She told the newspaper she and her sister Anne are upset that the officers involved are not behind bars. About 30 people attended the meeting. The day before about 100 people demonstrated outside Toronto police headquarters to denounce the killing.

The day after the August 9 killing, the police began a disinformation campaign against Vass. Police "sources" told the newspapers and broadcast media that Vass was beaten in the store by three other men. They claimed Vass had punched a police officer and twice tried to reach for the policeman's gun. Several stories were printed about Vass's alleged mental illness of manic-depression, of a previous arson charge, and of his resistance to court-ordered child support payments.  
 
Stories to deflect attention
"None of that has any relevance at all, none at all," an impatient Dudley Laws, leader of the Black Action Defense Committee, told the neighborhood meeting on August 17. "These are stories by police supporters who are just trying to deflect attention from the fact that four policemen beat a man to death."

Laws called for several prominent civil rights organizations to join the family in holding a joint press conference where the date could be publicly set for a mass demonstration to demand that charges be laid against the police involved and that they be jailed.

Several people witnessed the police beating of Vass early in the morning of August 9 in the parking lot of a 7-Eleven store. Two police officers escorted him out of the store after being called there in response to an in-store argument with other customers that resulted in some magazine racks being overturned.

Then one, without any action on Vass's part, shoved him to the ground, according to Amir Hameed, a recent refugee from Pakistan who saw the whole incident from across the street.

The two policemen punched him, beat him with the baton, and kicked him. Then two more police arrived and pinned Vass to the ground while the original two continued the violent beating. Paramedics who arrived were unable to revive him.  
 
Beating lasted several minutes
"He was just screaming in pain," said Hameed. "He never hit an officer--they never gave him a chance, and he never tried to. They were beating him worse than an animal." His friend Asim Abbasi, also a refugee from Pakistan, gave the same account. They said the beating lasted several minutes and the police hit him about 50 times. Another woman, who has not released her name, also saw all but the start of the incident. "There was nothing he could do. I was horrified. I in fact yelled out, 'Stop.' But I was way above them."

The Special Investigations Unit has taken the unusual step of withholding the results of the autopsy, but "sources" quoted by the press have confirmed that Vass was hit on the head with a "blunt object consistent with a police baton."

The August 16 demonstration outside police headquarters was called by the Committee to Stop Targeted Policing. Representatives of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty, the Canadian Auto Workers, Street Health, and the Black Action Defense Committee spoke at the rally. Protesters chanted at the police who guarded the building, "Who killed Otto Vass? You did. You did."

John Steele, mayoral candidate of the Communist League in Toronto's November municipal election, attended the rally and distributed a statement explaining that the killing was not an isolated incident. "Over the past 15 years Toronto police have shot, killed, and beaten many Black youth, former mental patients, and other working people. The brutality of the Toronto police is standard operating procedure," the statement said. It called for meetings and demonstrations to demand that the police guilty of this crime be charged, convicted, and punished to the full extent of the law.

Canada's ruling rich need a police force with the brutality shown by Toronto's cops, he said in an interview. "Every time the police get away with crimes like this they are emboldened to go further. The labor movement and all opponents of police brutality should fight to push this back. The example of the August 26 national march on Washington against police brutality should be emulated here in Canada and elsewhere."  
 
 
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