Why was Umar Zameer tried for murder?

April 2024

Firstly, I would like express my condolences to the family of Detective Constable Jeffrey Northrup.

With the acquittal of Umar Zameer in the death of D/C Northrup, we have avoided a gross miscarriage of justice. After hearing the evidence and what the presiding judge thought of the Crown’s case, this was the only responsible verdict that could be rendered.

Frankly I’m mad at the apparent actions, both during and after the fact, of the police officers involved, and I say this as a retired police officer. It appears, and for legal reasons I emphasize that it appears, that the officers involved made some tactical errors when the approached Umar Zameer and his family, and that they subsequently lied in their statements and in the courtroom to cover up that fact. Once again, I say that it appears that way, because I wasn’t there with them.

That said, when the witness testimony they provided completely contradicts the physical evidence, as presented in the collision reconstruction reports done by reconstructionists for both the Crown and the defence, I do wonder why we are expected to believe the eyewitness testimony of the officers, testimony that was strikingly similar, which is what I find most concerning. In high-stress situations, eyewitness testimony can differ radically for a variety of reasons. This is a reason why, as anyone who knows the rule of evidence, knows that eyewitness testimony is considered the worst form of evidence.

Yes, sometimes it’s all that you have and you have to go with it and let the judge/jury decide if they believe it or not, but in the Northrup case, we also had physical and photographic evidence.

When I was at the Ontario Police College, we had an exercise that featured an instructor who unexpectedly (to us, anyway) interrupted one of our classes, verbally insulting and then physically shoving the class instructor, before quickly exiting the classroom. The instructor who was “assaulted” then turns to us and asks us what we saw. We had to write out a statement in as much detain as we could remember. There were noticeable differences in the statements throughout the class as we all perceive and remember things slightly differently, which was the whole point of the exercise.

Ontario Superior Court Justice Anne Molloy took issue with the fact that Northrup’s partner, then-Detective Constable Lisa Forbes, and two officers who were at the scene in an unmarked police van, Constables Scharnil Pais and Antonio Correa, all testified they saw Northrup standing in the middle of the laneway with his hands up when he was run over. As with the physical evidence and collision reconstruction evidence, this was in direct contradiction to the security video from the parking garage, which clearly showed that Northrup was not standing in the laneway of the garage, as the three officers who witnessed the incident testified.

Justice Molloy also noted Forbes “…has given a version of the events that didn’t happen, and now two other officers have the same version somehow. That’s bizarre.”

In her charge to the jury, Justice Molloy advised the jurors to consider whether it was possible that all three officers could have innocently been mistaken about the same key evidence, but that they can’t rule out collusion either. She even quipped, in the absence of the jury, that police had written their notes together in what she called a “note-writing party.” This was apparently backed up by the testimony of one of the officers who arrived at the scene during Zameer’s arrest, that he, Pais, Correa and two other officers wrote their notes at the same time, in the same room.

She also noted that “It is possible for one officer to have a memory of Officer Northrup standing in front of the vehicle in the middle of that laneway with his arms raised to his chest level and his palms outstretched, even if that memory is not accurate. It is for you to decide if it is possible for three officers to have that same mistaken memory.”

Did the Crown reach too high?

Justice Molloy found the Crown had a “reasonably strong” but not “overwhelming” case for manslaughter. Even if the jurors did not believe that Zameer committed murder, they could consider whether his driving was unreasonable to the point of manslaughter through criminal negligence.

For those who truly believe that a conviction should have been rendered against Zameer, the jury could also have been instructed that they could also consider Dangerous Driving Cause Death or even Careless Driving Causing Death, which is a provincial offence with a penalties that include a fine from $2,000 to $50,000, a licence suspension of up to five years and imprisonment for up to two years.

Toronto Police Chief Myron Demkiw asked Ontario Provincial Police to conduct an independent review in as a result of Umar Zameer’s acquittal, along with an internal review of all aspects of plainsclothes policing.

I would like to see an inquiry conducted by a Superior Court Justice into the possibility that three police officers committed perjury, along with a review into why the Crown Attourney’s office decided to proceed with a first degree murder charge, in light of the lack of clear evidence to support such a charge. I don’t say any of that lightly.

I have known officers who have died both in the line of duty and because of the line of duty, also known as suicide, because of trauma from the job. I have attended numerous police funerals and have regularly attended the Canadian Police and Peace Officers Memorial ceremony in Ottawa since 1997, at my own expense, missing only a handful of years, including during the pandemic. Even in retirement, I continue to attend because it means that much to me to remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice. I do understand that when an officer dies due to some one else’s actions, especially in the line of duty, we want to lay blame and see someone punished.

Detective Constable Jeffrey Northrup died, and he shouldn’t have, but in this case, it wasn’t murder. It appears that it was just a convergence of several elements, including things like the murder of four members of the Afzaal family in London the week before and the epidemic of car thefts. I didn’t read these incidents in any media reports, but I suspect these were things that flashed through Umar Zameer’s mind as he tried to escape what he testified he perceived as a dangerous situation, resulting in a very tragic outcome.