Winnipeg cops shoot man dead during mental health call

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This article was published 15/02/2024 (679 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

WINNIPEG — Police fatally shot a 59-year-old man Tuesday as they responded to a mental health call at a home in the North End — the latest in a handful of recent incidents in which a person was killed after involvement with city officers.

Const. Claude Chancy, spokesman for the Winnipeg Police Service, told a news conference Wednesday that on Feb. 8, police received an order under the provincial Mental Health Act to apprehend the man and take him to hospital for a non-voluntary examination by doctors.

Police didn’t release the name of the deceased.

Police said officers tried to find the man several times in the following days but could not. On Tuesday, at about 7:30 a.m., he answered the door at a home at 259 Magnus Ave.

Chancy said the man, who was agitated and held a crowbar, discharged a fire extinguisher at the officers. They called in the tactical support team, whose officers tried unsuccessfully to communicate with the man.

Officers forced their way into the home and discovered the man had barricaded himself in a second-storey bedroom, Chancy said, where he again discharged a fire extinguisher toward officers.

Eventually, the man left the bedroom and confronted officers while armed with a “large, edged weapon,” Chancy alleged.

That’s when officers fired at the man.

Police applied a chest seal and tourniquet on the critically injured man. Paramedics arrived and took him to hospital, where he died.

The Independent Investigation Unit, which is the provincial police oversight agency, is probing the fatality.

On Wednesday, Winnipeg police forensics investigators were seen working at the two-and-a-half-storey home, coming and going from the broken front door.

All of the windows on the first floor were covered with plywood. Plywood over the front window, adjacent to the front door, had been battered in.

Sarah Coates, a 55-year-old who has lived down the street with her daughter and a roommate for about a year, said police used a battering ram on the front door last week.

“Last week, he would not open the door,” Coates said on Wednesday. “They just kept saying ‘We just want to talk to you. We just want to talk to you. Please come outside,’ and he wouldn’t, so they used the battering ram.”

On Tuesday, Coates said, police used a battering ram on the front of an armoured vehicle to punch a hole in the plywood-covered front window.

“I heard a lot of banging, a lot of yelling. Police were yelling for him to come out and he would not come out,” Coates said, adding she did not hear anything that sounded like gunshots.

She left her home around 8:20 a.m., when police were positioning the vehicle with the battering ram in front of the house. When Coates returned shortly after 9 a.m., officers were still trying to get inside. She said the police presence remained heavy until about 3:30 p.m.

Coates said she did not know anything about her neighbour. “Every time I saw him, he was pleasant, he smiled — seemed like your normal, everyday person.”

Police Chief Danny Smyth, who has held several news conferences in recent months following any incident in which a person died after an encounter with police, was away in Ottawa on police business Wednesday. Instead, deputy chief Art Stannard took the podium.

“It is tragic whenever a police interaction results in a death,” Stannard said, adding that officers take their oaths to protect life seriously.

Stannard did not elaborate about the fatality, citing the police watchdog probe. He said the police service had past interactions with the man, all of which were related to his mental health.

He said that in this case, police would not have called in the Alternative Response to Citizens in Crisis Unit. The unit is a relatively new program in which clinicians and police respond to people in crises in tandem, but only when police believe the situation isn’t high risk or potentially violent.

“Based on the information we had, it was not a response for ARCC at all, absolutely not,” Stannard said. “The safety conditions and the information we had, it was definitely a police response.”

Stannard said police have non-lethal options, such as Tasers, but their use depends on the circumstances.

Police Supt. Bonnie Emerson weighed in about the types of calls police officers are mandated to respond to in order to detain people under the Mental Health Act.

“We need to partner, we need to work and we need to co-ordinate together with community and other partners involved in the social safety net to de-escalate situations before they require a police response, before the safety risk occurs,” she said.

Last year, Winnipeg police officers went to an average of 58 well-being checks each day — an increase of four per cent over 2022, and 16 per cent higher than the five-year average, Emerson said, describing it as the No. 1 type of call to police.

“Some of these may or may not involve calls regarding mental health,” she said, adding that last year police responded to an average of four Mental Health Act apprehension calls a day.

Later on Wednesday, Smyth published an article on the online platform Substack in which he said Winnipeg police officers receive comprehensive training to respond such events.

“Despite the hundreds of hours of training, and the thousands of hours of experience officers may gain during their career, things don’t always end well,” Smyth wrote.

The IIU has asked anyone who witnessed the incident or has video of it to call 1-844-667-6060.

» Winnipeg Free Press