Alberta’s police watchdog, ASIRT, has cleared a Calgary Police Service officer’s actions in a September 2017 incident that saw an intoxicated man wield a knife and set fire to part of a convenience store.
On Sept. 29 at around 8 p.m. police received a 911 call reporting a 22-year-old man armed with a knife and holding a can of beer was inside the 7-Eleven store in the 4600 block of 37 Street S.W. The man, who was not wearing a shirt, approached the caller, asking for a lighter, then grabbed her cellphone and entered a storage room, refusing to leave, the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team (ASIRT) said in a news release on Friday.
Shortly after the man walked into the store, a police officer went inside to buy something and became aware of the man in the storage room, talking with the man through a closed door. Additional police officers were dispatched to the store and used the cellphone to continue conversations with the man.
While inside the storage room, the man set fire to items in the room and refused to leave. When the man did leave, officers commanded the man drop the knife he was holding, shooting him with a conducted energy weapon, ASIRT said. The Taser-like device had no effect and the man went back inside the storage room.
The fire progressed and disabled the store’s electrical power, automatically triggering emergency lighting.
The man left the storage room again with the knife and police tried to contain him with two more conducted energy weapons, police said. Officers reported the man went back inside the storage room again, leaving it shortly after to charge at the officers with knife in hand.
An officer fired two rounds from his service pistol, hitting the man in the shoulder, ASIRT said, and the man dropped to the ground, beginning to stab at his neck.
Police said officers demanded the man drop the knife and deployed another Taser-like weapon, which stopped the man from stabbing himself but he would not drop the knife. A police dog was used to drag the man into an open area where officers disarmed him and moved him to an ambulance, amid thick smoke in the building, ASIRT said.
The man was treated for his injuries, which included burns to his upper body and a gunshot wound to the shoulder, and was booked into custody at the Calgary Remand Centre.
ASIRT said the man died on Dec. 23, 2017, “in circumstances unrelated to his contact with police on Sept. 29, 2017 or the physical injuries he sustained.”
Police believed the man was under the influence of drugs that were also interacting with pre-existing mental health issues.
An ASIRT release said the officers were “entitled to use as much force as is reasonably necessary to carry out their lawful duties” under Section 25 of the Criminal Code of Canada and are “entitled to the use of reasonable force in defence of themselves or another” under Section 34 of the same Code.
ASIRT determined that, given the circumstances of the man being intoxicated and under mental duress, the fire in the building, and the man armed with a knife running at the officer, “it is reasonable that he resorted to the use of lethal force.”
ASIRT also said “there are no reasonable grounds, nor even reasonable suspicion, to believe that the officer committed any Criminal Code offence.”
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