According to news reports, Prince George RCMP shot an eleven year old boy with a TASER weapon last Thursday, and yesterday Vancouver police shot and critically wounded a 47 year old man. Few details have been provided by the police investigators who are investigating the incidents. In the latter case, Vancouver radio station CKNW reported:

“I.H.I.T.’s corporal Dale Carr says the two officers were on regular patrol in the area about 9:45 a.m. when they had an interaction with the man.”

“That interaction turned violent when the male produced a weapon, which caused one of the two police officers to then draw his service pistol and fire an undetermined amount of rounds at the individual.”

Carr says the man is not known to police.
He says it’s not known whether the man advanced towards the officers or what the initial interaction was about.”

Huh? It’s not known whether the man advanced…? The reason police investigators say they don’t know yet what happened is that in these cases, the police handle things very differently than they would handle civilian on civilian violence. They do not usually attempt to interview the police officers involved. Instead of taking them into custody, reading them their rights and attempting to extract an explanation for what happened, as investigators would do with civilians, they send them home, invite them to get legal counsel and ask them to submit a written statement when they are ready. When the lawyer-assisted statement is submitted, it usually contains an exculpatory explanation for what happened.

As former justice Tom Braidwood has repeatedly said, police should not be investigating police. Reform is long overdue.