Officer gets conditional discharge after accidentally firing gun

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This article was published 11/04/2022 (1435 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A police officer who accidentally fired his gun through his bathroom mirror while training at home was given a conditional discharge on Monday morning.

Jacob Clement, 23, previously pleaded guilty to careless use of a firearm in Brandon provincial court in the June 2020 incident.

“This was an inherently dangerous act inside of a residential building that could have caused serious bodily harm or death to anyone that might have been in the hallway,” said Crown attorney Ari Millo.

On June 27, 2020, Clement had been a police officer for a year, Millo told the court. At approximately 1:25 a.m., he “unintentionally discharged” his service pistol in the washroom of his apartment while he was doing a “dry firing exercise,” Millo said.

A dry firing exercise involves practising the mechanics of drawing and firing a gun, including pulling the trigger, to instill muscle memory, he said. Police officers and soldiers are often encouraged to practise when they can.

A dry firing exercise is supposed to be done with an unloaded gun that has been proven clear, but Clement’s was loaded with a full magazine, the Crown said.

The gun fired and the bullet went through the bathroom wall, through the hallway and into his neighbour’s wall, where police later found it.

While the bullet went through the hall, it didn’t enter his neighbour’s apartment.

When Brandon police arrived at approximately 3:30 a.m., Clement told the officer he came off a night shift and was up late practising with his service pistol.

After firing the gun, he locked the gun in his lockbox and called his supervisor. Police seized the gun, along with three magazines — two with 15 bullets and one with 14.

The RCMP examined the pistol and bullets and found “no deficiencies” that would cause and “abnormal discharge,” he said. RCMP handguns can’t be fired without the magazine loaded, an extra safety feature of RCMP pistols.

“This isn’t a situation we sometimes come across where a bullet is racked into a handgun, a magazine is ejected but the firearm is not properly cleared … that’s not what happened here. Clement’s service pistol could not have discharged without a magazine loaded into it,” he said.

Millo said Clement is a “hardworking member,” but the incident was a flagrant breach of fundamental firearms safety taught to RCMP officers.

He recommended a fine and a five-year ban from owning guns, except in his duties as an RCMP officer. He said police officers have special privileges with firearms that everyday people don’t, and Clement’s actions were “not consistent” with their duty.

“His actions in the early morning hours of June 27, 2020, were reckless, they were easily avoidable and ones that could have easily caused serious injury or death,” he said.

Defence lawyer Joshua Weinstein said Clement realizes he made a mistake and went to his supervisor right away after the gun fired.

Weinstein asked for a conditional discharge and community service hours, saying Clement has endorsements from other RCMP officers that he has a good work ethic and it is a lesson learned for him.

Speaking to the court, Clement said his actions were dangerous and don’t represent who he is as a person.

“It was a lack of judgement on my part that night to improperly clear and unload my firearm before doing any manipulations to it,” he said, adding he was still trying to get used to the new schedule at the time.

“Unfortunately, that night I didn’t take any of the precautions I’ve been taught … I can see that as a police officer [I] have a lot of responsibilities and one of them is to use and carry our firearm, store it and maintain it according to the law.”

The incident was a very bad decision, Judge Shauna Hewitt-Michta said, but the guilty plea shows he is remorseful and it appears completely out of character.

“This was an inherently very dangerous act that could have had dire and even fatal consequences. Thankfully, that did not happen here, but I can’t give much credit to Mr. Clement … you were really just lucky there wasn’t someone passing through that hallway to be hit by that bullet.”

She sentenced him to a two-year conditional discharge with supervised probation. She also sentenced him to 40 hours of community service and banned him from owning firearms for five years, except for using them in his job as a police officer.

» dmay@brandonsun.com

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