The actions of five Red Deer RCMP officers who fatally shot a man wielding a compound bow have been justified, with a watchdog finding they exercised “reasonably necessary” force. “No other use-of-force options were reasonably available for attempted use,” the watchdog concluded. “The subject officers’ reliance on using their respective firearms to incapacitate this threat was reasonably necessary.”On May 24 2021, a man was shot by the police officers after the civilian produced a hunting bow, raised and pointed it at an officer and refused to lower it. After conducting an investigation into the officer-involved shooting, the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team (ASIRT) said the officer used proportionate force to manage the threat. ASIRT conducted interviews with civilian witnesses, the subject officers and the in-car police and evaluated private security video recordings, evidence which “provided sufficient information to determine whether the force used by the subject officers during this critical incident was reasonable.”Red Deer RCMP “received several complaints” about an erratic driver that night in 2021.An officer was parked in a marked police vehicle near the Red Deer Regional Hospital parkade at around 9 p.m. “when the vehicle that was the subject of the complaints pulled up alongside.”The driver made an “unprompted statement” to the officer “about having a weapon and he was going to the hospital.”The officer immediately called for backup but the man drove away toward the nearby hospital and into its parkade. The officer followed him in but stopped near the mouth of the parkade, which was “largely empty of vehicles,” and had a security camera directly overhead. The man got out of his vehicle “with a compound bow as well as additional arrows that he tucked into a pocket on his pants.”His vehicle “began to roll backwards toward” the police car, hitting its front bumper. The man “was then holding the compound bow with an arrow nocked and pointed in the direction of the officer, who backed the police vehicle away and put on its emergency lights, yelling at him to “drop the weapon”He “was trying to get” the man to talk to him, according to witnesses present in the back portion of the parkade ASIRT said. The man “was yelling back that he was not going to drop the bow. This back and forth occurred a few times.”Four officers arrived on-scene to backup the officer in question, parking outside the parkade and taking cover near the original officer’s police car. Then, one of them “ran out of the parkade and returned with a carbine, which is a long-barrelled gun,” and stationed himself near the entrance. “Officers continued to give commands for [the man] to drop the compound bow,” ASIRT said. “Instead of complying, [he] moved towards the officers and brought the bow up to a shooting stance, with it directed at several of the back-up subject officers.”All five of the officers “then discharged their respective firearms” at the civilian, shooting 28 rounds altogether. “Having been shot” the suspect “fell to the ground.”“The officers provided first aid while waiting for emergency medical services (EMS) to arrive,” ASIRT said. EMS “provided emergency care before pronouncing [the man] deceased.”“At autopsy it was determined that the man had four gunshot wounds to his body.”.“Civilians who were present confirmed to ASIRT that they heard [the officer] give numerous commands to the man for the weapon to be dropped,”ASIRT wrote. Further, the whole sequence of events was caught on video and audio from the police in-car recording system, and security CCTV footage from the parkade. As a result, “in tandem the entire incident is captured from beginning to end by good quality video.”Audio captured from the recording is consistent with reports from witnesses and the other officers. “I don’t want to shoot you, just put it down, we can talk about it…put it down, just talk to me…what’s going on?...we can talk about it...” the officer was heard saying at the time, as he “continued attempts to deescalate the situation at the same time that the [man] was walking towards [the police car] with the bow raised."“The officers were lawfully placed and acting in the execution of their duties,” ASIRT found. “The question is, applying principles of proportionality, necessity, and reasonableness, whether the force used falls into a range of possible reasonable responses.”“Proportionality requires balancing a use of force with the action to which it responds,” ASIRT wrote. “Here, the subject officers were faced with an individual that possessed a notched compound bow and was refusing to drop it, notwithstanding numerous commands to do so.”“This individual was moving forward towards some of the subject officers, and then raised the bow in their direction." "An arrow shot from a compound bow is certainly capable of causing death or grievous bodily harm to a person. As such, the subject officers’ responses in using their firearms to shoot was proportionate to the threat of death or grievous bodily harm that he posed to them, and their fellow officers also present,” ASIRT concluded.
