(JENNIFER STAHN / iNFOnews.ca)

A Kamloops RCMP officer is off the hook with B.C.'s police watch dog after a suspect was injured during a foot chase a year ago.

According to a decision from the Independent Investigations Office of B.C., a suspect broke his heel after he jumped off of a four-foot retaining wall trying to avoid arrest in the early morning hours of April 21, 2019.

Kamloops RCMP responded to a report of a man who had broken into an RV on the west side of Kamloops, the decision said. A female officer had spotted him walking up a hill but lost sight of him. A short while later she heard from a supervisor that a police services dog had tracked him to the back of Canadian Tire.

When the officer arrived behind the Canadian Tire, she says the man, who matched the description and photograph, was “red-faced, sweaty, breathing heavily and hiding.”

The officer said the man didn’t notice her at first so she snuck up quietly and pointed a firearm at him while she was "quite close." As the man hid behind a stack of wooden pallets she told him he was under arrest, to which he didn’t respond. She claimed the man was reaching down to his socks for what she believed could have been a weapon.

The officer said the suspect had been chased by a police services dog for about 30 minutes prior to his arrival at Canadian Tire. She believed the man could have been capable of overpowering her in a hand-to-hand fight and didn’t want to risk getting to close and allowing him access to any of her weapons or vehicle. She continued to point her gun and order the man to get on the ground, but the suspect fled on foot instead.

The suspect jumped off of a nearby four foot retaining wall and ran for another 20 feet before falling to the ground in pain. The officer had re-holstered her gun and chased after him until she reached him on the ground. She pointed the firearm at him again until she realized he was in considerable pain, and was then assisted by another officer to handcuff the suspect.

Chief civilian director Ronald J. MacDonald determined the officer did not cause the man's injury, but there were other errors she made during the incident.

In her original statement, the officer said that she saw the man had been flagged as violent on the police database. She gave her statement from memory three months after the incident, and her claim turned out to not be true.

MacDonald points out in his decision the officer did not consider other options she could have followed during the incident to avoid the potential use of lethal force, such as waiting in her car for backup. He notes how her decisions contrast the fact that the crime was a property crime and not a violent crime.

The decision states the officer’s methods didn’t reduce the risk level of the incident and she pursued the suspect although she thought it could be dangerous for herself, and immediately pointed a firearm rather than staying a safe distance away.

The officer is relatively inexperienced, MacDonald said, and was acting out of a sense of duty in a fluid and quickly changing situation. For those reasons it was determined she was not acting unreasonably and her actions were not a criminal act.

Click here to read the full decision.

— This story was updated at 10:32 a.m. on Friday, April 17 to clarify wording about the officer's errors.

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