Calgary officer not criminally liable for woman’s death: ASIRT

Content warning: This story contains details that some readers may find distressing.

A Calgary officer who shot and killed a woman on Christmas Day 2018 is not criminally liable for her death, according to an Alberta Serious Incident Response Team (ASIRT) investigation.

Instead, ASIRT says it was the officer’s superiors — who breached Calgary Police policy — who are to blame.

ASIRT says officers suspected the 30-year-old woman of impaired driving late at night on Dec. 24, 2018. The officers claimed she was moving slowly, merging, signaling, and changing lanes improperly.

When they tried to pull her over at two separate times throughout the night, it’s reported that she sped off, and the officers decided both times not to follow out of concerns it could create a dangerous situation.

Hours later, at 2:19 a.m., ASIRT says police got a 911 call about the same woman driving erratically.

Minutes later, the probe says officers found her driving near Saddletowne Circle NE and Falconridge Boulevard NE.

“The vehicle then ran a red light and travelled on the wrong side of the road. More police vehicles entered the area and began to follow the vehicle. The vehicle continued to drive very slowly but poorly,” ASIRT’s report reads. “At 2:35 a.m., HAWC1 began to follow the vehicle again, along with numerous patrol officers in their vehicles. The vehicle was now southbound on Stoney Trail NE approaching McKnight Boulevard NE, travelling at 50-60 km/h in this 100 km/h zone.”

Moments later, the acting staff sergeant told officers to use a “low speed box-in maneuver” to surround the woman’s vehicle with police cruisers and force her to a stop.

According to ASIRT, the box-in maneuver is only supposed to be used in a “spontaneous situation where public safety is such that if overt action is not taken, there is a reasonable likelihood of death or grievous bodily harm,” and only by officers who are trained to do so.

Of the several officers there at the time, ASIRT notes only one was properly trained to use the technique.

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After four police vehicles successfully boxed the woman’s car in, several officers got out of their vehicles and began to approach the woman. An officer in the HAWC1 helicopter repeatedly told officers on the ground to stay in their cars and watch out for “pinch points” — areas where the woman could pin them against their vehicles with her vehicle — the report explains.

At that point the woman stepped on the gas to try and drive through the box-in, which ended up trapping an officer’s torso in a police vehicle’s door, lifting her off of her feet.

Meanwhile, the report says the woman continued to hit the gas pedal aggressively, putting pressure on the trapped officer, creating smoke and sending bits of rubber flying.

“At 2:42 a.m., the subject officer drew his service weapon and fired at the woman three times from close range. All three shots hit her in the head. She was killed immediately. The entire time from the woman’s vehicle stopping to the three shots being fired was approximately 40 seconds,” ASIRT said.

The officer who was pinched by the woman’s vehicle was freed shortly afterward.

ASIRT concludes that the superior officer is to blame for how the situation — that ultimately led to the woman’s death — played out.

The officer who pulled the trigger “should be judged through the lenses of his training and the situation in which he was placed. Based on that and the whole of the evidence, notwithstanding the heartbreaking outcome, there are no reasonable grounds to believe that the subject officer committed any offence,” according to ASIRT.

The police watchdog adds the officer acted to save a fellow officer from danger. While the woman who was killed “was likely in some state of distress, that does not change the situation on the ground in that moment nor the risk she presented to the trapped officer.”

“There were serious breaches of CPS policy that led to that dire situation. However, the blame for those breaches does not rest with the subject officer, who was following the directions of his superiors and not trained in the technique used, and they do not give rise to any criminal liability for him. The issue of policy breaches is ultimately one for CPS to address,” ASIRT said.