9 dead in 18 police shootings in B.C. so far this year

The Abbotsford police shooting of a reportedly suicidal man Sunday evening brings the total number of people shot by police in British Columbia this year to 18 – with nine of those incidents being fatal.

"The police are, in fact, the wrong tool to respond to someone in mental health distress. When they do use force or deadly force, we often don't hear what the details are for months or even years to come,” said Benjamin Perrin, a professor at UBC’s Allard School of Law.

Perrin noted that officers suspected of wrongdoing are not required to cooperate with the province’s police watchdog, and that “very few fully do” cooperate.

The Independent Investigations Office of B.C. has opened 53 death investigations this calendar year to determine if the actions or inactions of police were contributing factors.

Seventeen of those investigations remain open and active, 35 have been closed with no public report, and just one has been closed with a public report.

In that case, the IIO cleared members of the Vancouver Police Department of wrongdoing after they shot and killed a man reported to be acting erratically on the Granville Street Bridge in February.

Chris Voller, a director with the National Police Federation, the union representing RCMP officers across the country, told CTV News some calls for people in mental health distress do require an armed police response.

"If someone is suicidal and they're speaking because they want to take pills, then there is significantly less danger than if someone who is suicidal has access to firearms,” he said.

Voller went on to say better mental health supports could be helpful in certain situations.

"I would certainly say that police welcome further funding and partnership with any sort of mental health capacity,” he said.

Perrin, who wrote a book called Indictment: The Criminal Justice System on Trial, says based on his research, in most cases mental health support for people in distress and policing do not need to go hand in hand.

He argues there are many situations where police should stay away entirely.

"They need to stop making budget requests that are taking scarce public resources away from those non-police crisis teams,” Perrin said. “And rather than trying to embed mental health in police units, we need to have a separate non-police crisis service."

The IIO’s most recent annual report says nearly one in five people seriously injured or killed by police is a person in crisis.

According to that report, B.C. police officers shot 26 people, killing 15, in the 2022-23 fiscal year.