Alberta’s police watchdog is investigating after an RCMP officer shot a man during a dramatic rooftop confrontation in Okotoks earlier this month.The Alberta Serious Incident Response Team is probing the Feb. 11 incident involving members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Okotoks, after the province’s Police Review Commission directed it to treat the case as a Level 1 matter.According to ASIRT, officers were called to a home shortly after 2 p.m. after a man phoned police claiming his parents had been abducted and were in danger. When officers arrived, they found the man standing on the roof of the house with a ladder positioned against the porch roof. He refused repeated requests to come down.Police spoke with the man’s wife while other officers confirmed his parents were safe. Shortly before 2:30 p.m., officers requested help from the Rural Police and Crisis Team (RPACT). An RPACT officer and a registered nurse arrived minutes later.Officers were told the man had a shovel and a baseball bat with him on the roof. Body-worn camera footage later confirmed he was holding a knife..At 2:53 p.m., the RPACT officer advised the man he was being apprehended under the Mental Health Act. Roughly a minute later, the man pushed the ladder away, preventing officers from accessing the roof.Okotoks Fire and Rescue crews arrived and positioned ladders at the front and rear of the home around 3:21 p.m. The RPACT officer climbed to the roof from the front of the house.An altercation followed. During the struggle, the officer deployed a conducted energy weapon and fired his service firearm multiple times, striking the man once in the side.At approximately 3:25 p.m., the man surrendered a knife. Shortly afterward, his mother — who had climbed onto the roof — retrieved two additional knives from him and threw them to the ground.Police informed the man he was under arrest for possession of a weapon and continued negotiating with him for about an hour. He eventually climbed down and was taken into custody.Officers provided first aid until EMS arrived and assumed medical care.Under the Police Act, a Level 1 ASIRT investigation is triggered in cases involving serious injury, death, or serious or sensitive allegations related to an officer’s actions. ASIRT said the information released so far is preliminary and that the investigation remains ongoing.
