UPDATE: On Aug. 31, 2023, ASIRT released the findings of its investigation and said it had concluded that “there are no reasonable grounds, nor reasonable suspicion to believe that” an officer committed an offence of any kind over the course of these events. The report notes a police officer was fired at “without any warning” and said the police officer “clearly” fired their gun in self-defence. You can read the report in its entirety here.
A Calgary police officer is recovering at home after being shot during an incident early Friday morning.
Just before 3 a.m., police attended a call of a suspicious vehicle in the 500 block of Canyon Meadows Drive S.W.
The Calgary Police Service said when the officer approached the vehicle on foot, the man inside the vehicle shot at the officer. That officer – who had more than two decades with CPS – was hit in the leg with part of a shotgun blast.
Police said the suspect then abandoned the vehicle and ran off into a wooded area of Fish Creek Park.
As more police arrived in the area to arrest the man, they said they heard another shot from in the woods.
Police said the man died by suicide.
The officer was taken to hospital with minor injuries.
Later that day, CPS Chief Mark Neufeld confirmed the officer was out of hospital and recovering.
“The situation could have ended very differently. I can tell you I’m proud of the officer and the way that he responded. He will fully recover from this,” Neufeld told reporters, speaking from a graduation ceremony for 22 new CPS officers.
Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek said she was “incredibly thankful” to hear the officer will have a full physical recovery.
“It is unbelievably tragic what happened,” she said. “We have incidents happening to our city where service members are put into harm’s way and a lot of it has to do with people in positions of vulnerability.
“Today was a good example of that.”
John Orr, president of the Calgary Police Association, said the well-being of the association’s members is at the top of his mind, especially in light of recent officer deaths in Burnaby, B.C., and Innisfil, Ont.
“I think it’s critically important that community leaders show support openly and publicly for the police,” Orr said. “The rise in anti-police sentiment is concerning, and this type of behavior towards police officers is unacceptable.”
Neufeld said getting the call that an officer had been injured was like another call in recent memory.
“When (the phone) rings at that time, it’s not good news. It’s never good news that rings at that time. And I’ve got to tell you, for me, it was probably a bit of a throwback to the phone call I got on Dec. 31 for Sgt. (Andrew) Hartnett. And so you approach that with a lot of trepidation,” Neufeld said.
The CPS chief attended the scene shortly after the shots were fired.
The Alberta Serious Incident Response Team has taken over the investigation, but Neufeld added that CPS will have an internal review of policy, training and equipment.
“If there’s anything obvious that sticks out in our policies or systems that we need to change to make things either safer for the public or safer for officers, we’ll do that as quickly as we can,” he said.
Wednesday’s Calgary Police Commission heard that most types of crime are down and levelling off to pre-pandemic levels.
But with the city seeing an increase in gun-related incidents, Neufeld said Calgary police are aware of a “small portion of the community willing to pull the trigger.”
And Friday’s police graduation ceremony was a reminder for Neufeld and the new recruits of how an officer’s job is anything but “routine.”
“We talked this morning with officers at the 7 o’clock parade, just talking about the fact that there’s no such thing as a routine call. I would say that there is an unknown risk to a traffic stop or types of calls, but there’s no such thing as routine.”