Pubdate: Sat, 16 Oct 2004
Source: Toronto Sun (CN ON)
Copyright: 2004, Canoe Limited Partnership.
Contact:  http://www.canoe.com/NewsStand/TorontoSun/home.html
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/457
Author: Kim Bradley
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)

MAN SLAIN BY POLICE HAD VIOLENT RECORD

Thug Had Been Deported From Canada 3 Times

THE MAN undercover drug cops shot and killed during a botched takedown had 
a violent past and would not have gone quietly, his former lawyer said. 
Courtney Livingstone Peters, 32, was in Canada illegally after having been 
thrown out of the country three times since 1993 because of a lengthy, 
violent criminal record.

"Mr. Peters was not the sort of person who would have gone willingly," said 
John Struthers, a defence counsel who had represented Peters. "He would 
have been deported again."

Struthers' relationship with Peters ended in March 1996 after Peters tried 
to electrocute his 22-year-old girlfriend.

Peters was convicted of several offences in that case including drug 
charges for cocaine found in the house.

In 2000, Peters was pulled over on the suspicion of drunk driving and was 
found with cocaine and a handgun.

Peters was first ordered back to his native Jamaica in 1993, but didn't 
leave until he was forced to in 1998. He was ordered to leave again in 
2002, almost 20 years after he immigrated here in 1983.

'BIOMETRIC DETECTION'

He has an 8-year-old son living in Toronto.

"We really need some sort of biometric detection at the airport -- 
fingerprints, iris scanning or something for identification other than 
documentation that can be forged," Struthers said.

The Special Investigation Unit is investigating Peters' shooting, which 
happened Thursday around 10:30 p.m. outside the Petro Canada station at 
Ellesmere and Victoria Park Aves.

Undercover drug squad officers were attempting to arrest two men when 
Peters, driving a black Infiniti G30, slammed into a police Grand Am that 
had boxed him in with another undercover police vehicle -- a Jeep, 
witnesses said.

The officer driving the Jeep got out and shot into the driver's side window 
of the Infiniti several times, but SIU spokesman Rose Bliss said 
preliminary reports indicate he only fired twice.

Sources say while police did find crack cocaine in Peters' car, they didn't 
find a gun.

Bliss could not confirm if a gun was found, saying, "the car has been sent 
to the Centre of Forensic Sciences for a thorough search and examination."

Some of Peters' friends returned to the gas station yesterday with flowers 
and booze to have a drink in his memory.

One friend, who did not want to be named, told reporters Peters would not 
have harmed the officer, only tried to escape. "There's no way he would 
have raised a gun to police," he said.

Police arrested the passenger in the car and charged him with drug 
offences. His name has not been released.

This was the fifth police shooting in Toronto and the seventh in Ontario 
this year.
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