Was shooting Sammy Yatim Necessary

        Sammy Yatim, 18 was on a TTC streetcar, and decided to pull out his penis and held teenage girls at the back of the Streetcar hostage with a knife. After the Streetcar came to a stop all the passengers ran off the car and Sammy stayed on the Car. Shortly after the cops arrived and they all held guns to him asking him to drop his knife. After he held the knife in his hand after being asked multiple times to drop the knife James Forcillo a 30 year old officer shot him times. After seeing that he was still moving he put another 6 shots for a total of 9 shots to Sammy. To top it all off, Sammy was moving but at the slightest and the Officer decided to tase Sammy to solidify that Sammy was no longer a threat. You have to look at this from two different perspectives. What would you want the police officer to do if you were a parent of someone who was being threatened by Sammy or what would you want the Police to do if you were close to Sammy.

       Some people may think that Officer Forcillo shooting him 9 times as well as tasering him after the shots were fired was going overboard. People know that Sammy was not close enough to the officers that the knife would cause a threat. Even if Sammy decided to throw the knife, the armour that Officers wear would easily protect them. If they wanted to make sure that Sammy no longer posed a threat then they could have easily shot Sammy in a spot that would have made him fall to the ground like the arm or leg. This returns to cop training, maybe they should train cops to shoot people in places that will most likely not cause death so we can prevent things like this happening. At the end of the day, Cops should be here to serve and protect, not murder.

      
        Other people may think that shooting Sammy was the right thing to do. Due to the fact that he was holding a knife, he was posing a threat. The only way to keep everyone safe on and off the streetcar was to remove him from the situation and after he decided not to listen to the officers, they felt that the best thing to do was to get rid of him by shooting him. Yatim reportedly pulled out his penis and was threating girls at the back of the streetcar with a knife. How would you feel if you were a parent of one of the girls. what would you want the cops to do.  you would want the cops to remove him from that particular situation for the safety of your daughter

    In my opinion I think that shooting Sammy Yatim was not necessary, let alone 9 times as well as a taser shock. I feel that, at a distance a knife can not cause a threat. In the surveillance video you can easily see that Sammy is scared, considering he had several guns pointed at him. Although I didn't personally know Sammy I could tell that the only reason he didn't drop his weapon is because he felt that is was the only sense of defence he had. Even after Sammy didn't drop his weapon there was clearly no need to shoot him 9 times. At most the officer could have shot him in an area like the arm or leg which would cause Sammy to drop the weapon and not die. I hope that the officer that shot Sammy gets charged as well as lose his job because we can not have officers like that who aren't protecting us attempt to protect us.