A Fort Chipewyan RCMP officer involved in a non-fatal shooting has been cleared and the man who was shot feels he owes the cop an apology. The shooting, which occurred June 7 2019, was investigated by the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team (ASIRT), an external watchdog that monitors Alberta law enforcement. ASIRT used evidence from the victim, the officer who pulled the trigger, civilian witnesses, the witness officer and police car video recordings to conduct its investigation and determine whether the force used was reasonable. “After the interview with ASIRT was completed, [the individual] wanted to apologize to [the officer] for causing him to have to shoot him,” the ASIRT report reads. The officer in question was working alone on June 6, and just before midnight he was notified there was a man kicking and banging on the door of the detachment of the police station in Fort Chipewyan,When he arrived, the officer spotted the man on the front stairs of the building in the dim lighting. When he exited the vehicle, the man, wearing all black, advanced towards him “while screaming at him.”The officer warned him to stop yelling and asked what was the matter, to which the man continued to shout profanities. ASIRT said the man then put his hand in his pocket while the officer “drew his firearm and yelled at [the man] to stop and show his hands.” The man in black then pulled a black object from his pocket, which turned out to be a remote control for a television and yelled, “Just do it, shoot me,” while swinging his arm upwards. The officer pulled the trigger once and the man “fell to the ground having been shot” in his right thigh.Another officer helped the first cop handcuff the man and provide him with first aid until paramedics came. He was transported to a local hospital and treated for his gunshot wound. The man told ASIRT he spent the day hanging out with his girlfriend, smoking hash and napping. Between 9:30 and 10:00 p.m. he walked to the liquor store and bought a mickey, drank it by the river and then went back to the store to meet up with friends. One of the friends had the group over, then they went to continue drinking at a baseball diamond, “and that is all he remembers before waking up in the hospital and being told that he had been shot by a police officer.”He “did not know what had happened, he was told that he had attempted ‘suicide by cop,’ and that he was being kept in hospital until he had a psychiatric evaluation.”The man then wanted to apologize to the cop, knowing the officer’s “day was not supposed to go like that.”“He wanted ASIRT to notify” the officer “of his sincere apology.”ASIRT concluded the “proportionality” of the incident, which “requires balancing a use of force with the action to which it responds,” was warranted. The officer “was faced with an individual that was clearly upset and was acting aggressively,” ASIRT said. He believed the man was pulling a knife or gun from his pocket and “failed to follow directions to show his hands.”“Given this and the relatively close distance” between the officer and the individual, the fear of death or grievous bodily harm” by the cop “existed.”The officer’s “response in using his firearm to shoot” the man “was proportionate to the threat of death or grievous bodily harm that he reasonably appeared to pose.”
