Tragic, deadly force and haunting consequences

To quote many a police and justice official, let me start by saying even one is too many.

Any death is too many whenever we talk about police-involved shootings. And I don’t want anyone to lose sight of that as this column continues.

As Justice Ministry spokesman Drew Wilby told reporters Tuesday regarding the 2017 death of Brydon Whitstone: “(It’s) a terrible situation. No one ever wants to see that.”

There is suffering to be sure for the families who have lost a loved one to a police-involved shooting, but also for the officer who pulled the trigger, living with a new kind of hell that comes from taking a life, even in the course of duty.

I sat down 10 years ago with an officer who knows that only too well.

“You couldn’t make a movie that was as intense as those seconds,” the retired officer told me. “I don’t want her to die. No one wants her to die.”

By that same token, I interviewed family members who also live with nightmares, having witnessed the confrontation that ended with police fatally shooting their stepfather. They too live with countless questions. “(Police) feel their life is in danger so they react ... but if they were told, maybe as a part of their training, ‘Think about the impact on the person at the other end, how it impacts their family,’ ” one woman told me, recalling how her life spiralled out of control in the aftermath.

Exactly what unfolded in Whitstone’s death will be explored at an inquest slated for December. That will be the time to scrutinize what did or didn’t unfold, and what lessons, if any, there are to learn.

But as I recently paged through the annual “use of firearms” reports, I was struck again by how rarely — thankfully — someone dies in a police shooting in this province, indeed across this country.

According to the Washington Post, 987 people in the U.S. last year alone were shot and killed by police. By comparison, an analysis by the CBC found there were 461 fatalities at the hands of police in Canada from 2000 to the end of 2017. No official numbers agency, such as Statistics Canada, actually keeps track, which is its own troubling tale and one I flagged when I explored this issue in 2008.

At the time, Saskatchewan’s numbers of fatal and non-fatal shootings by police were actually on the rise.

In nearly four decades, the number of such deaths in Saskatchewan has never exceeded three in any given year, according to statistics drawn from Saskatchewan Police Commission reports, Leader-post files and notices for coroner’s inquests.

And that’s not to diminish the tragic fact 24 people have died from a police bullet in that time frame in this province.

Whitstone was the only one in 2017. As I said at the beginning, one is too many.

But in this province, officers are more apt to pull their guns to shoot wounded or vicious animals — not people.

The best numbers in this province come from the commission reports, to whom both municipal and RCMP agencies in this province report their use of firearms. The 2017 report is typical: reflecting one fatality, six people injured, one in which shots were fired without injury, two accidental discharges, and 22 incidents of euthanizing injured animals.

While the deaths to date aren’t mounting — fortunately — another troubling trend is emerging. Within those reports and others that cross my desk, it’s clear officers are increasingly facing gun-toting suspects, and pulling their guns in response. And the what-ifs and close calls are on the rise.

Take, for example, Monday evening when Regina police took three firearms off a young Regina man. Officers were initially called because he was allegedly pointing one of those guns at passing vehicles. But what really drew my attention was this: “One male became agitated and kept trying to stand. The investigating officer gained control of the male and found two firearms, one of them loaded, strapped to his torso and a third firearm in a backpack.”

As one of my colleagues pointed out, it sounds like something straight out of a movie.

And it’s easy to see where it very easily could have had a different ending.

Unlike the fatality numbers, those sorts of scenarios are not rare anymore.

If anything, the statistics show restraint. But as more scenes like that play out, the risks for officers and suspects alike grow.

And even one tragedy is too many.