I've seen lots of Toronto police do a good job of de-escalation, but we certainly hear about the cases where they don't.  Sammy Yatim was a classic case -- a spaced-out young man with a small knife who was alone on a streetcar, shot by a policeman in full panic mode.  (If you don't believe me, watch the video.)  

As described in this story, Andrew Loku sounds like the same kind of situation -- a policeman who has seen too many cop shows on TV barging in, creating alarm in a mentally ill person, and then shooting him.  Whether  the person is white, like Yatim, or black, like Loku, seems to be secondary to a culture borrowing too heavily on cheap U.S. gun-happy images..

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