Michael Sweet (policeman)

Michael Sweet (Metro Toronto Police) December 2, 1949 - March 14, 1980, was a Police Constable with the Toronto Police Service who was murdered by career criminals Craig & Jamie Munro.

On March 14, 1980, Constable Michael Sweet, a 6-year veteran of the Metro Toronto Police Force, and his partner were on patrol when they responded to a robbery in progress at George's Bourbon St. Bistro at 180 Queen St. West in Toronto.

Constable Sweet was shot by Craig Munro and held hostage by the robbers. Constable Sweet pleaded for his life but the robbers refused to let him receive medical treatment.

Ninety minutes later, heavily armed police stormed the restaurant and attempted to rescue him. Constable Sweet, however, had bled out and died in hospital. He left behind a wife and 3 children.

Sgt. Eddie Adamson, commander of the Emergency Task Force (TPS) on the scene, initially wanted to storm the building, knowing Sweet had been wounded and was likely on death's door, but was ordered to stand down. After about 90 minutes, Adamson finally defied that order and he and his men stormed the building anyway, but it was too late as Sweet had bled-out. This fact would haunt Adamson to the day that he took his own life on 5 October 2005 at a motel in Innisfil Township, north of Toronto. The son of former Metro Toronto police chief Harold Adamson, was nine days short of his 58th birthday. After his death, the Workplace Safety & Insurance Board eventually ruled, "that Eddie Adamson's death was not simply brought on by a bullet from a gun but from Posttraumatic stress disorder triggered by the guilt he felt each day for the last years of his life for not disobeying the order to stand down and, instead, storming the bistro to save 30-year-old Michael Sweet's life."

In 2010, Craig Munro was granted unescorted temporary absences from the minimum-security Kwikwexwelhp Healing Village in a remote mountain setting 37 km east of Mission, British Columbia. Jamie Munro was released from prison in 1992 and deported to his native Italy.

Adamson's daughter Julie Adamson, a Sergeant with York Regional Police, is currently fighting to have her father's death recognized as an "on-duty" death.

References

• Toronto Police Honour Roll
• Honour for cop overdue
• The Officer Down Memorial (Canada)
• "Eddie was a hero too". Toronto Sun, June 13, 2011.