Ontario’s police watchdog has cleared two Ottawa police officers of criminal wrongdoing for shooting a man outside the Rideau Centre in the spring. A 24-year-old man was treated for multiple injuries following the shooting on Rideau Street on April 29 at 2:05 p.m. In its report, the Special Investigations Unit (SIU) said the man was touring the area around Parliament Hill and the National War Memorial the day after the federal election and was carrying a placard protesting the results of the vote. According to the SIU, the handwritten placard said, “Save Le Canada from Rigged Elections. Pierre-Bruce Carleton Re-Election Now!!” The SIU says a schoolteacher on a field trip to Ottawa observed the man, “noticed a gun in his front left pants pocket” and reported the matter to military police at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Military police called the Ottawa Police Service and provided a description of the man and the direction he was travelling. According to the SIU, security personnel at the Rideau Centre reported there was a person matching the man’s description in the mall. The SIU says the officers located the man sitting on a windowsill outside the mall and one of the officers grabbed his left arm, but he resisted. The SIU says the man then grabbed an air pistol from his pocket, followed by an officer yelling out “gun” and a total of seven shots being fired. “The (man) was transported to hospital and treated for multiple gunshot injuries, including wounds to his upper arm, lower back, left hip and right buttock,” the SIU said. In a decision released Monday, SIU director Joseph Martino said there are “no reasonable grounds to believe that either subject official committed a criminal offence in connection with the (man’s) injuries.” “I am satisfied that Subject Officer #2 and Subject Officer #1 fired their weapons believing it was necessary to protect themselves and others from a reasonably apprehended attack at the hands of the (man),” Martino wrote. “Given their proximity to the (man) at the time – not more than several metres away – each officer would have been rightfully concerned that their lives and the lives of others in the vicinity were in immediate danger. In the circumstances, a resort to gunfire made sense at it was the only force available to the officers with the stopping power required of the moment.” The SIU is an independent government agency that investigates the conduct of police that may have resulted in death, serious injury, sexual assault and/or the discharge of a firearm at a person.
