, 04.23.2018 10:43 PM

Questions about April 23, 2018

  1. Why do some people always bicker over whether it was terrorism or not? It was mass murder. Isn’t that enough?
  2. How could he be driving for as long as he did on Yonge Street (half an hour) – as far as he did (more than a kilometre) – and no one shot him, or rammed his van, or both?
  3. What do those early stories mean, when they say that he was known to police?
  4. Why do politicians always offer thoughts and prayers? Why don’t they instead offer policies and ideas that would prevent something like this?
  5. Who was that truly amazing cop who caught the killer without firing a shot? Where does bravery like that come from?
  6. Who are the ones who took pictures of victims to post on Twitter? Can we find them and shame them?
  7. Why do we always give these mass murderers what they want, and profile them? Can’t we, just once, lavish that much attention on the victims alone?
  8. Has anyone started a fund to help the families?
  9. Why do we need to hear from anyone other than the mayor and the top cop? Why do federal and provincial politicians insist on being seen at the press conferences?
  10. Why did this happen, and how can we make sure it never happens again?

30 Comments

  1. Ian Scott says:

    I will answer some of your questions, Warren:

    1. People are not taught critical thinking skills. They emote on words instead of recognizing reality.

    2. There are many “reasons.” – Men are taught not be like men of the past, the heroes that might have tried to stop something like this. Oh, there are still some around, but probably none were today, in North York. Also, we’ve been brainwashed that we are not supposed to do anything – we are to wait for the police. This is horrific, and both society and the police are to blame for this, moving away from the Peel’s Principles, one of which states, The public are the police, and the police are the public.

    3. I wonder the same thing. I found it odd to read some sources claiming he was known to the police, while Chief Saunders said he was not known to them.

    4. Good question. Politicians are mostly useless as it is, prey on people’s fears, invent fears for people to be afraid of, so they can be elected. In the end, they are mostly sociopaths, and in when something is going down, they really show their true colours, unable to offer anything really.

    5. Yes! Who was that police officer? I’m tough on bad policing, but that was GREAT policing. I’m wondering if he’s an ex-Community Guardian – our training was “Arrest/Force as a last resort.” Takes a lot of self-discipline to do that, which also accounts from bravery. You take control of yourself, deal with the fear, and take in reality of the situation. That police officer’s actions should be in EVERY single use of force training class in North America. In fact, maybe he should be promoted immediately to some position where he can do the training. Although, I’d bet he would not want to leave the streets.

    6. I did not see many photos on Twitter. The ones I did see I thought were more about showing news. So, can’t answer that.

    7. Profiling them is helpful. And it is the human condition to want to know “Why, who, what, where, when.” Check out your own questions šŸ™‚

    8. Good question. I would bet if not yet, someone will. People are still in shock at the moment.

    9. Because politicians are mostly sociopaths and have a “need” to be seen, even if only to say, “we offer up prayers.”

    10. We cannot make sure it never happens again. But we should be examining our societal values – encouraging men to be men that they once were, and perhaps even relaxing regulations about self-defence – and remembering “The public are the police and the police are the public.”

    I wrote this quickly… I reserve the right šŸ˜€ to modify and clarify in the future.

  2. Curt says:

    Warren,
    You ask valid questions. But reality is not part of our Government’s essence. Our federal and provincial and indeed our city governments all want to make us believe that we live in La La Land…… Canada.

  3. Pedant says:

    Why do some people always bicker over whether it was terrorism or not? It was mass murder. Isnā€™t that enough?

    You could say the exact same about the notion of hate crimes.

    If a person is assaulted or murdered, that is a crime. Does it matter, legally, if the perpetrator’s motive was derived from hatred of the victim’s race or religion?

    • Fred from BC says:

      Well said. I would only add that as far as the ‘ terrorism ‘ designation goes, it is simply used to ensure that we are prepared for possible further (coordinated) attacks.

  4. Steve T says:

    Question 11:
    Why is so much time spent discussing whether the murderer was mentally ill? Who gives a sh*t? Of course he was mentally ill, to do something this horrid. It doesn’t make him any less of a monster, and giving him this sort of excuse and sympathy is a huge betrayal to the real victims.

    • Fred from BC says:

      By definition, mentally ill people are not responsible for their actions. You make it sound as though it is a choice they somehow made…

      • Mark Roseman says:

        No, that’s very incorrect. One (extremely small) subset of mentally ill people would at certain times meet criteria to be deemed not criminally responsible (or incapable of health decisions, or …).

      • Steve T says:

        Not criminally responsible is a far cry from deserving sympathy.

        My problem is that so often the perpetrator is given sympathy alongside their victims. That is fundamentally unfair, unjust, and insulting to the innocent people who lost their lives.

  5. Cyndy says:

    The question of why politicians must be ā€œseenā€ at the press conference is simply that if the person isnā€™t seen then the story by people who oppose them becomes ā€œwhy werenā€™t they there supportingā€ the victims. I am pretty sure that had Premier Wynne not been at the press conference everyone would now be complaining that she was ā€œout campaigningā€. They canā€™t win in any situation.

  6. the salamander horde says:

    .. 10 good question I have no answer to
    As a young man I worked
    in triple maximum security
    worked with drug addicted
    and the emontionally disturbed

    I remain with no answers..
    sometimes people crack
    and explantations (like that autospell)
    just unfold in disastrous ways

    his parents and friends, neighbors
    will describe him in nicer ways

    This is a guy who cracked..
    brain went topsy turvy

    Political motives ?

    Give me a break..
    he was driving up a sidewalk
    killing pedestrians..
    This is mental illness

    a brain that cracked..

  7. Marc J says:

    Number 6: Iā€™ve seen that in action and it was very depressing/frustrating. I witnessed an accident between a bus and a train in Ottawa a few years back. While I and a few others went to help. The majority of bystanders stood there with their phones out. I get escaping through a lens but standing there is a crisis is just forgien to me.

  8. DRB says:

    Re: How could he be driving for as long as he did on Yonge Street (half an hour) ā€“ as far as he did (more than a kilometre) ā€“ and no one shot him, or rammed his van, or both?

    Would insurance cover you if you intentionally rammed the van in question in an attempt to stop it?

    I believe there was a story yesterday of someone who tried to follow the van and keep speed with it, all the while honking its horn to try and alert pedestrians of the danger until traffic prevented him from keeping up.

  9. Eric Weiss says:

    1. They bicker over it because they need to assign blame to a group, race, religion, or political affilation they hate.
    2. Because real life isnā€™t an action movie.
    3. Initial reports are usually BS, spread by the internet and refuted later once the facts are accumulated and released by the authorities. Ignore them.
    4. Thoughts and prayers are easy.
    5. Agreed! The only good thing that came out of the tragedy yesterday. One cop showed the world what policing should be. And all the internet tough guys who said they would have shot him, please refer to answer number two.
    6. Iā€™m glad I never saw any of those photos, but internet lynch mobs only add more pain and rage. Rise above.
    7. Iā€™m conflicted in this. I hate that they inspire copycats and they get the notoriety they crave, but not being open and honest about who they are and what they did would just fuel the paranoia and conspiracy theories. I wish there was a middle ground.
    8. Iā€™ve seen reports of one, but canā€™t find a link.
    9. Because politicians are attention whores. But if they donā€™t say anything, their opponents would say they donā€™t care.
    10. Some people are just broken. No society is immune to this kind of insanity.

    • The Doctor says:

      I went on Breitbart yesterday to see their reaction, and in the comments section the Trumpbots immediately concluded the perp was muslim. When it was pointed out he was Armenian and that most Armenians are Christians, the Trumpbots responded by saying he was still a muslim. Then they switched to say he was a secret muslim or a convert and that the Fake News media and the Deep State were covering up the fact that he was muslim. Damn that MSM!

      It was very clear that the Trumpbots dearly, dearly wanted this to be an act of Islamic terrorism and they were truly crushed and bitter that it wasn’t.

      Once it was abundantly clear that the perp was not muslim, Brietbart let the story die and the Trumpbots took their hate elsewhere.

  10. Pipes says:

    My first reaction is in the depth of my sympathy for those who suffered and the intensity of my gratitude to those who helped.

    My second reaction is a blood thirsty call for justice and I expect it will be diluted with the questions of this monster’s mental fitness.

    “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?” The Hangman knows. Let the Hangman expunge the identity of the mass murdered.

  11. Ned Ludd says:

    We’ve been lulled into a false sense of security that incidents like this do not happen in Canada. I would be taking a page from countries that have suffered these attacks, and construct barriers, bullards, whatever you want to call them, to prevent vehicles from entering onto sidewalks or pedestrian areas. Not particularly expensive, ld reduce the chances of this ever happening again in Canada.considering the lives they would save. I am sure Israel, Germany, the UK, and others have many ideas that could prevent this from every happening again in Canada

    • Ned Ludd says:

      Scuse the grammar and spelling errors….always try to copy before sending, and somthing went amiss. my apologies.

    • doconnor says:

      Adding bollards and other street funature in places people gether will help, but Toronto has hundreds of kilometres of sidewalk with a similar level of activity as the area attacked.

      • Ned Ludd says:

        Again, we should be seeking the expertise of those countries who have experienced similar attacks to find out where best to place these devices. You can’t protect everyone, obviously-but you can certainly reduce the risk. If it costs millions, so be it-its better than 10 dead and 16 horribly injured.

        • Lyndon Dunkley says:

          I will never understand security theatre fetishists. Let’s cover the entire country in concrete in order to decrease the odds of a repeat black swan event from one in a billion to 1 in 1.000000001 billion.

          Increasing the fine for texting and driving to $10,000 will eliminate more vehicle related deaths than a million miles of concrete stanchions.

          • The Doctor says:

            I know it’s easy to say when you’re not directly affected, but people do overreact and react irrationally to these events. You’re right, it’s more dangerous to drive your car to work every day, but those arguments are rational, and a lot of people react in a very emotional, visceral way to incidents like this.

            I noted the reaction of some people interviewed who said stuff like “I thought Canada was safe, but . . .”. I’m sorry, but that is a stupid thing to say. Canada is still extraordinarily safe by any rational international comparative standard.

  12. Montrealaise says:

    Question 3: on yesterday evening’s newscasts, the American networks like NBC correctly identified the killer (before the Canadian ones did, I might add) and said that their information came from US law enforcement authorities, without being more specific. I know the Toronto police chief has said he was not known to them, but why did the US authorities know about him, and what did they know?

    • doconnor says:

      The US authorities knew him because the Canadian authorities had just asked about him and US authorities leak faster. It doesn’t mean the US authorities had any information on him.

  13. Robert White says:

    As one formally educated in Personality Theory & Psychopathology from a Clinical & Experimental Psychology perspective, it is way too early in the assessment stage to hazard a guess as to etiology of the psychopathology of the individual in question. Further, social reaction to mass murder in society is bound to be highly variable in all types of groups/cohorts based on myriad demographics.

    Toronto is an aboriginal word for community as I recall. The aggression & attack is on the whole of society throughout the Western world as it is a display of that which is anathema to life & civilization as we see it in contemporary society. Mass murderers seem to be focused on the death instincts instead of life instincts as Freud might have characterized it in the past. Behaviourally, the act of mass murder is extremely rare, and very few people in the population actually commit such acts which makes that behaviour extremely difficult to detect on Psychometric measures of personality via Structured Personality Interviews that are commonly used to detect latent tendencies towards elevated measures of psychopathy in populations.

    Unfortunately, this alleged mass murderer is part of our shared society and he will undoubtedly receive quite a bit of attention in the media due to the numerous questions people will have about this sort of behaviour that has grabbed everyone’s attention due to mass media coverage.
    Psychopathology is interesting subject matter to most people given that they don’t study it formally.

    Expect questions, and expect few answers.

    RW

  14. Pedro says:

    All appropriate questions. The young man found like minds in that repugnant group called “incels” and unfortunately, young persons seek approval and he found it in those haters. Why, oh why are so many young men turning to anger to deal with wild emotions that accompany the stage of growth when all of us begins to identify “self”, the body gets wracked with hormones and there is no appropriate mentor or model to show them how to deal with it? That is NO EXCUSE but my view is that we may see more of this before we see little or none. Oh Lord i hope not.

  15. Jay says:

    When Nazi’s, Incels and Sovereign Citizens, or the many other forms of white male cranks commit mass killings, it’s not “terrorism”,

    Both the religion and skin tone are of the “wrong kind” for them to be “terrorists” .

  16. Ronald O'Dowd says:

    Warren,

    We have to be careful not to paint with an overly broad brush as regards mental illness. Depression and bipolar disorder are mental illness.

    This attack is beyond tragic. You can’t stop all attacks, terrorist or otherwise. The perpetrator only has to get it right once, the police 100% of the time. And police cannot possibly prevent all future attacks.

  17. Charlie says:

    OFFICER KEN LAM

    The only person outside of the victims that I give a shit about knowing more of.

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