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Brutality CanadaPolice Brutality O Canada |
Chris Purdy, Journal Staff Writer
The Edmonton Journal
Thursday 17 May 2001
Anyone criticizing police for fatally shooting a drunk, knife-wielding man in his south side apartment should know all the facts before they lay blame, says police chief Bob Wasylyshen.
"Would they expect the officer not to use force and allow himself to be killed?" he said Wednesday.
"Certainly when an officer is threatened with a knife and their lives are put in danger ... then they would be authorized to use deadly force if they need to do that to save their own lives or someone else's."
He said details of Wednesday's early morning shooting are still under review.
The four tactical squad officers who burst into the apartment were armed with pepper spray and at least one taser gun. They didn't use the spray and it still has not been determined if they used a taser before shooting the man.
John Peter Pavic, 31, died on the floor of his suite at 11453 40th Avenue about midnight.
A neighbour said the man moved from Ontario about nine months ago. He has an estranged father in Windsor and no other family.
It was Pavic who first called police to the building about 8:30 p.m., saying he had been assaulted by a neighbour at a drinking party in another suite.
But when officers arrived, Pavic was belligerent and refused to talk, said police spokesperson Annette Bidniak.
About 10 p.m., an area resident spotted Pavic out on the building's front lawn, waving a knife and yelling threats at a neighbour.
The officers returned but Pavic had locked himself alone in his suite and refused to come out.
Over the next two hours, police secured the building and obtained a search warrant for the suite.
The four tactical officers entered the suite about midnight and found Pavlic armed with a large butcher knife.
"The confrontation escalated," said Bidniak. "At one point the man lunged at one of the tactical officers and cut him on the hand at which point he fired on the man and the man died in his suite."
She said it appears the officer who received a minor cut is the one who shot Pavic. The 33-year-old officer has 12 years of service with the force.
Bidniak said details of the incident are still being reviewed, including the number of times Pavic was shot.
She said "several" shots were fired at the man. Two bullets went through the building's exterior wall.
An autopsy performed Wednesday showed Pavic died from a shot to the chest.
Pavic called The Journal about 45 minutes before he was fatally shot.
He sounded agitated, saying that he was trying to sleep but police were outside his residence to arrest him. He declined to say why they wanted to arrest him, although he said he had phoned them previously.
"I'm not going to let them in because they don't have a search warrant," he said.
Pavic said he had earlier called a lawyer and he wanted the media present to cover the incident.
"I'm a pretty good guy," he said. "I didn't do nothing wrong. It's the cops, they've got guns."
He said police had phoned him three times but he had hung up on them.
A neighbour, who declined to give his name, said "there was no reason for anybody to die."
Sticking his head out of a basement suite in the rundown six-plex, the man said he often shared beers with Pavic.
A rusty shopping cart with empty beer cans was parked behind the building, a former day care now decorated with graffiti and sheets hanging in the windows.
The neighbour said police should have used pepper spray or a taser to control the situation.
"They were too aggressive," he said. "They came on too strong."
Stephen Jenuth, a Calgary lawyer and president of the Alberta Civil Liberties Association, said the best option would have been for officers to wait until Pavic was calm enough to come out on his own.
"It should mean backing off, talking and sending in the next shift of officers."
Area resident Ardis Dahl said police did what they had to do.
"Oh, I don't blame them at all. They're doing this in the line of duty."
Wasylyshen said using a taser depends on the situation and is a decision made by the officer.
The tactical officers were sent home to rest after the shooting and returned to work late Wednesday for further interviews.
Homicide detectives are investigating the shooting and the force will conduct an operational review of events and an internal review about the use of force.
A provincial court judge will later conduct a public fatality inquiry to determine what happened and whether it could have been avoided.
Pavic is the third person to be shot and killed by an Edmonton police officer in the line of duty in 11 years.
Long Duy Hoang, a 28-year-old enforcer known on the streets as "Crazy Jimmy,'' was shot several times by three of six officers on Jan. 5, 2000. Hoang allegedly fired on the officers when stopped in a car on a west-end street.
In 1990, officers killed Erwin Harrison Adams, 27, after he threatened family members and police with knives.
Florence Loyie, Journal Staff Writer
The Edmonton Journal
Friday 18 May 2001
John Pavic poked his head around the corner at the top of the stairway into his apartment.
The police had forced open the door. They peered at him from across the threshold. Pavic jumped into full view at the top of the stairs, brandishing a butcher knife.
Drop the weapon, the officer said.
But he wouldn't.
The lead officer of the tactical unit fired his taser, which should have stopped Pavic cold by sending 60,000 volts through his central nervous system.
But it didn't.
Pavic jumped the constable at the top of the stairs. The officer lost his shield as they wrestled. Pavic still wielded his knife. The officer fired. Pavic was dead.
This is the picture Chief Bob Wasylyshen painted Thursday of the struggle that ended in the death of John Pavic, a 31-year-old man from Windsor, Ontario.
Police had little indication that the night would end so dramatically when Pavic called them to his apartment at 11453 40th Ave. Tuesday night at about 8:30 p.m.
He said he had been assaulted by a neighbour at a drinking party. When the officers arrived, he was belligerent and refused to talk. They left.
An hour-and-a-half later, someone called police about a man waving a knife and yelling threats. The same two officers responded, but Pavic went back to his suite and locked the door.
Get a warrant if you want to talk to me, he said.
The police checked him out in their computer system. Nothing came up -- they hadn't dealt with him before. A patrol sergeant tried by telephone to convince him to come out and talk to the police. Pavic hung up on the police and phoned the media instead.
"I'm a pretty good guy," he told a Journal reporter. "I didn't do nothing wrong. It's the cops, they've got guns."
The police got a warrant. The tactical unit tried one more time to persuade him to exit voluntarily.
He refused.
That began the life-and-death struggle that Pavic lost.
The constable, a 12-year veteran who has been with the tactical unit for four years, has not been named. Wasylyshyn wouldn't say how many shots were fired, but it was more than one.
Wasylyshen said there is no doubt the use of deadly force was appropriate.
"The constable's life was in danger," he said. "We are not talking about a situation where people are 10 feet apart. We are talking about two people basically on top of each other."
Police felt no need to use a stun grenade to disable Pavic. He was hostile, but seemed mostly concerned about whether the police had a warrant.
"Quite frankly, we did not expect the level of violence he exhibited once our officers went in."
Pavic was one of six children. His mother, Yaga, died of breast cancer 10 years ago.
His family wonders why police didn't wait until he had calmed down.
"Everybody was extremely shocked that happened," said his older sister, Maria. "Couldn't they have shot him in the leg or something?"
Wasylyshen said his officers made the best decisions they could given what they knew at the time."This is not an exact science," he said. "You use the best information you have, and generally speaking, 99.9 per cent of the time, things work out very well.
"But there is always an unknown factor, and we never know when that unknown factor will occur."
A fatality inquiry will be held.
Reprinted under the Fair Use doctrine of international copyright law.
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This page created July 15, 2001
