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Bus Hijacking That Sounded Fishy (Probably) Was

By David Topping

bus_fishy.jpg
Last December 30th, when it was reported that a bus was hijacked in downtown Toronto, the story that we were told didn’t seem to make much sense. Here’s what we wrote at the time:

…a TTC bus was hijacked earlier this afternoon, and the details as of right now are sketchy at best. According to City, a man boarded a bus at 12:30pm at around Bay and Wellesley, rode it down to Front and Bay, and then — and this is particularly significant — only when the bus was empty except for himself and the driver did he pull a gun. “From Bay the vehicle went eastbound to Cherry St., north on Cherry to Queen St., and east from there to Church St” (City’s final directions are wrong, however, since Cherry is east of Church, not west). The suspect got off the bus and “took off” on foot. The man is a white male, in his 40s, 6’1″, and was wearing a black suede jacket, jeans and a red hat.
Bad thing? Of course. But no injuries to the driver (who’s doing alright, described as “calm” by Detective [Toronto Police Detective Gordon] Serroul), and done in a careful and deliberate way, as the suspect waited until the bus was emptied before flashing a gun. We’ll have to wait for more information to come through about it, because the whole thing sounds very weird to us.

Our thesis was that Toronto is an exceptionally safe city, and that rare events like this get blown out of proportion by the mainstream media — especially when they’ve just happened and details are scarce. To the best of our knowledge, no other media source questioned the hijacking, but the absolute absurdness and rarity of the incident should have tipped their more seasoned media minds off: even Serroul said right after the incident that he couldn’t “recall one [other time] where a bus driver was confronted and actually where he was commanded to take the bus on a trip.”
We’ve been waiting to hear more about what happened on that bus ever since, and, as it turns out, our suspicions may have been right: CityNews is reporting that the driver, Sean Forbes, is charged with making the whole thing up.
Our conclusion the day after the hijacking (after a teenaged boy was shot at Yonge and Dundas, also under somewhat suspicious circumstances) was that “Toronto may be many things, and many master statuses and over-arching defining labels can be used to describe our city. “Dangerous,” however, just isn’t one.” But “strange” probably is, and a little skepticism in this weird place — especially from our media outlets — is always a good thing.
Photo by Kevin Steele on Flickr.

Comments

  • http://photosapience.com Jerrold

    Hmmm. Very interesting development. I think that rather than chastising the mainstream media and patting ourselves on the back for calling a weird incident weird, we should instead be highlighting the real story here. A TTC employee fabricated a story and put a serious mark on the credibility of the TTC employee safety issue.
    What might result? Will people be forced to question the word of TTC employee safety advocates? Are all of these alleged statistics on abuses against employees also fabricated or embellished?
    The MSM reported this story based on the TTC driver’s recounting of the incident. They did their job as they should. Following the surfacing of the truth, I suspect (much like you have here) that they will update the public and condemn the dishonesty.
    Furthermore, isolated, freak, shocking, things do happen. This kind of thing could very well happen at any place, at any time (even in a safe Toronto).
    Skepticism is good, but I don’t think we should be blaming the MSM for propogating the bus driver’s lies.

  • http://www.torontoist.com David Topping

    Jerrold, allow me to pick apart your argument a bit:
    For one, all this story proves is that the TTC has people working for them who shouldn’t, which is something that we all already knew, though I think you’re right in that it certainly doesn’t help people trust the organization.
    A few individual points, though:

    “This kind of thing could very well happen at any place, at any time”

    That’s enormously problematic logic, when “this kind of thing” has almost never (if ever) happened before, at any place in the city, at any time. Sure, anything could happen, but the likelihood of an incident like this is incredibly low and we should be treating it as such. The “be afraid, be very afraid” perspective is something that the media encourages when it should be dispelling it.

    “The MSM reported this story based on the TTC driver’s recounting of the incident. They did their job as they should.”

    No, I’m sorry, they didn’t. The media’s job isn’t just to report, it’s also to investigate, to try to put what they are given against what makes logical sense, to explore the validity of claims. The whole hijacking story sounded off. And when we start thinking that the media’s job is to merely report what they’re told, that’s when we get into really big problems.

  • http://photosapience.com Jerrold

    Should the media be interrogating victims of crime and trying to make liars out of them? Not really. But fact checking is essential, I agree.
    The TTC passed on what they were told was fact. The police passed on what they were told my the driver and the TTC as fact. The media reported it, and we all know how things snow-ball from there.
    Only after further investigating was it possible to refute the TTC driver’s story, and when it became known that he was fabricated, the media was let in on the story.
    I see this as a typical story cycle in journalism, not a reason to blast the media.

  • http://www.torontoist.com David Topping

    It’s not about simple fact-checking (which is stuff like getting people’s names right) or “interrogating victims of crime and trying to make liars out of them,” it’s about looking at a story that doesn’t fit together and going “hmm…that doesn’t sound right.” I’m not advocating complete and utter distrust of any source of news, but this story didn’t make sense.
    Here’s what is bizarre about the story as it was originally presented. By themselves, these bits of the story aren’t that suspicious, but when presented together they seem a bit weird (and hindsight doesn’t hurt, of course):
    - That the hijacker waited until the bus was empty before he pulled a gun.
    - That the bus was completely empty in the middle of the day in downtown Toronto on the first Saturday after Christmas.
    - No eyewitnesses, on the bus or off it (say, on the street or in other cars), to any part of the story.
    - That there seemed to be no point to the hijacking whatsoever: the hijacker got on, forced the driver to drive for a bit, then hopped off.
    - That the driver was described as “calm” after the hijacking took place.
    - That an incident like this has never happened before.
    In the United States, the media has been chastised lately for doing the same thing (most notably, in terms of the beginnings of the Iraq war): merely reporting what they are told and not going deeper. Of course, a bus hijacking in downtown Toronto isn’t a war, but it’s not insignificant. Someone should have looked at this and said “this doesn’t fit together.”

  • http://photosapience.com Jerrold

    I see what you saying. All of the points you listed are vaid, and do suggest that the story might have more holes than swiss cheese. This is what the POLICE investigators should have seen rather easily.
    It’s probably safe to assume that these same concerns about the story are what exposed it as a lie. Why it took three weeks to be confirmed is a mystery.
    My guess is that it was suspected early on, but took so long to make the news either because they wanted to be sure to have rock-solid evidence that the TTC employee was lying or they wanted to keep it under wraps because this wolf cry may have profound implications on public opinion on the TTC employee safety debate.

  • http://photosapience.com Jerrold

    edit: vaid = valid

  • http://www.torontoist.com David Topping

    I agree, Jerrold, that it’s also the job of police investigators to really get to the bottom of stories like this, and it makes sense that it’s taken them a bit of time to charge the driver, though I don’t know how much politics entered into the equation — I assume it was a simple matter of, as you say, needing to have “rock-solid” evidence against him before charging him, rather than a fear of influencing public opinion.
    My concern is that the media didn’t seem to see (or report on) the same problems that the police eventually arrested a man based on.

  • http://www.newmindspace.com kevin bracken

    When I read the headline in the newspaper, I was definitely imagining some kind of Speed-like situation, complete with Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock making out.
    I guess “Man hijacks empty bus” wouldn’t have been nearly sensational enough, but very Canadian.

  • http://photosapience.com Jerrold
  • http://www.torontoist.com David Topping

    Jerrold, Marc and I have talked about the newly-launched crime column, and the format will be changing slightly next week, and will continue to change as we tweak it. We’re not into sensationalizing crime, and we’re very conscious of how we approach our coverage of absolutely everything we do here.
    (I should point out, though, that that specific graphic that you linked to does nothing but state specific gun crime statistics in our city with no embellishing — and so doesn’t fall into the same category of “sensationalism” (if you’re going to call it that) that Kevin’s talking about. Now, if we start calling the column “THIS WEEK IN MURDEROUS RAMPAGES/BABY MASSACRES” (all caps and all), then we can talk.)

  • http://photosapience.com Jerrold

    Devil’s advocate:
    The inaugural Torontoist crime column didn’t fit the usual Torontoist mold, and we both know that it was intentionally sensationalist (the very elaborate and rather spooky lead graphic, the stark image of the gun with the red font, and in huge blue in-your-face incident and death tolls).
    The Toronto Sun and other main stream media (which Torontoist very often takes pokes at) sells papers with intentionally sensational headlines.
    I don’t see these two scenarios being all that different, as you are suggesting. I’m sure other casual readers will share my opinion to some extent.

  • http://www.torontoist.com David Topping

    Jerrold, “the format will be changing slightly next week, and will continue to change as we tweak it. We’re not into sensationalizing crime, and we’re very conscious of how we approach our coverage of absolutely everything we do here.” I didn’t write the article, nor did I take part in any stage of the process of doing so — I can defend it only from an editorial position. I suggest that you contact Marc, or post a comment in that article, if you have any more complaints about it.

  • Marc Lostracco

    The crime article’s header image was a tongue-in-cheek allusion to sensationalist pulp fiction novels, and the rest of it was simple reporting on what happened that week. Some guy poured gas on a woman and set her on fire while six boys get slammed with 94 charges for ambushing students and robbing them with weapons. Crime by its very nature is sensationalistic.
    Sure, the gunshot graphic may have been sensasionalistic, but as David mentioned, we’ve discussed ways of how the followup columns will evolve and how to deal with something that’s, by its very nature, often alarming and scary. Still, gun crime is always a hot button issue with our readers (see here, for example) and I’m of the school of thought that people need to be reminded that it’s a massive problem since it’s only through community mobilization and co-operation with police that the problem can be best-managed.
    We, being a blog, also have the luxury of reporting things differently than the mainstream media, which may include creating a cheeky header graphic or maybe even an updated shooting tally from week to week. We’re not The New York Times, even though they’ve upped their sensational content over the last two years.
    It’s a good thing a 99-year-old granny didn’t eat any babies this week or we might have really upset ya.