On a cold morning in February 2023, Devon Fowlin was walking his dog through a North York park.
He had been living in his car after losing his job and had slept there the night before. A civilian called the police, reporting a man talking to himself with an unleashed dog and "swinging a knife around." The knife, Fowlin later said, was one he used for cooking and prayer.
When police arrived, the knife was still sheathed in Fowlin’s waistband. Officers shouted commands and fired a Taser that failed to subdue him. As he backed away, asking them to stop, Fowlin pulled out the knife and raised it, not at the officers, but to his own neck. Minutes later, Constable Andrew Davis shot him twice, leaving Fowlin with permanent injuries.
The body-camera footage shows what’s now familiar in Toronto: a man in distress, a confrontation escalating too quickly, and no mental health professional present. What the footage doesn’t show is the alternative the city already has, which it is now quietly dismantling.
