Calgary police Chief Mark Neufeld said that the Alberta RCMP will be conducting an independent review into events leading up to mistaken charges against two Calgary teens.

Chief Neufeld provided the update at the Wednesday meeting of the Calgary Police Commission.

On Nov. 13, Calgary police responded to a shooting in the parking lot of Trans Canada Centre in Marlborough Park. One person was dead, later identified as Rami Hajj Ali, 23, and two other people were reported to have suffered gunshot wounds.

 A day later, police announced charges against two teen brother, 14 and 18. The 14-year-old was charged with first-degree murder and two counts of attempted murder, and the 18-year-old was charged with one count of accessory to murder after the fact.

By November 21, police said that they’d reversed course and stayed charges against the two teens.  Chief Neufeld said he apologized “unreservedly” for the actions of CPS, while defending the investigative work that had led them to that point.

Chief Neufeld said at the time CPS would commit to an independent review of circumstances leading up to laying the charges against the teens.

He confirmed at the meeting that the RCMP would be doing the investigation.  It was in response to a public question from Farah Ali, executive director of the Calgary African Collective.

Ali was concerned with potential wrongful convictions based on officers’ initial compelling evidence.

“As a parent of 14 and 15-year-old Black boys, I’m concerned by the safety, the fear particularly … when thinking about the possibility of them ending up in the wrong place without evidence to prove their innocence, potentially leading to unjust charge,” Ali said.

Chief Neufeld said he believed all aspects of the arrests and charges would be investigated.

“Fortunately, it’s a rare situation. But what we will do or what we’ve committed to doing was an independent review of the circumstances that led up to the formulation of the grounds to lay the charges and the laying of the charges,” he said.  

“As part of that also, we’ll look at the issue of whether or not there was any evidence or concerns relative to racial profiling involved in this situation as well.”

Complicated situation, Chief Neufeld said

Chief Neufeld said this wasn’t a case of investigators just profiling people walking down the street who were unconnected to the shooting.

“It is a complicated situation,” he said.

“There was much, much more to it than that that actually led investigators to believe and formulate reasonable and proper grounds to believe that the two young men were responsible.

“This part of the system. There’s the ability to get charge approval from the Crown and present the evidence that you have, and the evidence is available at the time obviously led the Crown to believe also that the two young men were responsible for the crime.”

Even with the rash of gun violence in Calgary, and a heightened desire for public safety, Chief Neufeld said he doesn’t believe there was a rush to judgment.

“I will say separate from that, that when you have a situation where there’s been a brazen shooting like that… when that happens in a community, that’s dangerous. So, if you have reasonable probable grounds to lay charges, I would suggest that it’s prudent to do so in order to end that,” he said.

“When I watched that video, I would say that the person who pulled the trigger, that was a very special kind of person and there’s a very small number of people in our community, a community of 1.4 million, who would pull the trigger like that. I would say that we would need to take those people off the street as quickly as we possibly can when we have evidence to do it.”

Chief Neufeld said they wouldn’t be taking any immediate steps internally as they conduct ongoing investigations into recent gun violence.  Instead, he said they would await the results of the review.

The Chief said they would be getting together with RCMP officials to nail down terms of reference for the review. From there, the RCMP would examine the chain of events that led to investigators believing they had reasonable and probable grounds to lay charges.

No further charges have been laid in that shooting.