Questions remain following deadly Calgary Police shooting

The shootout that happened with Calgary police during an attempted arrest in a parking lot in Calgary’s northeast Wednesday afternoon is prompting a lot of questions.

A suspect is dead, an officer was shot, and a Falconridge barbershop has a bullet hole in its window.

“The TAC team involvement indicates that the police thought it could be a much more difficult arrest,” Mount Royal University justice studies professor Doug King told CityNews.

“The police knew that there were dangerous individuals that they were going to arrest. Who would have firearms and apparently not afraid to use them,” chair of Calgary’s policing committee and member of the Criminal Trial Lawyers Association, Tom Engel, added.

Calgary police have confirmed the arrest warrant was for a suspect who had previous charges relating to firearms.

Read more: Calgary shooting leaves suspect dead, police officer hurt

By bringing in the tactical unit, King says Calgary police would be aware the arrest could have an increased risk of violence.

“When you’re talking about an arrest warrant involving someone who has a history of firearms, anything can happen,” he said.

King says because there was an arrest warrant, this wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment thing.

He adds police knew this was happening, but what he doesn’t know is why it happened here.

“There must have been a conscious decision by the police that the best place to arrest this individual was in that location… or it could have been the police saying ‘we had better act immediately because the individual is at risk of flight or something, we’ll never find them again,'” King explained.

Calgary police were unable to provide an update Thursday, leaving questions about why the takedown happened in a shopping plaza in the middle of the day, and whose bullets ended up in a barber shop.

“This is a question that the Calgary Police Service should be answering,” Engel said. “Instead, they’re gonna stand behind ‘ASIRT is investigating…people were in danger, there were probably people in that barber shop who could’ve been killed.'”

The investigation is now in the hands of the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team (ASIRT).

Those investigations typically take years, so it may be quite a while before it’s known what happened.