Chief sees meth link in shootings

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 25/09/2017 (2945 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A recent spate of police-involved shootings in Winnipeg — including one Saturday in the Maples that left a 33-year-old man dead — likely have to do with methamphetamine and the “wild behaviour” it can lead to, says police Chief Danny Smyth.

“We’re dealing with the opioid crisis and that is still a crisis, but meth is a whole different thing, and it’s creating some behaviours and dangers out there that we saw first-hand this weekend,” Smyth said Monday following a press conference on human trafficking at RCMP headquarters in Winnipeg.

He said he didn’t know the details of the incident that occurred Saturday just after 4 p.m. in the 100 block of Madrigal Close.

“Because it was an officer-involved shooting, it’s the Independent Investigation Unit that will do the primary investigation, but the distress call that we responded to — it certainly sounded like… drugs were involved,” Smyth said.

An officer with the tactical support unit was stabbed in the upper arm during the incident. The 35-year-old policeman was taken to hospital in unstable condition. On Saturday night, police said it wasn’t clear if his injury was a “life-altering” one.

That wasn’t the case, Smyth told reporters Monday.

“I’m happy to say that our officer is out of the hospital now and is recovering at home so I expect that he will make a full recovery,” Smyth said. “I’m grateful for that.”

It was the fourth incident in as many months in which police have fired their guns — and the second time someone has died.

On Sept. 12, police shot and killed 23-year-old Adrian Laquette in the 400 block of Alfred Avenue following a string of violent incidents that included attacking a woman, stealing a vehicle and robbing a business. One witness told the Free Press they saw Laquette carrying a gun with a long barrel as he terrorized the neighbourhood.

On July 24, police shot a 26-year-old man on Archibald Street following a high-speed pursuit. The incident began when officers received a call that a man had been seen with a gun on La Verendrye Street. Police chased and blocked a vehicle on Archibald Street. The man was shot by police after he left the vehicle. He was transported to hospital in critical condition but later upgraded to stable.

On May 1 at lunchtime in downtown Winnipeg, police shot a 25-year-old man in the skywalk of 266 Graham Ave. He was transported to hospital in unstable condition but his condition was later upgraded to stable. The incident occurred outside the office of an optometrist who told the Free Press he saw a man waving a long pole with a large pair of scissors taped to its end while a Winnipeg police officer with his sidearm drawn and two police trainees demanded he drop the weapon. “The guy was undone and completely irrational,” Dr. Robert Lecker said at the time.

While there’s been no official report linking the police-involved shootings to drug use, the threatening, criminal, violent and at times bizarre behaviour looks to be some of the “residual” effects of methamphetamine, Smyth said Monday.

“With some of the events we’ve been involved in, the people have clearly been under the influence of drugs like meth that just create such wild behaviour and our officers are having to deal with that,” he said. “It’s not just our officers — certainly the community as a whole is facing this.”

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca