EDMONTON – An Edmonton police officer who shot a man four times as he was stabbing his police dog will not be punished by the department.
An internal disciplinary hearing Tuesday dismissed a charge of unnecessary use of force against Staff Sgt. Bruce Edwards.
Kirk Steele survived the July 2006 shooting but doctors had to remove one of his kidneys and an adrenal gland.
“It is my finding that the only option available to Sgt. Edwards was his firearm and to use lethal force to the stop the lethal force threat presented by Mr. Steele,” wrote Paul Manuel, a retired Calgary police inspector, who adjudicated the hearing.
“I find that the level of force was not excessive in the circumstances and I do find that it was objectively reasonable.”
The Crown earlier stayed a criminal charge against Edwards, citing that the officer was acting within police parameters when he fired seven rounds at Steele, hitting him four times.
Manuel’s ruling and comments differ substantially from those made by Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Eric Macklin in 2010. He convicted Steele of being unlawfully at large but scolded the officer for using excessive force.
“Firing a Glock pistol without warning seven times at a man armed with no more than a steak knife from distances of 20 feet or less is an unconscionable use of excessive and aggressive force in the circumstances,” Macklin wrote.
“Irreparable prejudice would be caused to the integrity of the judicial system by the court’s seeming condonation of the use of excessive force by police and the unacceptably negligent investigation by the same police into that use of force.”
Steele was later sentenced to six months in jail.
Manuel said Macklin might not have made those statements if he had heard expert testimony at the police disciplinary hearing made by William Lewinski, director of the Force Science Institute in Minnesota.
Lewinski, a police force psychology expert, testified Steele was defiantly resistant to police and posed a lethal threat to Edwards and other officers at the scene.
Steele’s lawyer, Tom Engel, said he wasn’t satisfied with how evidence was handled at the disciplinary hearing and will ask Alberta’s Law Enforcement Review Board to hear the case again.
He said the different findings by Macklin and Manuel can’t be ignored.
“Our concern is that the Edmonton Police Service, in prosecuting this thing, doesn’t appear to have had its heart in the prosecution,” Engel said.
“This is something we will raise before the Law Enforcement Review Board.”
During his criminal trial, court heard Steele was in the bathroom of a house and cutting marijuana with a knife when he heard police in the home. He fled through the bathroom window.
Edwards, who was outside with his police dog Wizzard, heard on his radio that a suspect was coming out of the house. The officer testified he released the dog when Steele ignored repeated orders to stop. That’s when Steele stabbed the dog and was shot.
Steele, who said he still suffers pain from the gunshot wounds, was disappointed by the disciplinary ruling.
“How should I feel? Nothing came my way today so I will just keep trying,” he said. “It is in God’s hands.”
Wizzard survived his stab wounds and retired in 2007.
Steele has also filed a lawsuit against the police department over the incident.
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