The Alberta Serious Incident Response Team (ASIRT) says an investigation has cleared an Edmonton police officer of any wrongdoing in connection with the shooting of a 50-year-old man in December 2015.
The man was shot in the leg following a brief standoff with police in the early-morning hours of Dec. 27, 2015 at a home on 149 Street near 85 Avenue.
According to ASIRT, police received a 911 call at 3:52 a.m. that day from a man who said he was going to shoot himself. They said he repeatedly told the dispatcher he wanted “suicide by cop” and that he had a rifle in his hands. The investigative body also said the man told the dispatcher he would point the gun at officers when they walked in to prompt them to shoot him.
ASIRT said at 4:05 a.m., a 911 dispatcher spoke with another man in the same home who said the other man had been drinking and shooting off pellets with a BB gun but that he ran out of ammunition.
The police watchdog said two officers then pulled up to the home in an unmarked vehicle with their emergency lights and siren on before a man walked out of the home carrying “what appeared to be a long-barrelled gun, pointing it in the direction of the officers.”
ASIRT said one officer yelled numerous times to tell the man to drop the gun but that he didn’t comply and kept moving towards the officers. They said both officers pulled their guns out and took cover behind their vehicle as the man kept approaching. Once the man reached the sidewalk, ASIRT said one officer yelled at him to drop the gun or they would shoot. When the man didn’t do as he was told, ASIRT said two shots were fired and the man was hit and fell to the ground. According to ASIRT, the entire incident unfolded in under a minute.
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The agency said the officers immediately started to provide emergency medical care for the man until paramedics arrived and he was taken to hospital and underwent surgery for serious but non-life threatening injuries. According to ASIRT, the man was shot once in his left leg.
The watchdog said blood analysis later confirmed the man’s blood alcohol level was nearly four times over the legal limit.
Susan Hughson, ASIRT’s executive director, said “there are no grounds to believe that an offence was committed” and that “all the officers involved were lawfully placed and acting in the lawful execution of their duties.”
“On the evidence, it is my opinion that the officers not only needed to engage with the man, and had grounds to arrest, they had a duty to do so, given his armed presence outside the residence in a residential area,” Hughson said in a news release.
“The officer exercised considerable restraint and provided the man with numerous directions and opportunities to put down his weapon,” she added. “While there was some information that the rifle the man had might have been an air rifle or BB gun, in the circumstances the officers encountered, it also could have been a fully functioning loaded rifle.”
Hughson went on to say the man who approached police left “the officer with little option other than to respond with potentially lethal force to eliminate the observable threat.”
ASIRT is called on to investigate incidents involving Alberta law enforcement officers that result in serious injury or death, as well as serious or sensitive allegations of police misconduct.
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