is terrorism and who gets to decide what it is and isn't?
12
Toronto is a great city; wonderful to visit as I have a few times on my way from Detroit to Niagara.
My condolences to the victims.
I must add I am very impressed by the Toronto police; unlike US police, they did NOT to shoot as a first option despite provocation by the perpetrator. In the US several black males have been shot by police even when they were fleeing on foot or sitting quietly in their cars. Maybe we should send our police up north for training.
14
All the facts for this case are not in yet, but I think these are the relevant discussion points:
Main streaming of the mentally ill: one of the greatest crimes of the Twentieth Century - A crime whose consequences we are all living with today in the Twenty-First Century.
As mankind become more electronically connected and as technology becomes more compact and powerful the risks of death to hundreds, thousands, millions grows and grows and grows.
But to no avail - certain manufacturers of certain products and certain politicians won't accept even reasonable restrictions on their products; in addition, an army of psychologists, social workers and counter-culture people refuse to face the reality of human behavior. To them, abnormal behavior is just a healthy route to originality and creativity.
For further guidance on some of these issues, please watch the film, "Forbidden Planet".
It seems like a reasonable time to explore automatic cut-out fuel or ignition systems in vehicles involved in significant collisions (such as impact with a pedestrian). Maybe systems like this should only be employed on commercial or rental vehicles since the crazies rarely use their own cars and trucks.
5
Unfortunately, even if convicted on all charges, the maximum time this guy will spend behind bars in Canada is 25 years (life sentence). Even multiple life sentences ... all will be served "concurrently", ie, at the same time. He will be eligible for parole sometime around 16 yrs, I think. Not sure on the exact number on that one.
Such is the 'justice system' in Canada.
1
@Don Johnson
Not necessarily, he could be designated a dangerous offender, and then he could be held indefinitely (think Bernardo). Of course, that depends on the Crown proving the case, and it probably would involve a lot of psychiatric testimony. But it is possible.
3
So even a society with universal single-payer healthcare fails at appropriately diagnosing and managing those with serious mental and emotional disorders, and even in accepting, multicultural Canada, troubled students are objects of amusement and derision.
Though I strongly support sensible gun laws and the removal of weapons of war from public access, it's clear that it does not all come down to guns. It comes down to lifelong support for families with troubled children--and more aggressive prenatal and preconception outreach to eliminate all preventable causes of such brain miswiring.
4
Please provide links to the medical journal articles that prove that any kind of pre-natal testing can diagnose this 'miswiring'.
Condolences to the hurting people of North York, the City of Toronto, and the Province of Ontario. Yet more unbearable misery inflicted upon civilians peacefully going about their daily lives by a young man suffering from some version of testosterone sickness - this last occasion, this reader would humbly argue, qualifies as much an act of terror as any such attack and pretty much derives from the same unbearable pain of rejection, whatever the perpetrator of the moment's stated beliefs and/or politics.
5
John Brunner's seminal 1960's Sci-Fi novel, Stand on Zanzibar, had a plot element captured in one word that should withstand any test of human time.
Mucker: derived from the Malay word, "amuk" (amok, amuck); a psychic disturbance characterized by depression followed by a manic urge to murder. When a person goes violently mad, rushing through the village and murderously attacks everyone in his path, they have run amok.
It is not an explanation but one is not needed and would almost certainly be inadequate if not grossly misleading in any case. Alek Minassian was a mucker. One bloody frenzy may or may not satisfy him for life; no one knows, Alek probably least of all.
'...attacker expressed anger at women'
This once again demonstrates how far we still have to go, in gender parity...where women are not just viewed as mere 'things' that some men feel they are 'entitled to'. We all get lonely. We all feel the sting of rejection. But yet, 9 times out of 10, it is the jilted man (vs jilted woman) who turns to murdering the object of his affection (or it seems, in this case, who simply lashes out at strangers in rage....)
33
It used to be that you knew all the oddballs around you — who was harmless, who was unpredictable, and who should be avoided at all cost. The local police also knew, and kept an eye on the right people. But now people move around a lot more and everyone is a stranger.
3
My thoughts and prayers go out to Canadian Conservatives who are devastated to learn that the attacker was not a Muslim. No city is, or can be, totally safe from such an attack, but thanks to our restrictive gun laws these incidents happen very rarely here.
18
I was listening to NPR and a CBC reporter mentioned that this was not being considered an act of terrorism.
With all due respect to the Canadian authorities, I disagree. The so-called "Mens' Rights Movement" is a terrorist movement and "Mens' Rights Activists" are terrorists in the same way that "lone wolves" who commit terrorism (i.e. Timothy McVeigh) are terrorists. This was not simply mass murder - this was a terrorist act not much different from that of Elliot Rodgers'; it was perpetrated to send a message of terror.
50
I completely agree. If terrorism is defined as "the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims", the deeply troubling misogyny of the "incel rebellion" movement clearly meets that definition. I am mere kilometres from where this happened. I feel entitled to call it what it is: terrorism.
16
Insane and angry humans will always find a way to murder innocent folk. Whether with vans or clubs or poison or nooses or knives or legislation.
The key factors seem to be insanity and anger. No sane human can murder another human unless insane or angry. That is why we discriminate between murder, suicide, war, and self-defense.
Likewise, no human can be murdered unless they are victims of insanity, war or incite anger.
Here is how I managed to stay alive for 62 years: I avoid the insane, I have never volunteered to go to war, and I never purposely engage my fellow citizens for the sole purpose of angering them.
Its not that hard.
Of course, the "mental illness" defense will come into play to spare the killer, especially if the family of the killer has money. This is an insult to the millions of people who struggle daily with mental illness, who do not kill or maim people! I noticed the Waffle House killer asked for a lawyer and his pathetic family has also been bleating the "mental illness' excuse as well. Either society reopens mental health hospitals and once again commits people, or the criminal justice process creates a new catagory to deal with those who murder and main and seek to avoid justice by claiming mental illness.
I am perplexed by the "expressed anger at women" headline. The story tells us only that he said he was afraid of girls in High School, and that on FB he praised Elliott Rodger -- who had expressed anger at women. Those elements seem like a thin reed. How about one -- ONE -- example of this guy expressing anger at women before you say he expressed anger at women???
1
The suspect didn't just praise Elliot Rogers (who wrote a misogynistic manifesto before going on a killing spree). He also self-identified as an "incel," a group that is defined by anger at women and their attraction to "Chads." In other words, if someone says they're an incel, they're explicitly telling you that they're angry at women.
6
Athourities said it wasn't an act of terrorism? Really?? Sounds like people at the scene felt plenty of terror.
7
These spectacular and abominable events demonstrate that you simply can't "ban" away evil or deranged people, no matter how enlightened you believe you and your city or country is. What happened is terrible, but these events are inevitably followed by some sort of "we should have done more" mea culpas or "we should have banned" whatever was used.
Life can be spectacularly unfair and unpredictable. But putting the blame on anyone or anything beyond the human perpetrator is just as spectacularly unfair. What would or could anyone have done differently that would have avoided this? That's rhetorical, but feel free to speculate that all sidewalks should be separated from the street by a concrete barrier or all people who have been observed to have "abnormal" behavior or shared "abnormal" sentiments be held for psychiatric evaluation... indefinitely. It think the Soviets used that approach for their "abnormals".
Let's give full marks to the policeman who declined to shoot dead the alleged perpetrator of this crime.
402
Are you seriously praising the police for not shooting a mass murderer? How many innocent people's lives would have been spared if they had shot sooner? How much human life and taxpayer money is going to be wasted on his trial and incarceration?
3
Jane - He was apprehended within 7 minutes of the first call to police, a mile away from where the incident started. How would you expect the police to get there sooner and find him?
In case you are unaware of the fact, in Canada we do not punish people before they are tried. We do not have the death penalty either.
10
Assuming the reports are accurate & the driver had Asperger's or another set of impairments, or ASD, I would question why the people who knew him best did not make more of an effort to call attention to his problems with rage & his unreasonable expectations of others, specifically women.
If he was functional enough to attend classes, he was functional enough to have it explained to him that he was not entitled to hurt others, and that lack of sexual intimacy is not an excuse for mass murder. (If it were, there would be mass murders committed all the time, by thousands if not millions of frustrated people).
Perhaps there were psychological disorders, diagnosed or not diagnosed, masked by the Asperger's diagnosis & not adequately addressed. This could not have been the 1st time Alek Minassian flew into a rage. It takes some planning & resolve to accelerate for 2 km mowing people of all ages down.
There should be a thorough investigation, including of the way his family was interacting with him over the course of his lifetime. Maybe he was being pushed to do too much. People with fragile minds & psyches can't handle levels of pressure others shrug at. For the victims, witnesses, medics & investigators, this crime was exactly like a terrorist attack. Since AM survived, he should be studied for clues about how better to spot mental health crises & how to manage aggressive males with cognitive anomalies. But I would look for the full story, including why he was so intolerant.
23
I find you comments to be cold and your reflexive blame of the family to be impertinent and out of place. Why do you assume that this family has not done everything in their power to help their son? How is it that you think that just "telling" someone what is proper and what is not automatically results in some kind of miraculous compliance where some disability and/or illness overshadows behavior? Launching into the Aspergers rumor/assumption is also incredibly thoughtless. There are tens of thousands of people with Aspergers and many more with mental illness who never commit harm of any kind. You would have us study this man like a specimen. His act was heinous, and, of course I don't "condone" it. But, it also sounds like he was quite ill. A measure of compassion is in order--on all sides.
11
I too have a male cousin with an ASD diagnosis and I can tell you his greatest frustration is his inability to form intimate relationships with females. Any attempt to explain this to him is of no value. He harbours a combination of resentment and an unyielding fantasy that he shouldn’t be restricted from pursuing this right. He doesn’t however have the cognitive and emotional capacity to understand his own impairment and the ramifications of it on the establishment of social and intimate relationships. It’s not as easy and as black and white as you have suggested in your comment. We all have a right to experience the joys of attraction and also the desire to be attractive to others. This man most likely never experienced the latter and accordingly had established a deeply unhealthy and pathological rage towards the opposite sex. I’m certainly not condoning his behaviour but it is important to recognise that people with cognitive and/or social and communication disorders as in ASD have a longing just like the rest of us that needs appeasement and this is where intervention is vital. In the case of my cousin, the best outlet for him is to have him visit with a chaperone a sex worker who has experience in managing people with disabilities. This intervention has enabled him to experience the joys of intimate physical relations. It is important for disability advocates to take these matters into account when crafting holistic whole person intervention.
16
Speculation run amok. Assuming perhaps maybe....
2
Toronto is a wonderful city. I visit regularly and will continue to do so.
46
Crazy people exist everywhere, I do wonder if his roots are in some other country and if he has any religion. I also wonder why nobody took notice that he needed mental health assistance, after all it is probably free in Canada.
13
The Canadian Loony is of Armenian origin, the vast majority of whom are orthodox Christians.
Some people noticed.
In 2009, Sona Minassian, his mother, was quoted in a story in the Richmond Hill Liberal lamenting that her son, who suffered from a form of autism called Asperger syndrome, was at risk of losing access to a special program called Helpmate that assisted the teen to “work though his cognitive barriers and prepare him for the workplace.”
“My son would spend afternoons working with Helpmate. They were sensitive to his needs and now he has a job at Compugen here in town,” she said, referring to an IT company in Richmond Hill.
“He was able to take the experience provided by Helpmate and apply it. This kind of service for my son wasn’t available elsewhere. I am convinced that if we didn’t have Helpmate, my son would not have had such an opportunity.”
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/toronto/article-suspect-in-toront...
Let's just be grateful he didn't have access to the weapons of war that angry American males have in the form of unlimited assault weapons; the death toll likely would have been higher in that case.
322
Even though Asperger's syndrome is a biologically caused mental disorder, it doesn't prevent the individual with that diagnosis from distinguishing right from wrong. Hence I doubt that a judge would permit him to mount an insanity defense.
8
There is nothing to be "grateful for", Socrates. This is a very faulty argument, that access to guns would explain mass killings. There are many other weapons to which people have easy and unlimited access. Remember the Boston Marathon?Ant the multiple events of vehicular killings? Etc.
Toronto is a great city in a great country. Our prayers are with you.
247
Ditto. Beautiful city with wonderful, friendly people. But I would only visit during the Summer.
10
Things are starting to get warmer and warmer.
3
Thank you, Paul. Your thoughts are very much appreciated.
2
How many of these incidents need occur before manufacturers are going to be held responsible for failing to introduce a safety feature that shuts down a vehicle's engine when a front-side impact occurs?
336
There are already systems available across most brands that include automatic braking if a pedestrian is in the path of the vehicle. That would be enough to stop this sort of thing. The systems do not distinguish the reason the vehicle is forced to stop based on the driver's intent.
50
Actually most automatic breaking systems do have ways to gauge driver intent. My vehicle instructions say if you are ever stuck between train crossing barriers to just keep on the accelerator and it will override the system. You can also just turn the functionality off with a button.
1
...just goes to show ya....interesting to see how many safety measures are enacted for cars and the operation of same...but yet positively stupefying that not only are similar things Not done for guns, and the operation of same, but that so many actually fight Against it.
7
Richmond Hill is a separate municipality, north of Toronto. It's not a neighbourhood, though in the GTA (the Greater Toronto Area).
18
Oh, Canada! Our hearts are with you.
372
Let's hear from the gun lovers:
"Now we should ban vans".
"Let's confiscate all the vans".
We get it, you've made your point: you love guns more than you love human life.
430
That argument has never and will never make sense. It shouldn't need to be pointed out, but guns don't have any economic utility in our society except for those who make them. Cars have clear economic utility.
173
Guns have utility to those that use them. Whether you think that utility is worthwhile is besides the point. Its not something that needs to be explained or justified.
6
While I don’t agree with many gun rights advocates, this is a strawman argument. The gun represents a tool with which, when kept and borne by the citizenry, natural liberties are ensured and secured. It is not love of the gun but love of liberty that motivated the Second Amendment’s creation. Furthermore, there are many things that people do value above their life, including faith, family, and, of course, liberty; the founding fathers embodied such a belief - “Give me liberty or give me death.” That said, critiques can certainly be made of these positions that don’t require misrepresenting the other side of the argument.
26