Edmonton Police Watch

CBC NEWS

Using a Taser to subdue a man at an Edmonton toy store on Boxing Day likely averted a standoff, police Chief Mike Boyd said.

Officers used the stun gun on a man after he ran into the Toys “R” Us store on Gateway Boulevard wielding a knife.

The incident began at a nearby motel when police tried to arrest a 39-year-old man on a Canada-wide warrant.

The man gave police a false name but he didn’t realize that that name also had outstanding warrants. When he realized his mistake, he bolted from police and ran across a busy highway toward the toy store packed with holiday shoppers.

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EDMONTON JOURNAL

EDMONTON – An Edmonton police officer received a 90-hour suspension without pay and a reprimand Thursday after having three disciplinary counts proven against him.

Const. Jan Cichon, 55, was charged with neglect of duty, excessive force and insubordination in connection with an Aug. 20, 2005 incident.

Cichon was working at the Norwood community police station that day when Scott Kurie and his friends knocked on the door. Amidst a large crowd leaving an Edmonton Eskimo game, Kurie told Cichon his friend had been assaulted and needed help.

Cichon told them to leave because the station was closed, Kurie told the hearing in November.

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EDMONTON JOURNAL

EDMONTON – Alberta’s information and privacy commissioner has ordered the Edmonton Police Service to tell a man exactly how many times they ran his name through the CPIC national police database.

The man, whose identity could not be released, asked the EPS in July 2005 for the number of times they ran his name through the computerized system in the past 10 years, privacy commissioner Frank Work said in the order dated Dec. 11, 2007. Later that year, the police sent the man a chart with dates and times his name had been searched. The man then asked for a review of the police response and for the reasons they had used his personal information, but the police refused, citing legislation that protects law enforcement activities.

The order says Work met with police in a closed meeting to discuss the case, but did not agree with their arguments as to why they investigated the man. He also did not agree that police disclosure on the matter could have harmed a law enforcement issue, because the police only gave him “hypothetical situations.”

The commissioner is still awaiting submissions from both parties on whether the police had the authority to use the man’s personal information in the first place.

The police were given 50 days to let the man know if there were other records. EPS had no comment.

EDMONTON SUN

City cops were ordered yesterday by the privacy commissioner to release portions of a training video, entitled EPS Canine Unit: Life’s Short, Bite Hard.

The Edmonton Police Service refused to release the video about a year ago when the Criminal Trial Lawyers’ Association asked for it.

Police argued that it depicted tactics and strategies that might be classified as “investigative techniques and procedures in law enforcement.”

This forced the lawyers’ group to use the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act to obtain a copy of the video.

Teresa Cunningham, an adjudicator with the privacy commissioner’s office, ruled that some portions of the video could be released without any harm to law enforcement.

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