Slain peace officer lacked support
Inquiry hears from colleague
Better equipment and support should have been provided to peace officer Rod Lazenby when he was killed at a property outside Calgary, one of his colleagues told a public inquiry Tuesday.
Sgt. Darlene Roblin of Foothills MD was asked by Lazenby’s family members if her fellow officer’s job could have been made safer.
“My opinion to that is much more could have been done and should have been done,” Roblin told the inquiry overseen by Provincial Court Judge Bruce Fraser.
Lazenby was strangled by Trevor Kloschinsky at the latter man’s Priddis-area home on Aug. 10, 2012, while responding to a dog complaint.
Kloschinsky was found not criminally responsible for the death of the Foothills MD officer following a 2014 trial, which heard the accused thought Lazenby had come to steal his dogs.
The slain man was unarmed, amid a lack of regulations mandating peace officers be ensured backup and be armed with nonlethal weapons.
“This shouldn’t be discretionary, it should be mandatory,” Roblin said of access to backup and proper communications to enable that.
“There’s training that could have been done to qualify him for something like a baton.”
Information-sharing was also lacking, said Roblin, adding that it was only following Lazenby’s death that she become aware of Kloschinsky.
If anything, some communications now aiding peace officers are set to deteriorate, with RCMP planning to encrypt their radio transmissions, barring access to them by community peace officers, said Jamie Erickson, past president of the Alberta Association of Community Peace Officers.
“There’s a safety concern for us … they’ll be able to hear us and I’ll have to hope one of their members is listening to our channel,” said Erickson, who’s recently met with Alberta Mounties to voice those fears.