TORONTO

In today's world of social media it's difficult to keep things secret.

Unless you end up shot, wounded or dead in custody of the Toronto Police, where recently basic facts, details and information are not being publicly revealed.

This is the case, at least, in the last three incidences that involved police and people ending up dead or in hospital.

Their identities are a mystery.

This past Aug. 29, a man was in an altercation with Toronto Police at Remington's on Yonge St. and was pronounced dead in hospital.

On Nov. 13, a man said to be brandishing a gun in the Sherbourne and Carlton Sts. corridor is shot dead after a standoff with Toronto Police's ETF.

A teenager on Dec. 13 was reportedly waving a gun on the subway platform at the TTC's Queen Station and is said by witnesses to have been shot four times but he is expected to survive.

The three men have three things in common.

They were all entangled in incidents with Toronto Police. Their cases are under investigation by the province's Special Investigations Unit. They are all anonymous.

In a time when the public has become accustomed to know just about everything and in real time, with these three we don't know who they are.

And they won't tell us.

Toronto Police say they can't comment because it's an SIU mandate and they won't talk while they are investigating.

The result is these three people are nameless, faceless and storyless.

Same goes for the police officers involved.

We don't know if they are heroes or otherwise.

What I wonder about is what do you think of this trend?

"Sensible people are willing to wait for the facts," Chief Bill Blair told reporters Tuesday.

How long is sensible?

Aug. 29 is a while ago. So is Nov. 13.

We are already five days removed from the Queen St. shooting and we don't really know what happened there.

Is that the new normal in covering incidents with police? It seems only logical the media ask for information--particularly when there have been two police officers charged with murder in the past two years following SIU investigations.

Should media just wait for the press release?

What happens if the news release never comes?

Toronto Police did not respond to my questions.

But the SIU did through spokesman Jasbir Brar: On case "13-TCD-215" she said, "The investigation remains open as we are awaiting further results and analysis of evidence from the Centre for Forensic Science." And case "13-TFD-265" is "also an ongoing investigation in which we are awaiting results from a number of submissions the SIU has made to the Centre for Forensic Science."

And the identity of these dead people?

"In an effort to protect the privacy of complainants and their families (in death cases) the SIU has adopted a policy to request consent from the complainant or his/her family," explains Brar. "Accordingly we do not release the name if consent has not be granted. In cases where the name is made public through other sources, the unit will consider whether to offer confirmation of the identity or not. In both of the above cases the families did not consent to the release of the name of the deceased."

So what this means is you can be shot and killed by police or die while being arrested by police and your name never be known to anyone.

Who knew?

With these three dead or injured in question, when it comes to their names and why they ended up the way they did, we may never know.

We do in today's media world get to know the exact time of when Mayor Rob Ford last urinated in a park.

Perhaps some secrets are best left secret.