It’s like watching a video game — only it’s all too frightening real.
In the dashcam video played at his disciplinary hearing, Const. Moussa Tahlil is seen racing south on Dufferin St. on a busy June afternoon with his siren blaring as vehicles scramble to get out of his way. He weaves around traffic and barrels down the wrong side of the road.
With the engine revving, we can’t see the speedometer, but the hearing has heard that at some points, the new officer is travelling at 126 km/h through city streets, narrowly missing at least one car. He’s also spent 27 seconds in the lane of oncoming traffic travelling as fast as 90 km/h and even crested a hill in the wrong lane where he wouldn’t be able to see pedestrians or traffic coming towards him.
Was the 13 Division officer fast and furious because he was responding to a life and death emergency? Nope. Tahlil was heading to a dispute over a traffic ticket — and the dispatcher had said several times that there was no violence or weapons involved.
“PC Tahlil continued to drive at these incredibly high rates of speed, endangering the lives of pedestrians, the safety of other drivers through areas filled with vulnerable people in what is a mixed commercial/residential area … filled with community safety signage,” charged police prosecutor Mattison Chinneck.
“If the officer truly believes this driving is safe, there is a far larger concern with respect to this officer’s understanding of reality.”
Tahlil originally told professional standards he probably should have been travelling slower — but at his disciplinary hearing, he said he’d had time to “reflect” and that when an officer’s life is in danger, he had to get there as “quickly and safely” as possible.
In his closing submission, his lawyer Peter Brauti denied there were any near-misses. “He is in control of the car the entire time.”
Tahlil, 44, is facing four counts of discreditable conduct over the incident on June 16, 2022, starting with his driving and ending with allegations that he was confrontational and used “profane, abusive or insulting language” with an obviously disturbed man raging irrationally over a parking ticket.
Captured by his bodyworn camera, Tahlil is seen goading the threatening, epithet-spewing motorist, telling him to “keep running your mouth,” “Yeah, what are you going to do?“, “Yeah, come walk towards me” as well as telling him to “shut the f— up.”
“We’re seeing a complete lack of decorum or conformity with Toronto Police Service procedures or at a bare minimum, what the public would expect from Toronto Police Service officers,” Chinneck told the hearing officer, Supt. Shane Branton.
“This is more like a schoolyard hissy fit. Or two intoxicated 19-year-olds at a bar,” he said. “This was an emotional meltdown happening in the presence of the public.”
Tahlil’s lawyer defended his approach, insisting the police make the effort to recruit minorities who have different lived experiences because they bring a different perspective to policing and how to handle people: the hearing heard Tahlil immigrated from Somalia with his mom and eight siblings in 1989, grew up in Toronto housing and had to drop out of high school to help his family. The father of two later went back to get his diploma, started a successful landscaping business and served on the Anti-Racism Advisory Panel before realizing his dream of becoming a police officer in 2021.
“He grew up in the ‘hood and has dealt with people like this. You can see all the de-escalation efforts that certain officers were making weren’t working,” Brauti said. “It was emboldening the subject.”
Tahlil used a different tactic, he said, playing bad cop by asserting some dominance and control. “We can be critical and say maybe he should have used different words,” Brauti said, “but one could argue that it worked.”
But is that the way our officers should behave?
Branton has reserved his decision.