I’m looking at the photo in the newspaper. It does look like the Sylvia I know, the big-?hearted worker who doled out cookies to seniors at the Harold and Grace Baker Centre, the devout Christian who got into deep discussions with my Jewish father about religion.
But it can’t be the same Sylvia Klibingaitis, shot and killed October 6 by Toronto police. The disconnect is too great for me and most everybody at the centre to fathom.
This slight, not at all physically imposing woman isn’t someone I could ever imagine in the kind of confrontation where a police officer would feel compelled to pull his gun.
I became aware for the first time that Klibingaitis was having some mental health issues when I last saw her six months ago. She seemed distracted and was suffering from the kind of involuntary body movements often associated with antipsychotic drugs. I remember being outraged that any doctor would not notice these side effects. She was obviously on the wrong medical cocktail.
When will psychiatrists and GPs start taking the time to tailor drugs to the individual? When will police learn how to deal with a person struggling emotionally and behaving unpredictably – as early press releases from the police suggest Klibingaitis was?
When will officers be trained to disarm and disable instead of shooting for the heart? I’m down with mental health advocates who are fiercely battling taser use. But, really, compared to the bullet that felled Klibingaitis, I’d go for the taser any day.
This is the second death of a mentally challenged individual at the hands of Toronto police in three months.
How many more troubled people have to die before our governments step in and take some action?
Of course, we don’t know exactly what happened in this case. I have no idea how it feels to be a police officer threatened by a person wielding a knife, or how close this woman got as she allegedly moved forward. But I do know, regardless of specifics, that Sylvia Klibingaitis should never have died this way.
susanc@nowtoronto.com
