** Warning: This story has explicit language **
The police watchdog has cleared a Chase RCMP officer after an Indigenous teenager tried to take her own life minutes after speaking to him.
The Independent Investigations Office of B.C. had been investigating an incident from about 12:05 p.m. on Oct. 2, 2020, where a girl had jumped off of the Pine Street bridge, landing on the beach in front of the South Thompson River.
While surviving the incident, the girl needed a six-hour surgery to repair fractures to her pelvis and spine, as well as lacerations and other injuries, and needed significant treatment afterwards.
According to a report released today, the girl involved was between the ages of 16 and 18 and was Indigenous, and the IIO says the bridge jumping was her third suicide attempt on that day.
An officer had initially responded to a report that a young woman had thrown herself in front of a vehicle on Pine Street. When the officer arrived, the woman did not appear to be in distress or impaired, and denied being the person involved in the report and refused to speak to the cop. Callers to police reported the woman had “pretended” to jump in front of the vehicle, and another caller said it would be hard to locate the person involved, saying it was lunch hour for students and there were lots of kids around.
The report says the interaction lasted less than a minute before the girl walked away, wearing socks but not shoes, and the officer left. Five minutes later, Chase RCMP were called about a woman jumping from the bridge, who was later determined to be the same girl the officer had talked to.
Made worse in the response to the bridge-jumping incident was the two officers were stuck behind a train at a rail crossing on their way back to the area.
“I just fucking talked to her too,” one of the responding officers said, who moments earlier had said the girl did not give her name. He added other young people at that scene had said she fell in front of the car and “didn’t know if she was playing around.” He was later described by his colleagues as being “quite upset” about the outcome of the incident.
In its report, the IIO spoke to the girl involved, who told investigators she had tried to drown herself in a creek, not long before the vehicle incident and the subsequent bridge jumping.
The girl said she was reluctant to speak to the arriving officer and told him to “fuck off,” suggesting that the officer “lacked the proper training to deal with such situations.”
In its conclusion, the IIO said there was not reasonable grounds to believe the officer committed an offense. Chief civilian officer Ronald MacDonald says he considered whether the officer may have been negligent in his response, which could’ve been a causal link to the girl’s injuries.
“When (the officer encountered (the girl) on the street, the only information he had was that a young Indigenous woman had fallen, jumped or perhaps pretended to jump in front of a passing vehicle,” MacDonald says.
“He had an incomplete description… In those circumstances, without more specific information about an actual intent to cause herself harm, he had no lawful grounds to detain (the girl) if she did not wish to stop and talk with him.”
