I don’t generally have much positive to say about the Ontario Special Investigations Unit, but I do today. Late on September 4th, 2010, Sault Ste. Marie police were called to an apartment by a 9-1-1 call. When they arrived, one officer entered the apartment to find a man on top of a woman, knife in hand. She was bleeding from stab wounds she’d already suffered.
The officer told the man to drop the knife and move away from the woman. Seems he didn’t hear too well, and turned toward the officer, knife in hand. For his act of gross stupidity he got shot. Rightly so too, if you ask me.
As Sean Connery so famously said, “Never bring a knife to a gunfight.”
This guy did, and paid the price for that poor judgment. Got shot right in the ass. You’ll have to forgive me for finding that really funny.
Usually it seems that Ontario’s SIU does it’s best to avoid charging cops who’ve injured or killed civilians.
It’s really nice to see they didn’t have to do that in this case.
And this is probably one of the few times where I’ll agree that the officer being investigated should have remained on active duty.
SIU Director Ian Scott said, “The results of the investigation support the inference that the subject officer may be justified under s. 27 of the Criminal Code in shooting Mr. Syrette because he represented an imminent threat of death or grievous harm to the woman. Alternatively, given Mr. Syrette’s turning motion in the direction of the subject officer, the subject officer may have been justified in the use of potentially lethal force under ss. 34(2) of the Criminal Code due to an imminent threat to himself.”
Kudo’s to this officer for doing what he needed to do to save both the woman who’d already been stabbed, and possibly himself, from this jerk.
The jerk in question, Christopher Syrette, was charged with attempted murder, assault with a weapon, threatening death and breach of probation. Yup, just another model citizen that our [in]justice system likes to ignore. This time it almost cost a woman her life.
Good thing the cops arrived in time, isn’t it.
Leave a Reply