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Police may have overreacted with de Groot shooting, but dangers faced undervalued

Police may have overreacted with de Groot shooting, but dangers faced undervalued

It’s likely to be months before we know what happened when members of an RCMP emergency response team (ERT) confronted Peter de Groot in a remote cabin near Slocan, B.C., and shot him dead on Thanksgiving Day.

A lawyer acting for de Groot’s family said there are striking parallels between his death and that of another mentally troubled man in northern B.C. two years ago, when the Mounties were accused of over-reacting.

But a psychologist experienced in assessing violent threats said Monday-morning quarterbacks often underestimate the danger police face when confronting armed suspects, especially if they’re mentally unstable.

What we do know is de Groot died in that encounter, four days after fleeing into the bush following an earlier encounter with local Mounties investigating a low-level assault allegation.

De Groot’s family says the RCMP over-reacted, did not take health problems, including the residual effects of a brain aneurysm, into account and rebuffed the family’s offer to help bring him in.

Danna de Groot has accused the RCMP of executing her brother.

For Vancouver lawyer Cameron Ward, the case has disturbing echoes from September 2012 when another ERT team shot and killed Gregory Matters, an army veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, near Prince George, B.C.

His family, too, has challenged the Mounties’ interaction with Greg Matters during a standoff on his rural property outside the northern B.C. city. Matters was shot in the back by an ERT member after reportedly advancing with an ax on another Mountie who’d fallen down.

Like Matters, de Groot had largely withdrawn from society, living reclusively with his animals on his property near Slocan, in southeastern B.C.

Ward said in both cases, the RCMP responded to what family saw as relatively minor incidents involving someone who was emotionally or psychologically disturbed with heavy force. With Matters, Ward said it involved an altercation with his brother and a minor motor vehicle accident.

“The RCMP’s response to the situation was to deploy up to 45 members, a helicopter, an ERT team clad in their camouflage gear and carrying M-16s,” Ward said in an interview with Yahoo Canada News.

Ward, who often works with clients in cases alleging police wrongdoing, said police also ignored relatives’ pleas to let them help defuse the situations that ended in the both suspects’ deaths.

“In both cases the RCMP failed to take the sensible step of having a trusted family member or professional assist them in resolving the situation peacefully and safely.”

An investigation by then-new Independent Investigations Office (IIO) of B.C. cleared the Mounties of criminal wrongdoing last year in Matters’ shooting death. But a subsequent inquest ended last January with nine recommendations for dealing with mentally disturbed suspects and the use of less-lethal force by ERT members, as well as employing body cameras in these situations.

[ Related: Jury makes 9 recommendations in Greg Matters inquest ]

The original IIO investigation is also under review. It was revised last May to take into account evidence submitted at the inquest that chief investigator Richard Rosenthal did not have, but he did not change his original conclusions.

Rosenthal has since also ordered an administrative review of how his office handled the file by Vancouver lawyer Mark Jette that’s expected by the end of this month.

Matters’ mother, who lived on the property with her son and was detained and handcuffed when she tried to reach him hours before he was shot, is suing the RCMP. Ward is not her lawyer, but he helped the family prepare a statement of claim.

De Groot’s sister drove 10 hours to Slocan to try and plead with the Mounties to allow her to talk to her brother once they located him.

“Of course, when they located where he was they didn’t do any of that and they shot him,” Ward said. “It’s too early to say whether there was any justification for the shooting. It’s under investigation; time will tell, but there are parallels without a doubt in my view.”

Psychologist Steve Hart agrees there are parallels in the two cases but warned against condemning the Mounties’ responses.

“Some people, including some family members, maybe underestimate how difficult and dangerous these situations are for police,” Hart, a professor at Simon Fraser University, told Yahoo Canada News.

Hart, a specialist in assessing and managing violence threats for Vancouver-based ProActive ReSolutions, said police are often accused of over-reacting when a suspect ends up dead in situations like the Matters and de Groot cases. That doesn’t necessarily mean they did anything wrong.

Hart pointed to Matters’ and de Groot’s previous run-ins with the law and allegations by some that de Groot might be violent against the police or others.

[ Related: Sammy Yatim shooting: Const. James Forcillo to face added charge ]

The RCMP allege de Groot shot at them when they first went to his property, then fled. Hart said some have disputed their account, but that doesn’t diminish the risk police believed was there.

“In a situation like that, the family saying this is just a poor guy with mental illness actually doesn’t decrease the risk of the situation. If anything it increases the risk of violence in that situation.”

In both cases, the Mounties spurned outside intervention. And quite rightly, Hart said. The internationally accepted protocol is for a trained police negotiator to be the only channel of communication.

“There’s been situations where that’s gone horribly wrong because the family member ends up making the person more agitated or angry or upset.”

Hart said police are liable if a relative brought into the situation comes to harm and equipping officers with body cameras likely wouldn’t have changed the outcome. But video could add information for any subsequent investigation,

Footage shot during the Taser-related death of agitated Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski in 2007 at Vancouver International Airport was crucial to unravelling the RCMP’s misrepresentation of what happened.

But Hart noted cellphone video of Vancouver police shooting Paul Boyd, who suffered from bipolar disorder, in the street as he crawled towards them in 2007 did not show him attacking officers with a chain and padlock just beforehand. Prosecutors who cleared the officers said the video did not tell the whole story, including Boyd being shot several times, dropping the chain but still advancing on police.

“Video can give you a perspective that looks objective but actually ignores the psychological context of what was going on,” said Hart.