A Calgary Police officer has shot and killed a man, after responding to a break-and-enter at a former Telus building, now empty of tenants, near Memorial Drive and 2 Avenue SE.
Police said that officers were assaulted during a search of the building by a man wielding a weapon. The incident began at around 4:20 a.m. on Feb. 14.
“Due to the rapidly changing dynamics of this confrontation, one officer discharged their Service weapon,” wrote the service in a statement provided to the media.
The Alberta Serious Incident Response Team is now investigating.
Calgary police Chief Mark Neufeld said that officers had to clear out the building manually when they encountered a person inside the building. He said they had the person contained for a certain amount of time when an altercation happened. That’s when the person was shot.
Chief Neufeld said that a couple of officers on the scene who had been medics delivered medical care. EMS later pronounced the man dead at the scene.
There have been three shootings by police in the Calgary area in the past week. Neufeld said that these are impactful events and there has been a cluster of them, but it’s not indicative of regular police interactions. He said there are hundreds of thousands of interactions where nothing happens.
“At the end of the day, they represent, thankfully, a very small fraction of interactions between police and the public,” Chief Neufeld said.
He added that they’re always looking at better ways to intervene in these situations.
“At the end of the day, sometimes police are putting into an impossible situation where somebody in crisis is in a place where the likelihood of achieving a peaceful outcome is almost, you know, almost impossible,” he said.
