'Too little, too late,' Abdi family says of inquest jury's calls for change at OPS

The jury in the Abdirahman Abdi coroner's inquest has called on the Ottawa Police Service (OPS) to rethink how it responds to calls about people in crisis, among a number of other desired changes. 

But while Abdi's family says it appreciates the jury's "extensive and well intended" work, the recommendations "are too little, too late" given "the actual implementation of [prior] change" by police since's Abdi's 2016 death, the family's lawyer says. 

"The words that were used in the recommendations: 'consider' and 'consult' and 'prioritize' — these aren't words of action," Lawrence Greenspon said on Tuesday. "That's what's needed."

The month-long mandatory inquest concluded earlier that evening with the delivery of the jury's verdict.

After listening to nearly 100 hours of testimony, five civilians drawn from the Ottawa area declared Abdi's 2016 death a homicide and issued a total of 57 recommendations meant to prevent deaths like Abdi's in the future. 

Other groups were also called upon to make changes, including the Office of the Chief Coroner, which was asked to do what it can to speed up the timeline for launching inquests.

"Eight years is far too long to wait for bereaved families to have their tragic loss before the public eye," Greenspon said. 

But just under half of the recommendations were directed at the OPS, the principal focus of the inquest's scrutiny given the circumstances of Abdi's death. 

The 38-year-old Somali-Canadian struggled with his mental health over the first six months of 2016. He was pronounced dead on July 25, 2016, a day after his violent arrest by two Ottawa police officers. One was later charged with manslaughter, but was eventually acquitted.

The inquest zeroed in on the intersection of Blackness and mental health, de-escalation, the OPS's accountability to the public and especially police tactics and training.

• Read the inquest jury's full list of recommendations here. 

Unsurprisingly, many of the jury's recommendations to the OPS focused on training, including a central recommendation directing the police force to create a new mental health advisory council that takes in the lived experiences of people struggling with mental illness.

Chief among the council's goals would be helping the OPS to develop "a co-ordinated and cohesive OPS-wide mental health strategy specific to improving outcomes where police interact with those in crisis," according to one recommendation. 

Robin Browne, co-lead of 613-819 Black Hub, a group seeking police reforms in the years after Abdi's death, said via email that revised training "will simply fuel increased police budgets to pay for the training."

But Browne welcomed the homicide declaration because it will keep the debate about Abdi's death "going," he said in an interview.  

'Mental health issues are highly complex'

Some of the non-binding recommendations — many of which were pitched to the jury by interest groups that participated in the inquest — sounded too prescriptive for OPS's taste, the police service's lawyer stated during the inquest's final arguments on Monday.

Take Recommendation 13, which asks the OPS to "consider" introducing a new code for call takers and dispatchers at its 911 centre that will "clearly signal" to officers that there is a "mental health component" to a call. How much information officers had about Abdi's mental status was a key question during the inquest.

"Calls involving mental health issues are highly complex and may not be effectively addressed by relying solely on a specific code," OPS co-counsel Katrina Bekkers said on Monday. 

The OPS has made a number of changes since Abdi's death, the inquest heard: It launched the Ottawa Guiding Council for Mental Health and Addictions, which led to a program started this summer that redirects mental health calls to crisis workers. 

The police service has also evolved its training on use-of-force, de-escalation, anti-Black racism, and fair and impartial policing.

But the recommendations call on it to do more, including considering adding more teachers. Only one person, a Black Ottawa community member, teaches the anti-Black racism course, and there are still a number of officers who have not received the mandatory training. 

Next year, the OPS will have two mobile crisis teams consisting of one member of the force's mental health unit (MHU) and one mental health professional, though Bekkers admitted the MHU, with fewer than 10 staff members, "faces significant challenges."

The two officers involved in Abdi's arrest, who had their own lawyers at the inquest, took no position on the recommendations, content to leave that discussion to institutional experts, their co-counsel Solomon Friedman told CBC. 

Const. Daniel Montsion was "more than happy" to tell his side of the Abdi story, Friedman said. Montsion had wanted to but did not end up testifying at his trial, he told the inquest. 

As for Weir, who left the police service earlier this year and gave some of the most emotional testimony of the inquest, "this is something that was stressful and traumatic," Friedman said. 

Trauma-informed touches

Taking part in the inquest was also painful for Ifrah Yusuf, chair of the Justice for Abdirahman Coalition. The group formed in the immediate wake of Abdi's death and still gives out an annual bursary in his honour, Yusuf said.

While not a "party with standing" at the inquest, meaning it could not cross-examine witnesses, the coalition was allowed to provide input to the lawyers representing the coroner's office, which is essentially tasked with speaking for the dead.

Some of the coalition's hopes are reflected in Tuesday's verdict, particularly one of the more specific trauma-informed recommendations.

Recommendation 21 calls on officers to ensure they co-operate with a hospital to allow family members to visit a loved one hospitalized after an incident with police that remains under investigation, "taking such measures as are necessary to protect the integrity of the investigation(s)."

That stems from testimony given by an Abdi family friend who cited police resistance, at least initially, to allowing Abdi's family to attend his deathbed to give him a final Muslim prayer.

"That was something we definitely wanted to make sure was [put] in the recommendations," Yusuf said. 

Another example of the trauma-informed thinking that permeated the inquest is a recommendation suggesting recruits at the Ontario Police College be shown videos of real use-of-force events involving racialized people — provided the college receive the consent of affected families.

Some inquest participants, noting the disquieting Abdi arrest video — moments of which were repeatedly shown at the inquest — still voiced concerns about the sensitivity of that recommendation, however. 

Other notable recommendations 

Another set of recommendations reflected a desire for more detailed information in the OPS's internal reviews of police-involved fatalities, as well as a call for greater transparency. 

The inquest heard that some of the OPS officers who received use-of-force training in 2016 — the same year Abdi died — were shown a video featuring an aggressive Al Pacino voiceover and a sensational montage of extreme police-civilian conflict, with zero context provided. 

"How disappointing, how disappointing," Yusuf said, shaking her head. "These are our members of the community who are meant to serve and protect."

Despite much questioning, no one at the inquest could account for why the video was shown in some classes, including Montsion's.

Recommendation 25 asks the police service's professional development centre to ensure it keeps reliable records, including anyone approving the training and all materials used. 

The inquest also heard that the OPS never sent its oversight body, the Ottawa Police Services Board, a summary report about its internal review into the Abdi incident. The same review delved into the training video and was not made public until the inquest.

Charles Bordeleau, who headed the OPS as its chief from 2012 to 2019, including during Abdi's death and its aftermath, said he was surprised the report wasn't shared. 

"This would have been an important step towards transparency and accountability," he said via email.

The OPS declined to be interviewed about the inquest. It issued a statement on Thursday afternoon that said, in part, that rebuilding the service's "fractured" relationship with the city's Somali community is a top priority.