Posted Aug 31, 2022, 5:48 PM
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Peddling to progress
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Join Date: Jul 2019
Location: Vancouver's West End
Posts: 1,631
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Bear Sprayed, Chris Amyotte Was in Agony. Then, Shot Dead by Police
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Downtown Eastside residents, a former solicitor general and the family of a man who died after being shot by police with beanbag rounds say they and the wider community need answers to how a victim of a bear spray attack ended up dead on East Hastings Street.
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“He never came at anyone to try to choke anybody or nothing,” Anuroff said. “He had his hands up and he was going ‘aaahhhh!’ — like freaking out.”
Several police cars arrived on the scene and officers ordered Amyotte to stop walking and to get down, said Anuroff and Boss. He didn’t comply and kept walking away from the officers, but Boss said he wasn’t moving quickly — “he was just kind of shuffling,” she said.
“And we said ‘don’t shoot him, don’t shoot him,’” recalled Anuroff.
Officers then fired around five shots, Anuroff said, with some of the beanbag rounds hitting him in the front of his torso and other shots hitting him in the back.
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It’s extremely painful to be the target of a bear mace attack — often people can’t see, breathing might be difficult if they’ve breathed in the spray, and it’s so irritating to the skin that victims often strip off their clothes in an effort to get some relief.
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Anuroff said she believes Amyotte didn’t comply with police orders because he physically could not do what they were asking.
“He doesn’t want to stop, because once you stop you get hot,” Anuroff said.
After seeing the aftermath of over a dozen bear spray attacks, Ribeiro said it would have been almost impossible for someone covered in mace to get down on the ground and lie still. He wants to know if the Vancouver Police Department has a specific policy or training when it comes to responding to people who have been bear sprayed.
“People cannot lie down and comply with orders,” Ribeiro said. “You’re going to be writhing, wiping at your face. You can’t lie on your back.”
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Beanbag rounds are fired from a shotgun, which is usually marked with a fluorescent orange, pink or red barrel. The gun fires a bag filled with small pieces of metal shot which is supposed to hit an assailant but not pierce their body, as a bullet would.
It’s part of the range of “less-lethal” options — including tasers and batons — police have to try to subdue a person who’s a threat to others. But, Heed said, these options are called “less lethal,” not “non-lethal,” because there’s always a chance the targeted person can be hurt, including simply falling and hitting their head.
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There have been incidents where beanbag rounds have penetrated people’s bodies, and they can be especially dangerous if they hit someone’s head.
A review of injuries from beanbag shootings during Black Lives Matter protests in Austin, Texas, in 2020 found that beanbag rounds caused serious head injuries, facial fractures and “penetrating soft tissue injury to chest and breast” when a beanbag round pierced the skin, as well as lacerations and broken bones. In a letter to the editor of The New England Journal of Medicine, doctors who had compiled the list of injuries said beanbag guns should not be used for crowd control.
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“I just think there needs to be a different procedure in place,” said mental health worker Ribeiro about the deadly force that took Amyotte’s life. “It’s such a common incident down there, I’m a little surprised (police) don’t have more awareness about it. Even if they just gave the guy time and let people help him.”
Boss spoke to officers after the shooting, and one of them told her Amyotte had passed away.
She says she told the officers, “‘Yo, can I just say something? Maybe next time, instead of you guys just shooting a man that’s covered in bear spray… and isn’t going fast, maybe you could talk to your peers about having some sort of policy where you don’t shoot.’”
Two hours after Amyotte’s life ended someone had posted, just outside the police tape, a sign printed with a black marker on white poster board.
“VPD killing the community one by one,” it read. “Who’s next?”
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