18 year-old had a heart attack?

On Wednesday, May 5, 18 year-old Alexander Manon collapsed and died near the York University campus after a brief chase by police. At 6:30 pm, Toronto police stopped a car on Founders Road at Steeles Avenue West. Manon got out of the car and fled on foot and after being chased by the police, he collapsed. The driver of the car told the media that the police "beat him up, he was on the floor, he wasn’t resisting. Two officers on him, punching him in the face, one kicking him in the ribs…and then five more come and jump on him…he is not that big for seven cops to be on him like that."

Meanwhile, an internal police union memo written yesterday by Toronto Police Association president Mike McCormack, said that an autopsy on Manon found "no anatomical reasons for the death of the 18-year-old" and that "for more than three weeks, the SIU has known that at the autopsy the pathologist found no broken bones and no anatomical reasons for the death of the 18-year-old, with the coroner’s office exploring ‘other causes.’". (The SIU that McCormack refers to this the Special Investigations Unit, a civilian oversight agency). The director of the SIU, Ian Scott, emailed the Toronto Star Monday evening and said "members of a police force are under a statutory duty not to disclose info about an ongoing case." McCormack's justification for writing the memo and disclosing the information was "that the information wasn’t forthcoming and this was starting — if you look on the Internet and the media — rumours around his death that were starting to erode relationships between the community and the police".

Sorry Mike, but 18 year-olds don't normally suffer from heart attacks. If Manon suffered from a heart condition or lived off of nothing but McDonalds, that would certainly seem plausible. But Manon's family isn't buying it either. According to the Manon family attorney, Selwyn Pieters, when the family viewed Alexander's body at the morgue, they claimed to see signs of abuse. Pieters said that "there was blood all over. He had a neck brace on. His eyes were black and blue. The issue of a heart attack is fiction. It seems that he died from physical force. He was a healthy young person."

The SIU has recently come under fire from Andre Marin, the Ontario Ombudsman (who oversees and investigates public complaints about the provinicial government, including more than 500 provincial government ministries, agencies, corporations, tribunals, boards and commissions). While the SIU was under investigation Marin said it is "a toothless tiger and muzzled watchdog" who conduct investigations with a police bias. Marin previously said that the SIU "has not only become complacent about ensuring that police officials follow the rules, it has bought into the fallacious argument that SIU investigations aren't like other criminal cases and it is acceptable to treat police witnesses differently from civilians."