Officer who shot Norway House man will not face charges

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This article was published 16/09/2015 (3907 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The chief of Norway House Cree Nation is calling on the RCMP to review a “bad judgment call” after an independent investigation determined no criminal charges will be laid against the officer who shot and injured an unarmed man during a youth baseball tournament last summer.

An independent investigation by the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team and three-tiered review by the Manitoba Prosecution Service found police had reason to believe Evan Cromarty, then 20 years old, was carrying a gun. A conviction would be unlikely if charges were to be laid against the police officer involved, the investigation found.

Chief Ron Evans said he accepts the investigation’s findings, which were presented to him in person Tuesday. But he said the shooting deeply affected the community and he will meet with RCMP to discuss more effective training options.

“We still feel it was a bad judgment call, but that’s an internal issue with the RCMP,” Evans said.

“If you have information that someone might be having a gun, is that the place to try and arrest him, when you know it’s a community where… there’s no place to run. Why endanger other people, when there was no need for it? That’s the way we view it.” 

On July 20, 2014, RCMP were trying to arrest Cromarty for allegedly uttering threats. Earlier that day, Cromarty was accused of assaulting another man with a baseball bat, breaking his arm, police said, but the victim didn’t want to pursue criminal charges. Also that afternoon, a woman reported Cromarty allegedly threatened her when he showed up at her home uninvited. The complainant told police Cromarty “always” carries firearms, and he was known to police for separate incidents involving firearms, ASIRT’s report found.

All criminal charges against Cromarty were later dropped.

Cromarty ran from arresting officers, onto a baseball diamond where young people, including Cromarty’s own brother, were playing. He was shot in the shoulder after he ignored police commands and reached into his pocket, the report says.

It turned out he had only a cell phone and wallet in his pocket.

ASIRT executive director Susan Hughson said the officer was facing away from the baseball players at the time of the shooting and had reason to believe Cromarty had a gun. 

“If the affected person had, however, produced a firearm and had fired in the direction of the officer, that would have also been in the direction of people that were on the field and other bystanders,” she said.

The findings of the 14-month-long review were presented to Norway House Cree Nation representatives in person Tuesday.

Glen Lewis, Manitoba Justice’s executive director of policing and public safety said the review was one of the most thorough he’s seen in the past 25 years.

“This was clearly a traumatic event witnessed by children, youth and adults from two communities – Norway House Cree Nation and Cross Lake, the youth of which were involved in a baseball tournament. It was also traumatic for the officer and the witness officers involved in this incident,” Lewis said.

Now that Manitoba has established its own Independent Investigations Unit to review cases of people hurt or killed by on-duty police officers, future reviews may be faster to complete, Lewis said, noting this review was one of the largest ASIRT has ever done.

Norway House is a community of 8,000 about 800 kilometres north of Winnipeg.

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca