In late August 2021, a young person crashed a stolen Mercedes at Victoria Park Road and Finch Avenue East in Toronto, resulting in an arrest and the seizure of a Norinco 1911A1.
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Otherwise, the Star is free to report its contents, which include details of the investigation that led police to Rodger Kotanko’s garage. The Star is scheduled to appear in court in late February to contest a police request to have names of officers and civilian employees redacted from the materials. The 28-page search warrant application, called an “information to obtain,” or ITO - a document put before a judge to seek authorization for a search warrant - offers a very lightly redacted account of the reasons for the police raid. Once a civilian-led SIU investigation is underway, police typically do not comment on a case. The police board did not immediately respond Tuesday to a request for comment. Toronto police on Tuesday acknowledged receiving a copy of the statement of claim from the Star but a police response was not immediately available. The allegations have not been proven in court and police have not yet filed a defence document. “Rodger Kotanko wasn’t able to defend himself, or his reputation, but his family will.” “The Kotanko family is holding Toronto police to account, so this doesn’t happen to someone else,” the family’s lawyer, Michael Smitiuch, said in the press release. The family’s statement of claim, filed this week, names five unidentified officers with the Toronto police Integrated Gun and Gang Task Force, an inspector in charge of the task force, Chief James Ramer and the Toronto Police Services Board as defendants. The family also alleges Kotanko’s wife was unlawfully detained and restrained by police and prevented from “providing him with comfort after he was shot and was dying.” Police “recklessly targeted” Kotanko and the operation was “negligently planned,” the family said in the press release. The family alleges in their lawsuit that the search warrant was not presented on the day of the raid, that the information used to get the warrant “was obtained using irrelevant and prejudicial information” and was “designed to undermine (Kotanko’s) credibility and standing before the judge or justice of the peace and the public.” Kotanko’s family has also obtained the search warrant documents, and on Tuesday announced a $23 million wrongful death lawsuit, alleging, the family said in a press release, that Toronto police “unlawfully executed a search warrant and used excessive force … in a military-style take down,” shooting him four times.
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In short, police believed Kotanko had milled off the serial numbers on two restricted handguns registered to his company, and, without authorization, transferred their ownership, with the guns ultimately ending up in the hands of two young Toronto residents. Search warrant documents unsealed at the request of the Star reveal why. Seven other officers have been designated as witnesses to the events that have raised many questions in a community where Kotanko was respected.Īmong them, what were Toronto police so interested in that they had honed in on a 70-year-old father of three, some two hours and a great lake away from the big city? Until now, what was known through official channels through Special Investigations Unit press releases is that officers were there to execute a search warrant, and Kotanko was shot dead by one officer. 3, just before noon, a customer was waiting as Kotanko made his way into the workshop, likely unaware Toronto police were watching him. The garage sits at the end of a driveway, lined on one side during summer with towering sunflower plants Kotanko would never see again. The gunsmith’s workshop, a detached garage, was where Kotanko tended to the firearms of loyal customers - police officers and soldiers among them. She’d just failed a driver’s test and needed some cheering up. Rodger Kotanko had just returned to his rural home and workshop in Simcoe, Ont., a short drive west of Port Dover, near Lake Erie, after doing some shopping with his wife, Jessie.