A gun that shoots hard, plastic batons intended to cause pain but not to kill was the best tool for officers responding to a report of a woman said to be armed with a knife and barricaded in a room on fire, a Victoria police officer testified Wednesday.
Retired judge Wally Oppal is presiding over the hearing to determine whether Kirkwood intentionally or recklessly used unnecessary force in shooting Rauch with the ARWEN and whether he failed to meet department standards for documenting incidents in which an officer uses force that results in death or serious injury.
Officers initially decided to try to persuade Rauch to leave the unit on her own and were awaiting the arrival of crisis negotiators, but the situation became urgent when smoke was seen coming out of the unit’s window and the fire alarm went off, Stephen said. If police did not attempt to gain access to the unit to put out the fire, everyone in the building would be at risk, he said. But if officers went in, they would put themselves at risk, because Rauch had access to a knife and had shown animosity to the police, Woodall said.
Chris Considine, counsel for the police complaint commissioner asked Stephen why an ARWEN was used instead of other options, such as bean-bag gun or a Taser. “Obviously if we’re not able to see through smoke, we’re not going to throw a flashbang into the suite, because even though it’s not designed to cause pain or cause injury, it can,” he testified.“I can’t speak for the deployment, but that would be a sighted deployment,” Stephen replied.
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