The family of Andrew Loku is “very disappointed and very sad” about the decision not to lay charges against the Toronto police officer who fatally shot the 45-year-old man inside a Toronto apartment building last year.

“We don’t know exactly how they got to this conclusion,” said Senos Timon, Loku’s uncle, reached at his home in Saskatoon on Monday. “We have strong feelings that not all the information was taken into consideration.”

Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit, the civilian watchdog that probes deaths involving police, announced Friday that the unnamed officer who shot Loku last July had used justifiable force against Loku.

The SIU ruling prompted demonstrations by Black Lives Matter protesters outside city hall and police headquarters downtown beginning Sunday and throughout the day Monday. The protest at police headquarters became the scene of a confrontation in the evening, as officers pushed their way past demonstrators to extinguish their fire and dismantle their tents.

Pascale Diverlus, the co-founder of Black Lives Matter Toronto told the Star that moments before police came out, protestors were “not causing any harm,” before officers “violently” shut them down. Not commenting on any allegations of violence, Sgt. Caroline De. Kloet told the Star, “All tents have been taken down, or are no longer there.”

Later, police returned guarding a white-jumpsuit-clad trio who dumped a tarlike substance — from barrels bearing the symbol for flame retardants — onto the protesters' firewood. Police said on Twitter that the protesters were free to stay overnight so long as they did not start fires or erect tents.

The spark for this most recent confrontation was Loku, a Sudanese-Canadian father of five who according to the SIU was advancing toward two Toronto police officers while wielding a hammer inside his Gilbert Ave. apartment complex. The building’s units are leased by the Canadian Mental Health Association to provide housing and services for people suffering from mental illness.

Close friends of Loku have told the Star Loku may have been suffering psychological trauma from growing up in war-torn South Sudan. “He told me he would sometimes still hear the gunshots,” Kiden Jonathan, a close friend, said days after Loku’s death.

The SIU ruling prompted demonstrations by Black Lives Matter protesters outside city hall and police headquarters downtown beginning Sunday and throughout the day Monday, as well as calls for a coroner’s inquest into Loku’s death.

“For us this is very disappointing,” said Black Lives Matter Toronto co-founder Rodney Diverlus. “The rage is still real. The passion is still real. People still have a desire to see justice.”

A Toronto police spokesperson declined to comment on the protests.

A summary of the SIU investigation released by the watchdog says police were called around midnight July 5, 2015, after receiving a 911 call stating Loku was inside a neighbour’s apartment, armed with a hammer and threatening to kill the tenant. Two officers arrived on scene, drew their weapons and ordered Loku to stop and drop the hammer.

According to the SIU news release, Loku did not follow the commands, walked toward officers and said: “What you gonna do? Come on, shoot me.” As he advanced toward the two officers, one of them shot Loku twice in the chest.

“Confronted with an armed and violent suspect who had neared to within three metres or less and was refusing to stop, I am satisfied that the subject officer fired his weapon believing it to be necessary to thwart an imminent hammer attack,” SIU director Tony Loparco said in a statement.

The SIU’s ruling is based on the police recordings of a 911 call, a partial video of the scene, the statements of several eyewitnesses to the shooting and more. But Timon — alongside multiple groups including the African Canadian Legal Clinic and Black Lives Matter — is calling for the release of additional information about the SIU’s investigation, including the release of the video. The SIU’s summary of events does not provide any detail about what can be seen in the video.

“(I wish that) there had been an independent person who has recorded the actual incident,” said Timon.

Timon also wants to know how much weight was given to witness accounts from Loku’s neighbours, specifically Robin Hicks, the only known civilian witness to the shooting.

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Hicks says she had managed to calm down an agitated Loku, who had been complaining about his inability to sleep because of noise coming from the apartment above him. She says that by the time police arrived she was in the process of bringing Loku back to her apartment.

“I had his hand to the side of his legs, my hands were with his hands. So how the hell can his hands be raised?” she said last week.

Timon said he has not yet broken the news of the results of the SIU investigation to Loku’s wife and five children, who do not live in Canada. “It’s going to renew the whole thing — trying to understand, trying to figure out what’s next. It’s going to set the whole thing fresh over again,” Timon said.

The gatherings by Black Lives Matter on Sunday and Monday were the latest in a series of actions to call attention to discrimination against black Canadians.

Last July, the group crashed a Toronto Police Services Board meeting and held up traffic on an Allen Rd. off-ramp.

Anthony Morgan, a lawyer with the African Canadian Legal Clinic, said Monday that the group is reiterating its call for major changes to stop fatal encounters between police and members of the black community. The ACLC has previously said that far too many fatal encounters with Toronto police have involved black men with mental health challenges.

Among their demands is that the SIU collect and release data on the number of their cases that involve racialized people who live with mental health issues.

As the Star reported last year, no race-based statistics on fatal police encounters are kept by the SIU — or Statistics Canada, Toronto police or the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services.

With files from Chris Reynolds and Evelyn Kwong

Wendy Gillis can be reached at wgillis@thestar.ca

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