Vancouver cop who fired bean-bag shotgun at face-down suspect cleared of wrongdoing

IIO investigators are seen in Vancouver, B.C., in a file image.

An officer who injured a stabbing suspect by firing a bean-bag shotgun at him during a tense incident on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside last year has been cleared of wrongdoing by a B.C. police watchdog.

The incident unfolded in the early morning hours of June 7, as police were responding to multiple reports of a stabbing at a hotel on East Hastings Street.

In a report released Friday, the Independent Investigations Office said police found a victim bleeding at the scene before encountering a “large man” who had a knife in his hand and “refused to drop it.”

Surveillance video showed the man had begun advancing towards police when officers began firing less-lethal weapons at him, including a Taser.

Another officer fired multiple rounds of a bean-bag shotgun at him—including once after the suspect had laid onto his stomach.

That last shot came after officers had repeatedly told the man to “drop the knife” for approximately 13 seconds, and “within a second” of him letting go of the weapon, according to the watchdog’s findings.

The bean-bag round struck the suspect in his right palm. His hand was injured badly enough to require reconstructive surgery, the IIO said, while finding the use of force justified.

“It was both necessary and reasonable, in those circumstances, for the police to use the bean-bag shotgun to get (the man) to drop the knife,” wrote Jessica Berglund, the IIO’s chief civilian director, in the report.

“(He) remained a threat to the officers and the public until he was securely in handcuffs.”

Berglund said she found no reasonable grounds to believe the officer committed an offence, and would not be referring the incident to prosecutors for consideration of charges.