Winnipeg police chief Danny Smyth provided details Thursday afternoon about an incident that involved officers shooting a man with a ‘less-lethal’ foam round and using a taser to incapacitate him.
In a press release, police said they were called to the 200 block of Provencher Boulevard just after 11 a.m. Wednesday, after receiving a report about a man trying to drag a woman outside of a building.
Smyth said the caller noted the man “had a mental health history.”
When officers arrived on scene, the man allegedly grabbed a sharp pencil and held it to his neck, threatening to harm himself.
“The officers there attempted to de-escalate the situation using verbal commands, but it had no effect,” Smyth said. As such police fired the foam round. The man continued to act erratically after falling to the ground, responders said, but was eventually handcuffed, sedated with the help of paramedics, and taken to hospital in an ambulance.
Smyth said the woman involved in the original situation wasn’t hurt, and no charges are being brought against the man.
The Independent Investigation Unit (IIU) was notified, he said, and has taken over the investigation because the weapon used is considered a firearm, and the rubber-tipped foam rounds bruised the man’s leg.
The chief of police said, “by definition, this is a firearms discharge that caused an injury, and is a mandatory notification to the (IIU).”
Police have been under increased scrutiny after a 19-year-old man was fatally shot by an officer Sunday at an apartment building on University Crescent — one of three police shootings in Winnipeg in just over a month.
It is believed the young man was having a mental health crisis, the family’s lawyer told Global News on Tuesday.
The incident has sparked talk about the Alternative Response to Citizens in Crisis (ARCC) pilot project, which saw mental health clinicians and plainclothes officers attend to mental health crises.
The project report said it reduced the number of people police brought to emergency rooms with mental health concerns by 29 per cent.
Thursday afternoon, Smyth said he wants to make it clear that the call to Provencher Boulevard wouldn’t have been suitable for ARCC.
“These were both volatile situations with armed people, or with people threatening harm. An ARCC is utilized for non-emergency calls that do not involve violence or the risk of violence,” he said.
While he would be open to seeing the expansion of teams to include clinicians, he said there are not enough available to meet the demand.
The police chief said there has been a trend upwards in well-being check calls since the pandemic. “We’re attending calls like this almost 21,000 times a year now,” he said, assuring not all of them end in the use of force.
In 2022, Smyth said officers didn’t use any lethal force, and in general “less than half a per cent of the calls we have didn’t even require any type of use of force.”
He said these kinds of events come in clusters, and are “not evenly distributed throughout the city.”
When asked if the officers involved would need to take a leave, Smyth said the event didn’t necessitate it.
“Typically, when there’s a serious death or injury, we do have a protocol where our members will have to check in with the behavioral health unit.”