IIU absolves officer who shot teen five times

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This article was published 13/08/2020 (1603 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Independent Investigation Unit of Manitoba has deemed the 2019 police shooting of a 16-year-old male during an attempted robbery “appropriate to the situation” and the use of possibly lethal force “unavoidable.”

On Nov. 21, Winnipeg police responded to calls a convenience store at the corner of Ellice Avenue and Arlington Street was being robbed by a male with a weapon. Upon arrival, a youth wielding a machete advanced on an officer outside the building.

According to the IIU report released Friday, officers told the youth to drop his weapon and a Taser was discharged, to no effect.

“Sometimes the more important question is: is there a way we don’t end up with a guy with a raised machete six feet away from a police officer?” –Frank Cormier 

One officer shot fired nine bullets at the teen, with five hitting him. He was sent to hospital and discharged in mid-December.

The youth was subsequently charged and convicted with regards to the robbery, and has received a sentence, leading to the report’s release, IIU civilian director Zane Tessler said.

Tessler said he was satisfied with the police watchdog agency’s decision to recommend no charges be filed against the officer.

“If you look at the video and compare, and the eyewitness testimony and other evidence that existed, the number of shots itself was not necessarily excessive by any means in these circumstances,” he said.

The incident became the subject of public debate last year, after video of the incident circulated on social media. That video, along with nine civilian witnesses and 10 police witnesses, were used as part of the IIU investigation.

Both the officer who fired the shots and the youth who was injured declined to be interviewed as part of the investigation. The officer provided a self-prepared report on the incident; a form consenting the IIU to access the youth’s medical information was provided to investigators.

Tessler said he’d encourage those concerned the amount of force used was unjustified to read the IIU report in full.

“This is not television or movies. We don’t have single shots shooting things out of people’s hands or hitting someone in the shoulder and knocking them down. It’s engrained in their (police) training to shoot to neutralize the threat,” he said.

Whether or not the shooting was justified couldn’t be determined through arbitrary means such as the number of shots fired, University of Manitoba sociology and criminology instructor Frank Cormier said, calling police use of force “a multi-faceted and extremely complicated thing.”

“According to police training, once an officer has decided that deadly force is on the table, basically they will shoot until they believe the target has been neutralized — rendered no longer dangerous,” he said Friday.

In strictly technical terms — Cormier clarified he could only judge based on the video he had seen on social media, which he noted could not tell the whole story — the officer in the video fulfilled that requirement.

“You can hear very clearly when he was shooting and when he wasn’t, and once the young man went to the ground, he did stop firing,” he said.

University of Winnipeg criminal justice assistant Prof. Bronwyn Dobchuk-Land said deliberating over whether or not the use of force in the situation was legitimate was not possible, given the current system makes it difficult to regulate use of force in policing.

“It’s basically impossible for independent oversight bodies to find police guilty of illegitimate use of force, because the definition of legitimate use of force basically comes down to what the police deem to be legitimate in that moment based on their assessment of the threat,” she said.

However, Cormier and Dobchuk-Land said the incident raises questions about the role of the police in crisis situations.

“Sometimes the more important question is: is there a way we don’t end up with a guy with a raised machete six feet away from a police officer? How do we handle these situations? Is there another way to handle it?” Cormier said.

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: malakabas_