Use of force rise linked to police chases

A 91 per cent increase in Saskatoon police use-of-force incidents can be traced to a near-tripling of police vehicle pursuits, which are classified as force, a report says.

Statistics presented at Thursday’s board of police commissioners meeting show the use of force during initial contact with a suspect jumped from 92 incidents in 2015 to 176 in 2016.

Almost all of that increase can be linked to a spike in vehicle pursuits — 149 were logged in 2016 compared to 54 in 2015. However, the four other categories for use of force all show increases in 2016 over both 2014 and 2015.

These categories include searching/handcuffing, incarcerating, placing under arrest and transporting.

“They’re really volatile situations,” Insp. Patrick Nogier, the report’s author, told the board meeting.

Overall, use-of-force incidents rose from 216 in 2015 to 381 in 2016. When vehicle pursuits are removed, the situations involving force jumped from 162 to 232.

Saskatoon police fired their guns eight times in 2016, and five times in the two previous years combined. Canine units were directly used 36 times last year, up from 27 and 24 times in the two previous years.

Taser use dropped from 17 times in 2015 to 11 in 2016.

Fourteen police officers were injured during confrontations in 2016, while 101 suspects were injured. In the two previous years combined, 111 suspects were injured.

One suspect died after being shot by police in 2016, the first time a suspect has died during a police interaction in three years.