IIU absolves police in fatal shooting of man wielding hammer

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 07/01/2020 (1718 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Independent Investigation Unit of Manitoba has concluded that the use of lethal force in the death of a man shot by a Winnipeg police officer in February 2019 was “reasonable, necessary, justified, and unavoidable.”

In an eight-page report published Tuesday, the IIU’s civilian director, Zane Tessler, details the unit’s findings around the events that led to the death of Machuar Madut—a 43-year-old man originally from South Sudan who family and friends said had been experiencing mental distress at the time he was shot in his Colony Street apartment.

According to the report’s breakdown of the incident—based off interviews with three witnessing officers, civilians, and the notes of the officer who fired the gun—police were called Feb. 25 about a man with a hammer in the hallway banging on doors, trying to enter suites, and throwing items out of the building’s backdoor earlier in the day. 

A family member interviewed by the IIU said Madut had received treatment for mental illness, and had been notified of an impending eviction because he’d damaged his suite door. Madut was told he’d need to vacate the building by the end of the month.

One tenant told the IIU a man had entered their suite holding a hammer. Officers then spotted Madut and followed him to a different unit. An officer said he kicked at the door of the unit, and Madut answered. After Madut told the officer he lived in the building but in a different unit, he was asked to exit and face the wall to be handcuffed and detained, an officer said.

As one officer recalled, Madut refused, and ran into his suite with officers following.  An officer used his taser, but it was ineffective.  Madut charged at an officer and struck him on the head. “(The officer) was stunned by the blow, but not injured,” the report notes.

Madut then ran into the bathroom and, when an officer approached, Madut “ran towards” him holding a hammer. The officer threw his taser to the ground and pulled out his firearm. The officer shot three times, hitting Madut in the chest twice. 

“I am satisfied that the evidence gathered from all sources provides sufficient support for the conclusion that the decision by (the officer) to shoot (Madut) was necessary in order to prevent the injury or death to him and other police officers in the vicinity,” Tessler wrote.

Nowhere in the report is Madut’s race mentioned, and aside from his relative’s interview, neither is his mental health, and critics say such elements often play outsized roles in interactions with police.

An Ontario Human Rights Commission report into the Toronto Police Services found that from 2013 to 2017, black people were the ones killed in 70 per cent of police shootings resulting in civilian death, despite accounting for under nine per cent of the total population. In Manitoba, the majority of people killed in police encounters between 2000 and 2017 were Indigenous, CBC reported last year.

“I am unwilling to entertain the notion that Machuar Madut’s death was sad but inevitable,” wrote Robyn Maynard, the Canadian author of Policing Black Lives, shortly after his death. “We can and must collectively refuse the logic that tells us that violent death is an unpreventable turn of events when poor black people need support with mental health issues.”

Bronwyn Dobchuk-Land, an assistant professor of criminal justice at the University of Winnipeg, echoed Maynard.

“This report is saying his death was inevitable and justifiable, which I think is abhorrent,” she said. “The fact that police are far more likely to shoot and kill black and Indigenous men makes it impossible to consider this incident without consdering that race and racism was a factor.”

She said rather than de-escalating the situation, police had an opposite effect. Regarding the conclusion of the reasonability of the use of lethal force, she said, “Nobody was hurt until the police arrived.”

ben.waldman@freepress.mb.ca