Shot cop charged with assault, resisting arrest
Const. Nathan Parker, the Niagara Regional Police officer shot multiple times by one of his fellow officers last November, is facing charges of assault and resisting arrest.
Ontario Provincial Police charged Parker, 52, with assaulting a police officer, assault with intent to resist arrest and assault with a weapon in connection with the Nov. 29 incident that left him hospitalized with critical injuries.
Sgt. Shane Donovan was charged in March with attempted murder by the province’s Special Investigations Unit.
NRP Chief Bryan MacCulloch said the impact the incident and its ongoing aftermath on Niagara police officers has been “profound.” He said counselling and chaplain services have been made available for officers should they need them.
“Through it all, we have continued to see the support of the community we so proudly serve,” MacCulloch said during a Wednesday afternoon press briefing at NRP headquarters in Niagara Falls. “My members are dedicated, day in day out, to serving and protecting the entire community.”
He said the public trust held by the police service “cannot and is not taken for granted,” by NRP officers.
“This is not over. Not for our members. Not for the community
and not for the officers or their families.”
Parker was airlifted to a Hamilton hospital on Nov. 29 after an altercation involving two police officers.
Donovan and Parker were investigating a Nov. 12 impaired driving collision the area of Effingham Street and Roland Road. Police had returned to the scene for further investigation on Nov. 29 when an argument started between officers.
Parker was shot at least five times, according to police sources. The cause of the incident has not been disclosed.
After the shooting, the SIU invoked its mandate to investigate any incident of serious injury or death involving police in Ontario.
MacCulloch said once the SIU launched its investigation, he called upon the OPP to determine if there was any “criminal culpability” during the incident that fell outside the mandate of the SIU.
During Wednesday’s press conference, MacCulloch said the while the SIU has the power to lay criminal charges, its mandate limits its investigative powers.
An officer involved in an incident the SIU is investigating is called a “subject officer,” and the agency’s mandate is to determine if that officer committed a crime. It does not have the powers to expand its probes into possible criminal action by other people involved in an incident.
MacCulloch said it is not uncommon for a police service to run its own investigation parallel to an SIU probe.
Under normal circumstances, the NRP would have undertaken a criminal investigation. But because the incident involved two of its own officers, MacCulloch said he felt it was more appropriate to ask the OPP to investigate.
MacCulloch said he could not comment on the charges the OPP laid, including why Parker is facing a resisting arrest charge.
An OPP media release said investigators won’t be commenting any further on this matter as it is now before the courts.
Parker has a bail hearing scheduled for June 10 at the Robert S.K. Welch Courthouse in St. Catharines.
Donovan’s court case has begun but is still in the discovery phase.
Neither man is in custody.
The charges faced by Parker is the latest incident in a career marked by multiple disciplinary hearings, all but one of which involved violence.
In 2015, Parker was docked 120 hours’ pay after pleading guilty to discreditable conduct and unnecessary use of force against a prisoner under the Police Services Act.
In 2012, Parker was docked 60 hours of pay after pleading guilty to discreditable conduct after pursuing his own investigation into a commanding officer who had been cleared of wrongdoing from a previous incident.
Parker was found guilty of using unnecessary force in 2011 and docked 90 days’ pay for arresting a cyclist without cause in 2008.
And in 2007, Parker lost a week’s pay after he was found guilty in a disciplinary hearing for pepper-spraying a prisoner who was handcuffed and restrained in the back seat of a cruiser in 2005.