RCMP Watch

Glenn Kauth (Edmonton Sun) - Chief Mike Boyd has called in the RCMP to investigate after a man was shot while allegedly fleeing police yesterday morning.

The shooting left the man in serious but stable condition after police tracked down the truck he was riding in at a northside neighbourhood.

Early reports suggested the officer fired at the truck in self-defence as cops stopped it on Anthony Henday Drive south of Yellowhead Trail shortly before 1 a.m.

The truck, which was stolen, took off from the scene and evaded police until they found the Ford F-350 still running near a private roadway south of 176 Avenue near 97 Street.

A man who lives in the nearby house said he looked outside after hearing the commotion to see about 10 police cars on his property and police attempting to arrest the four people in the truck. It was then that officers discovered the man had been shot.

At the scene yesterday, a pile of clothes lay next to the driver’s-side door of the truck. The windshield was intact, and while the two front windows were down, the right side of the back window was shattered.

The rubber on the truck’s front-right tire had worn away, leaving it stuck in the snow.

Once they stopped the truck, police took the four people in it into custody, including the injured man who was taken to Royal Alexandra Hospital for treatment.

He remained in stable condition late yesterday afternoon, a hospital official confirmed. It’s not clear if he was driving the truck.

Boyd’s decision to turn the case over to the RCMP comes amid growing concerns over police investigating fellow cops.

In response to the criticism, the province recently moved to create a body, called the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team, to probe incidents where someone dies or is seriously hurt at the hands of police.

That office, headed up by a civilian director, won’t be up and running until January, however.

The RCMP, meanwhile, promised investigators “will apply diligence, professionalism and accountability” to the probe into yesterday’s shooting. Once it finishes its work, the RCMP then will turn the file over to a senior Crown prosecutor for a review, a process RCMP Cpl. Wayne Oakes couldn’t provide a timeline for yesterday.

Police weren’t answering questions about the circumstances of the shooting, though. It’s not clear, for example, whether or why an officer might have fired through the truck’s smashed rear window.

In July, police also called in the RCMP to probe Edmonton’s most recent cop shooting, which sent Janet Lapointe to hospital following an argument with her landlord.

Lapointe has bipolar disorder, a fact her relatives argued police should have taken into account before turning a gun on her as they intervened in the dispute at an Inglewood apartment building on July 6.

In that incident, police also said they shot in self-defence, a notion Lapointe’s family members reject.

And while Lapointe, who is in her late 50s, is preparing to leave the hospital next week, relatives say they’ve received almost no answers from police about the shooting.

“Who’s paying for this?” Lapointe’s niece Lynn McNeill said from her home in New Brunswick yesterday. “It’s like, ‘OK, we shot her. No big deal.’ I think that’s what frustrates us the most.”