MORRISBURG – Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit has cleared local Ontario Provincial Police officers following a four-month investigation into the use of non-lethal weapons July 13.
“On my assessment of the evidence, there are no reasonable grounds to believe that either subject official committed a criminal offence in connection with the incident,” said SIU Director Joseph Martino in a final report released November 7.
The report investigated the actions of two un-named officers in relation to a standoff with a 42-year-old man on a residential shoreline property in Morrisburg.
SD&G OPP were called to a residence after 4:30 a.m. that morning, where a man was by the shoreline and claimed to have two guns. Officers called for the man to put down the guns. The OPP’s Emergency Response Team and Tactical Response Unit, along with a crisis negotiator and a canine unit responded.
About an hour after the police arrived and engaged the man, uniformed officers ran towards him, who jumped into the river. Two officers discharged conductive energy weapons at the man, who was not affected.
The report said that OPP drone footage showed what appeared to be a gun held by the man, which he pointed towards officers before leaving the water.
“The Complainant was high on cocaine and methadone. Armed with a replica firearm, he had called police hoping to provoke a lethal confrontation in which they would shoot him,” the report said.
The man was repeatedly directed to put his firearm down, and refused to do so.
“He told the officers that either he or they would be shot and killed,” the report said.
According to the SIU, after 7 a.m. the man left the water with a hand inside a backpack.
Two officers each discharged an ARWEN, which is a less-than-lethal weapon that can fire 37mm rounds of direct impact batons, tear gas, or smoke munitions. One officer discharged all five of their baton rounds, the second officer discharged one.
The man attempted to run, was felled by the police dog and grounded, landing on his buttocks the report said. The police dog bit the man in the upper and lower back areas. After a brief struggle with officers, another officer deployed another conductive energy weapon, and police were able to handcuff the man.
Once handcuffed, the man was treated for his injuries, which included a fracture of his left arm, and dog bites to his upper and lower back, and head.
In his report, Martino said the two officers were part of a “lawful police operation that had been organized to contain a man of unsound mind, seemingly armed with a gun and threatening to use it on either himself or the officers.”
He continued that the officers were right to fire their ARWENS to “protect themselves and their fellow officers from a reasonably apprehended attack.”
Martino said that while the man was armed with a replica gun that was unable to fire real bullets, it looked like a real gun and that police were right to treat it that way. The threat level had not diminished throughout the standoff, and negotiations to resolve it.
“I am unable to reasonably conclude that the use by the officers of their less-lethal weapons, in the face of an apparently lethal threat, was excessive.”
The complainant in the investigation was the man who was arrested. The SIU investigates all instances that an official with a police service discharges a firearm at a person.
The identity of the man arrested was not released in this report.
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