Police watchdog absolves Calgary cops of killing a Black man in distress
Latjor Tuel was behaving erratically and allegedly committed a random assault, but ASIRT said calling a mental health worker to the scene was out of the question.
Alberta’s police watchdog has released its findings into the Calgary Police Service’s February 2022 killing of Lajtor Tuel, a South Sudanese refugee in mental distress who had allegedly assaulted someone with a metal walking stick.
In a June 14 report, the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team (ASIRT) described Tuel’s killing as “proportionate, necessary, and reasonable,” arguing that the cops’ lives would have been in danger had they not made the decision to fire live rounds at Tuel.
A former child soldier who was conscripted at age 11, Tuel’s family said he suffered from unaddressed post-traumatic stress, raising important questions about the lack of supports available to refugees, which are understandably beyond the scope of ASIRT’s investigation.
The choice police made not to engage with a mental health worker before setting in motion a chain of events that led to Tuel’s death, however, is highly germane.
Tuel’s name isn’t mentioned once in the report, which refers to him throughout as “AP,” meaning affected person.
According to ASIRT, three members of the public called police at 3:39 p.m. on Feb. 19, 2022, to inform them that Tuel was behaving erratically while carrying a metal walking stick and brandishing a knife near a bus station in southeast Calgary. Two of the witnesses reported that he had struck a pedestrian with the stick.
Calgary Police Service (CPS) officers began arriving at 3:46 p.m. The first officer on the scene spoke to Tuel while two other officers joined him, one with a gun and the other with a taser in hand.
For about 16 minutes, the report notes, the officers on scene attempted to convince Tuel to drop the knife. At no point was a mental health professional called into the scene to attempt deescalation.
During this time, more officers arrived, including two armed with ARWEN ACE-T less-lethal baton launchers.
At 3:57 p.m., a friend of Tuel’s arrived on the scene and attempted to deescalate. He was instructed to stand next to the officer who had their firearm drawn.
Tuel’s friend spoke to him briefly in an unspecified “non-English language,” according to the report. The friend informed the officers that Tuel had gotten into a fight with his roommate the previous day and was now unhoused.
A minute later, a K9 Unit arrived on the scene.
Somewhat buried on page 45 of the 54-page report is the first officer who arrived—the one who spoke to Tuel without pulling out a weapon—telling ASIRT that, in the report’s words, “the situation seemed to be de-escalating until the [police service dog] arrived.”
At the Feb. 23 Calgary Police Commission meeting, commissioner Heather Campbell, who is Black, noted that police dogs have been used “as a tool for racial terror and conquest” for hundreds of years. She asked the CPS chief whether, given this history, it was “appropriate to use a canine unit who was trained to attack as a deescalation tool with a member of a racialized community.”
Chief Mark Neufeld declined to respond to her question, citing the then-ongoing ASIRT investigation.
According to Tom Engel, an Edmonton-based criminal defence lawyer who’s representing Tuel’s family, dogs were weaponized in the Sudanese Civil War that Tuel survived.
“You can imagine how that might affect him if he was in a bad mental state and then there's a big dog barking,” said Engel.
While the police would have had no way to know this detail about Tuel, the canine officer’s decision to initially keep the dog behind a police car and out of Tuel’s view suggests a tacit recognition that the canine represents at least a potential escalation.
Around the time the canine arrived, Tuel’s friend asked if he could approach Tuel and take the knife from him. The cops said no, but that he was free to continue speaking to Tuel.
Tuel, who had been seated while talking to the cops, stood up at 4:01 p.m. When he was told to remain seated, he took a knee, with the stick in one hand and the knife in the other.
He began shuffling towards the mass of officers, one of whom shot him with an ARWEN projectile, about a minute later. After he got back up, banging his stick on the ground, the same officer fired another less-lethal round at him.
This didn’t help matters; Tuel began running towards a cop car and an officer tased him. Tuel then hit the service dog with the stick and was tased again.
Tuel stabbed the police dog in the neck while “at the same time” a cop fired the first lethal round at him, the report says.
One second later, they shot Tuel again. He stabbed the dog, which had bit onto his sleeve, four more times, which resulted in the dog releasing him from its grip before Tuel got tased again.
Tuel got up quickly with the knife and stick still in hand and approached another officer, who shot him three times.
By 4:26 p.m., less than an hour after police were called to the scene, Tuel was pronounced dead by EMS.
Engel questions why the canine officer didn’t release the dog from its leash once Tuel approached, a decision which he says put the dog and Tuel at greater risk.
“The theory of the family and my theory is that they did not send the dog to apprehend Latjor because they didn't want to risk the safety of the dog,” he said.
“The dog’s safety trumped the safety of other human beings.”
Engel noted the irony of this apparent effort to keep the dog safe.
“[The K9 officer] didn't use the dog as the weapon that could have apprehended Latjor with minimal or no harm to him, and so by their own tactics the dog wound up grievously injured and Latjor wound up dead,” said Engel.
ASIRT concluded that the use of less potentially lethal options—the ARWEN, taser and presence of a canine—combined with earlier deescalatory efforts, demonstrate that the cops did their due diligence before resorting to lethal force.
The report says that Tuel “presented a risk to the officers,” as he was armed “and had demonstrated erratic, assaultive behaviour with pedestrians,” adding:
While a knife may appear to be outmatched by the officers’ firearms, an individual can stab an officer if they get close enough. Even when the AP was at his initial location, he could run to one of the officers within a few seconds…
Once the AP started to move toward the officers, however, the risk was increased. At this point, the AP was in a partial kneeling position and breathing heavily. While this change could mean many things, it was reasonable to interpret this as the AP getting angry. Given the risk already presented by the AP, anger was a relevant factor.
The report calls Tuel’s stabbing of the dog “an extremely violent act,” which “was an act against the police, and not an act of self-defence.”
Attacking a police dog doesn’t in itself justify police use of force, the report notes, adding the somewhat confusing caveat that “it provided significant information about the [Tuel’s] risk” that could be used to justify the use of force.
“The deliberate pursuing and attacking of the [canine] violently demonstrated that [Tuel] was not acknowledging police authority. This raised the risk he presented to officers substantially,” the report says.
ASIRT’s conclusions echo CPS chief Mark Neufeld’s comments to the Feb. 23, 2022, police commission meeting, in which he portrayed the officers on scene as victims of a “dynamic” situation.
“Front-line police officers get the cards they’re dealt, and sometimes their hand is less than ideal,” said Neufeld.
At the same meeting, Neufeld acknowledged the CPS has no standard deescalation policy outside their use of force standards.
Engel said ASIRT’s investigation failed to examine the efficacy of the police tactics, particularly around the K9 Unit’s deployment, because ASIRT is narrowly focused on whether police engaged in criminal behaviour.
He said a fatal tactical miscalculation wouldn’t reach the bar of criminal negligence causing death, but could be a Police Act violation. The problem is Police Act violations are investigated internally.
“They turn their file over to the Calgary Police Service and then Chief Neufeld would decide what to do about it, which given his track record would be nothing,” said Engel.
The Tuel family is in the process of filing a lawsuit against the CPS, which will allow these tactical considerations to be addressed in court, Engel added.
Why didn’t police efforts at deescalation involve mental health professionals, given the fact that Tuel was clearly in distress?
The report addresses this question on page 52 of 54, as if it were an afterthought.
While acknowledging that the deployment of mental health professionals “is an important part of modern police,” ASIRT concluded that doing so in this instance would have put the “safety of mental health professionals” at risk.
“This was not a safe situation for a mental health professional to engage the AP and the fact that this was not attempted does not affect the reasonableness of police action that day,” the report concluded.
In other words, the police recognizes the importance of having mental health-care workers deescalate potentially dangerous situations, just not in this case.
One can’t help but wonder whether the police would have been more inclined to involve mental health workers in a case involving a white person, and whether they would characterize that person as “angry” more than once in their report.
But even if ASIRT had recommended charges against the officers who shot Tuel, the likelihood of the Alberta Crown Prosecution Service pursuing charges is slim, considering their recent track record.
This piece has been updated to clarify that AP means affected person, not arrested person.