The death of Jean René Junior Olivier is not an isolated case: 70% of people shot dead by police in Quebec in 20 years were struggling with a known mental health problem. Second part of three.
Report after report, the Coroner’s Office has pointed out nine times in the past ten years the lack of training of police officers to respond to people in crisis, according to data compiled by The duty. Both on the use of a firearm and on the areas of the body targeted, the deaths of disorganized people also call into question the model of use of force.
“I would like everything to be settled tomorrow morning; on the other hand, I am realistic enough to know that it will take time, but that it is by dint of work that we will get there. We do not change the ways of doing things established since the police have existed in two or three years, ”notes in an interview with The duty the Deputy Chief Coroner, Mr.e Luc Malouin.
The case of Mario Hamel, a homeless man with psychiatric problems shot in broad daylight in downtown Montreal in June 2011, shed light on the ignorance of the police when they face a citizen in crisis. “To shoot a criminal who fires himself at the police or at another person is one thing. To shoot with a firearm on a visibly disturbed person is another ”, already noted at the time the coroner Jean Brochu in his report.
This death was also a turning point for the National Police School of Quebec (ENPQ), which adjusted the intervention scenarios taught from 2012 and added de-escalation workshops.
Despite everything, the recommendations followed one another, and eight other people perished in similar circumstances. Last August, coroner Malouin, who chairs the public inquiry into the death of Pierre Coriolan, did not mince words to describe the intervention which cost the latter his life in 2017: ” [Les policiers] acted as they were formed 15-20 years ago ”. The man, who suffered from mental health issues, was armed with a kitchen knife and screwdriver. During the public hearings, it was mentioned that no attempt at de-escalation was undertaken before Mr. Coriolanus was shot dead by the police.
In one in two operations, the victim held a knife in his hands, according to our data. To justify their shooting in front of an armed person, the police forces invoke the “rule of 21 feet”, established according to an American study of the beginning of the 1980s.
She maintains that at this distance, a person armed with a knife would have time to stab a police officer several times before he could even draw his weapon.
“It is a rule of caution which says that faced with a person armed with a knife, one must draw,” explains Bruno Poulin, consultant in the use of force at the ENPQ. This does not mean that the police should automatically shoot, he emphasizes.
The duty asked the Ministry of Public Security and various police forces in the province for data on police officers injured or killed in the line of duty since 2001 at the point of a knife. Only the Sûreté du Québec responded to our request, indicating that no police officer was killed and that 25 were slightly injured and one seriously injured.
In addition, police officers are trained to target the center-mass, the region that includes vital organs like the heart and lungs. According to our data, 49 people killed during an intervention were hit in the center-mass, 16 in the head and 7 in the back.
Our analysis also shows that it is very rare for police officers to be criminally charged with using force. Only police officer Éric Deslauriers faced such an accusation for having shot dead a 17-year-old teenager, David Huyghes-Lacour, after a police chase in Sainte-Adèle, in January 2014.
Legally, the police have certain powers to exercise their role. The spokesperson for the Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions (DPCP), Mr.e Audrey Roy-Cloutier, explains that “the police do not have to wait for an attack to materialize before acting, they do not have to have a knife or a weapon pointed at them or at their temple to have the right to use force reasonable in the circumstances ”.
“A guide, not a doctrine”
The national model for the use of force, which is applied across the country, provides that in the face of resistance that can cause serious injury or death, it is legitimate for police officers to use the appropriate level of force.
Our compilation reveals that in 63% of police interventions that resulted in the death of a citizen, or 51 of 81 cases, no intermediate weapon such as the tasers was used. In the other fatal interventions identified, the police used cayenne pepper in 15 interventions before using their firearm and the telescopic baton on 6 occasions. The Taser was used in 5 interventions.
The use of force has dictated police interventions for too long, estimates Sergeant Éric Roger, a police officer for 25 years in Sherbrooke and now head of the mobile psychosocial intervention team since 2019. “We are now detecting cases of Mental Health. What we didn’t do before. When we had an individual in crisis, we fought with it! He was arrested and criminally accused. It was the use of force that prevailed. “
Towards continuous training?
Following the death of Jean René Junior Olivier in Repentigny, the 1er last august, The duty asked the Repentigny Police Department (SPVR) about the training offered to its workforce to intervene with citizens in crisis. The SPVR admits that only 8 of the 118 police officers in Repentigny took the training “Intervene safely with a person in crisis” and 18 attended the online training “De-escalation Mental state disturbed” in 2019-2020, provided by the National Police Academy.
“Our intention is to train all of our police patrollers in 2021-2022,” said the communications service of the Repentigny police. Police Chief Helen Dion refused the interview request for the To have to.
Last August, during the public inquiry surrounding the death of Pierre Coriolan, coroner Luc Malouin spoke in favor of annual training on mental health, on intervention with a person in crisis, on de-escalation. violence and on communication. Currently, only shooting skills are in fact subject to compulsory requalification.
The former police officer of the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) Stéphane Wall, who for 13 years trained police officers on the judicious use of force, points out that police training has too long focused on the technical side to the detriment of emotional intelligence. “We must not only better train our police officers, but also maintain mental health skills,” says the one who also co-authored the brief. Saving the lives of citizens and police officers by maintaining skills within the framework of the hearings carried out last year around the green paper on the police reality.
In Quebec, the typical path to becoming a police officer requires a college diploma in police techniques. Candidate police officers must then be admitted to the National Police School of Quebec. It is only since 2017 that 60 hours of intervention courses with vulnerable people have been added to the schedule of students in police technique at the college level.
Since 2015, the ENPQ has specifically devoted 21 hours in theory and practice to issues of homelessness and mental health in its program.
“It’s an improvement, but it’s not enough,” said Michael Arruda, mental health expert and retired SPVM police officer. According to him, the sinews of war is continuing education. Currently, no police force obliges its police officers to update their knowledge of intervention with people in crisis.
A matter of time
Half of the events with police firing last 10 minutes or less between the arrival of the police, the shots and the call for an ambulance, according to research conducted in 2015 by Annie Gendron, researcher at the ENPQ .
For Marie-Christine Beaudin, Crisis Intervention Response Agent (RIC) at the Longueuil Agglomeration Police Department, time is an ally during a police intervention with a disorganized person.
“In RIC training, we have been told several times, and it was perhaps less in our language before, but it is to take all the time necessary to bring a situation to be resolved peacefully”, notes Agent Beaudin.
At a time when the disarmament and definancing of the police are demanded by certain organizations against police violence, she nevertheless confides that if her weapon were taken away from her, she would not be comfortable answering this type of call. .
“The problem is that often, when the police arrive, just the uniform is a trigger [de la crise] “, Notes for his part the expert in the use of force Bruno Poulin.
To read tomorrow, in the third and final part of the To have to : Are police officers doomed to become social workers?