Police error?

Michael Dambrot is a well respected and senior Superior Court judge. He was a prosecutor for many years before becoming a judge and he is not someone to speak loosely or without care. He is a man worth listening to. For Justice Dambrot to suggest the police erred says, "yes, they really did".

A Superior Court judge has criticized Toronto police for an "ill-conceived" decision not to arrest a purported gang leader who allegedly went on four days later to shoot two teenagers in broad daylight.

Investigators had decided on April 15, 2004, to intercept Tyshan Riley's phone calls rather than arrest him, even though he had been implicated in several shootings by confidential informants and a friend and was seen to be breaching bail conditions from an unrelated charge.

Riley, said to be the leader of the Galloway Boys, was eventually arrested on April 19, 2004, about 90 minutes after allegedly shooting the teenagers at a townhouse complex in the Malvern area of Scarborough. The young men, who were not gang members, were each hit multiple times but survived.

One of the intercepted communications "apparently captured Riley describing the shooting ... as it happened," Superior Court Justice Michael Dambrot wrote in a ruling last October.

Earlier police wiretaps of phones belonging to members of Riley's hated rivals, the Malvern Crew, had been buzzing with talk of his incursions into the neighbourhood. The wires picked up one unidentified man telling Malvern leader David Francis on March 31, 2004, that Riley had brandished his pistol "in my face" at the Malvern Mall.

So in mid-April, Toronto police took the rare but legal step of intercepting Riley's phone calls without first obtaining a judge's permission. While investigators wanted to prevent Riley from shooting someone, they felt they could build a better case against him if they tapped his lines and kept him under surveillance.

Unfortunately, it didn't work out that way.

In fact, the judge at the trial where Riley stands accused of murder has described that police decision as "ill-conceived."

Arresting Riley, "a man with a serious record for violence ... would have succeeded in preventing him from shooting anyone else," Dambrot concluded last summer in a ruling that up until now has been covered by a publication ban.

At the time, Toronto-born Riley was the main suspect in a drive-by shooting six weeks earlier. Brenton "Junior" Charlton, 31, who worked at SkyDome, died in the attack at Finch Ave. E. and Neilson Rd. Leonard Bell, a renovator who is now 48, survived and testified before a jury that began its deliberations yesterday following an eight-week trial.

The Crown alleges Riley and his accomplices had mistaken Charlton and Bell for gang rivals who lived in northeast Scarborough.
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The jury is deciding whether they are guilty of first-degree murder, attempted murder and committing both for the benefit of a criminal organization.

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Before the trial, Dambrot ruled the Riley wiretaps inadmissible because police had not shown they intercepted the phone calls "to prevent serious harm to persons" as called for in the Criminal Code.

"... It was far more likely that an arrest would have taken Riley off the street for a considerable period of time and so would have been more effective than intercepting his communications in preventing serious harm," Dambrot wrote.

There was a "perfect opportunity" to arrest Riley "easily and safely" when he appeared at the Oshawa courthouse on April 14, Dambrot noted. He had been seen by police surveillance teams regularly to breach a curfew and travel restrictions under bail conditions from a previous charge.

James Morton
1100-5255 Yonge Street
Toronto, Ontario
M2N 6P4

416 225 2777