Not a big community in Toronto...
I saw the story on the news last night and also remember hearing about it the night before when it happened.
I am surprised that this youth is Dominican because I did not detect that at all on the news last night when they showed his sister (I believe). I knew it was a family of Caribbean descent and left it at that in mind and secondly because the Dominican community is not that large in Toronto and is completely out of the main stream media. If this were Montreal where Dominicans are a dime a dozen, I would not be surprised. The Toronto Dominican population is not the mainstream Latino population meaning Toronto has a lot of Latinos but the large populations are from Ecuador, El Salvador, Colombia, Peru and Mexico.
No, this is not usual for the Toronto police to beat a person to death but with all the problems in the last six years with Black youth etc it now has reached critical mass in my opinion. In that area where he was is one of the problem areas in Toronto in a broad sense. Areas surrounding Jane/ Finch, Keele/ Finch, Keele/ Lawrence, Jane/ Wilson, between Jane and Weston and surrounding communities are typical and Dominicans live there. No doubt he panicked because he probably had no idea why the police wanted to pull them over (he and his friend) and by his outward appearance, he's a Black youth. He showed no signs of resisting according to witnesses then the cops just took the situation out of control and you know when that happens the end result is tragic.
A few days before there was a round up of two major street gangs in Toronto and they are still looking for more youth and this could just be a case of mistaken identity, being in the wrong place at the wrong time and then the situation got out of control.
I hope once this investigation is completed, and if the policemen involved are found guilty, they are punished accordingly because it's not typical of the Toronto police to beat anyone but these days you hear of so many problematic encounters and in this case the outcome was tragic.
~MP.