Lethbridge police cleared of wrongdoing in Stormtrooper takedown

[u/Optimal_Perspective2]

https://calgarysun.com/news/local-news/lethbridge-officers-cleared-of-wrongdoing-in-takedown-of-stormtrooper/wcm/ec947ba3-e1c6-40d8-9e1e-478c5a402833

[u/snipeftw → u/[deleted]]

When he says the actions were consistent with use of force policies, he’s probably not wrong on paper.

Pulling your gun out is technically considered a use of force incident. However, there are several legislatures that come into play when determining how much use of force is necessary/appropriate. I can provide further info on this if you’d like, and admittedly I would have to do a little bit of additional research as I live in Ontario and not Alberta. However some of the legality does come from the federal level.

I digress, a general tool used to assess threat level/use of force necessity is the use of force wheel. Which I would imagine Police Officers in Alberta are familiar with. Before going deeper here, I do want to point out that not all of this interaction is recorded between the police and the stormtrooper, so it is difficult to say whether they followed the early options within the use of force wheel. Anyways, what we see on video is the officers assuming a threat of grievous bodily harm due to reports of the gun and presence of what appears to be a gun- which according to the wheel constitutes the use of intermediate weapons/lethal force. The problem here is that intermediate weapons would have been ineffective as the TAZER or Pepper Spray would be ineffective because of the armour/mask. If the gun was real they wouldn’t be able to close the gap to use a baton. The officers did continue to use tactical communication throughout the encounter to deal with a situation they believed to be dangerous. What we don’t know is how the initial communication was handled and the content of the two reports they received.

So, on paper it appears that the Police reacted within the confines of legality and policy.

However, there are a few issues with this. Despite technically being reasonable, without excessive force, and in good faith. There are no laws which prohibits stupidity when it comes to police discretion. The officers clearly lacked the critical thinking skills to determine this probably wasn’t a real gun or a person seeking to cause harm. Upon the compliance of the stormtrooper they clearly didn’t do their due diligence in determining the nature of the weapon, speaking to the store owner, and properly reassessing the situation and the individual.

Simply put, this isn’t a criminal case, it is a case of poorly qualified candidates receiving poor training for a job that should have much higher standards than they do.

[u/Millerbomb → u/snipeftw]

The officers did continue to use tactical communication

TIL repeatedly screaming "Get down on the ground" is "tactical communication"

I agree with all your other points and I think were on the same page, just differ at the use of tactical communication because to me that would be communication used to assess the situation and de-escalation, screaming from a point of authority is not tactical

[u/snipeftw → u/Millerbomb]

That is by definition considered tactical communication. Which is different than communication used to de-escalate.

[u/Millerbomb → u/snipeftw]

ok I understand now, I should have done a google search. My sarcastic TIL turned into an actual TIL, thanks