Alberta Mounties involved in shootings amid national debate over use of lethal force

Canadians don't like to think their police are as trigger-happy as their American counterparts but a recent spate of police-involved shootings might trouble many.

Just days after Toronto was stunned by the shooting death of teenager Sammy Yatim on an empty streetcar by a Metro police officer, RCMP in Alberta were involved in two shootings, one of them deadly, as well as a fatal Taser incident, over the space of three days.

According to The Canadian Press, a Mountie stopped a suspected impaired driver near Ma Me O Beach, south of Edmonton on Saturday night. RCMP said the officer apparently got into a fight with two men in the car and shot both, killing one and wounding the other.

The National Post reported that relatives identified the dead man as Lance Cutarm and the wounded man as his older brother Larron, both of Pigeon Lake, Alta.

Another man died Sunday after being stunned with a Taser during his arrest in Leduc, south of Edmonton, on Friday, CP reported.

And on Thursday night, RCMP shot and wounded Curtis Hallock, onetime star of the reality show "Mantracker", in a confrontation after a vehicle was pulled over in Grande Cache, Alta., in the Rockies about 450 kilometres northwest of Edmonton.

[ Related: 'Mantracker' sidekick in Alberta hospital after police shooting ]

A relative told CBC News on Friday that Hallock was hit in the arm and leg. Police said he fled but was captured soon after and taken to hospital.

The rash of incidents means a lot more work for the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team, which investigates all cases of police-involved deaths or serious injuries.

Former Crown prosecutor Clifton Purvis, who heads the arms-length agency, told a news conference Sunday these incidents should not undermine public confidence in the police, specifically in regards to traffic stops.

“I don’t think generally speaking the public needs to be concerned about being stopped,” Purvis said, according to CP.

“In fact, I think probably in Canada we’re one of the very few jurisdictions worldwide where your first reaction when you get pulled over by police isn’t fear, it’s ‘Oh gosh, I got a ticket.’ ”

According to Purvis, Saturday's shooting was sparked when a lone Mountie pulled over a car carrying five men and became involved in an altercation when he tried to arrest the driver for being impaired.

The Post reported Monday that Larry Cutarm, the father of the two brothers, told Global News the officer Tasered his son Lance even after he had died.

“My son was going this way and one of them cops shot him,” said the elder Cutarm, who didn’t deny that they had been drinking.

The man who died Sunday was Tasered after police tried to arrest him for a string of offences, including assault, stealing cars and hit-and-runs. He went into medical distress after being handcuffed, RCMP said.

Purvis said his team was not linking use of the stun gun with the death.

“There will be an autopsy conducted on that male later this week, and it’s hoped the results of the autopsy will confirm the cause of death,” Purvis said.

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There are few details of the circumstances surrounding Hallock's shooting. His sister, Priscilla Bowen, told CTV News on the weekend the family was terrified after the initial report he'd been shot by police.

"Nobody knew where he was hit or how bad he was hit," she said. "I was shocked and very scared and the whole family was really worried for him."

The Alberta shootings took place in the midst of a national debate about police use of lethal force in the wake of Sammy Yatim's death. The Syrian-born 18-year-old was killed on July 27 after apparently refusing police commands to drop a knife he was holding.

Ontario's Special Investigations Unit is investigating but many editorials and opinion pieces have questioned why the officer needed to shoot Yatim. While agitated and holding a knife, he was corralled on the empty streetcar with police outside.

"Police culture puts a premium on responding to a crisis with decisive and direct intervention," the Toronto Star editorialized last week. "But does that make it hard for officers to disengage, even when they obviously should? And if so, how is this culture to be fixed?

[ Related: What comes next in Sammy Yatim shooting investigation? ]

In an editorial Saturday, the Globe and Mail argued that the standard practice of teaching officers to respond to any perceived threat with lethal force needs to change, especially when it comes to the mentally unstable.

"As the Sammy Yatim case in Toronto and similar ones in other Canadians cities have demonstrated, the public is not convinced that lethal force is justifiable solely on the subjective ground that an officer feels threatened," the Globe argued.

"Police schools need to teach officers that – except in the most obvious and extreme cases – their primary role in confronting a citizen who may be mentally ill is to delay and de-escalate, not to confront aggressively and resolve quickly."

The editorial acknowledges that may not be applicable always. It wouldn't, for instance, help much when a lone officer confronts a carload of drunken, belligerent men on a lonely highway. Nor does it necessarily make sense to charge an officers criminally for using their training.

"Officers’ decisions are made far away from the comfortable armchair of afterthought," the Globe pointed out.

But studies have shown officers who're trained on how to deal with the mentally ill are more likely to try to de-escalate a confrontation.

"Training can save lives, but the current levels of training in Canadian police forces remain inadequate and poorly enforced. There is no excuse for this."