Police investigating police: Does it work? (Part 6)

On the night of June 22, 2009, Ontario Provincial Police officer Jeff Seguin responded to a disturbance call at Douglas Minty's house in Elmvale, near Barrie, Ontario. A door-to-door salesman claimed Minty took a swing at him. The cop didn’t know that 59-year-old Minty was intellectually challenged when he arrived at the house. Minty had the oxygen cut off to his brain during childbirth. He moved cumbersomely and had poor dexterity.

Shortly after the constable arrived, Minty moved toward him holding a small pocketknife given to him as a keepsake.

OPP Constable Jeff Seguin unsnapped his holster and drew his Sig Sauer handgun with one bullet in the chamber and 12 more in the magazine. Then he shot Douglas Minty five times; once in the right leg, once in the left shoulder and three times in the torso. He pulled the trigger until Minty went down, his bottle-thick glasses crooked on his face and breaths quick and shallow. His mother ran from the house, screaming, “You shot my son! You shot my son!” Minty died at the scene.

Was the knife blade extended, or folded into its metallic casing? Seguin and the two water-heater salesmen at the house said it was open. That’s strange indeed because it was found closed after the shooting. The constable's story is that Minty, after being shot five times and near death, reached across his bullet-riddled body and closed the knife. If you believe that story, I have a bridge I want to sell you. It is called the Brooklyn Bridge.

Seguin's decision to draw and fire his pistol on that night, was the subject of what the Toronto Star found to be a half-hearted, police-friendly SIU investigation that cleared the constable and provided few answers for the Minty family.

Though Seguin wore a bulletproof vest and carried a baton and pepper spray, he did not use either. In his patchy and sometimes contradictory statement, the constable told the SIU: “I thought Minty might kill me.”

Seguin declined, through his lawyer, to speak to the Star. His lawyer, Andrew McKay, referred to the Star's ongoing series as being “inaccurate and inflammatory.” Of course, didn’t he think that his client’s story about the knife was inaccurate, did he?

A former OPP colleague of Seguin's, retired Constable Wayne Smith — who revealed to the Star that he was involved in a fatal shooting in 1997 and was cleared — said that he recalls Seguin as a junior officer who “wants to be involved in serious occurrences.” Smith said that on more than one occasion, Seguin walked around the police station brandishing a C8 assault rifle because he wanted “to get comfortable with it.” It would appear on the surface that Seguin is what we would call a ‘cowboy’ at the station. I would prefer to call him an immature police officer who still likes to play cowboys and Indians or sheriffs and bad guys.

Seguin gave his only statement about the shooting in the company of an OPP lawyer to two SIU investigators. The interview took place not at SIU headquarters but at the OPP union office in Barrie. It should have taken place at SIU headquarters where the officer would not be so comfortable telling his story. What the SIU did was no different that interrogating a man in his lawyer’s office. However, in SIU cases, such ‘subject officers’ do not have to give statements to the SIU. Seguin did so voluntarily and for good reason, the witnesses were not necessarily kind to him in their statements.

The Star obtained a recording of the interview, as well as audio from SIU interviews of the two main eyewitnesses, both door-to-door salesmen: David Parker and Kunal Arora. The salesmen were interviewed hours after the shooting, when details were fresh in their minds. Seguin was interviewed more than two months later.

One witness said that when Constable Seguin arrived in response to the salesman's 911 call and parked his cruiser on the street, Seguin saw Minty, a man the witness described as “elderly” and “short,” at the end of a long driveway, “patiently waiting” in the carport.

Seguin said that he started walking toward Minty until he saw Minty extend the two-inch blade from the pocket-knife and move toward him. That’s when Seguin unsnapped his holster and drew his Sig Sauer, and shot Minty dead. He said later, “He's walking towards me and he darts.” He said that was when he decided to shoot Minty.

Relying on the interview recordings, as well as SIU and OPP case reports, the Star's analysis has raised several key questions the SIU failed to conclusively answer.

Salesman Parker said Minty “looked like some kind of zombie,” that he “was walking fairly briskly” and that he “was just walking very purposefully with a knife.” I bet the salesman was spoken to by the police before he gave his statement. During the interview, Seguin alternately describes Minty as doing all three.

One eyewitness (he asked that he not be identified) told the Star that it appeared Minty's poor dexterity made it difficult for him to slow his walk on the downward-sloping driveway.

His brother John said later, “Doug was truly just a really nice man. He worked his entire life on the farm with my father and myself. He would help neighbours. He looked after my mom to a great extent ... He was responsible for taking out the garbage, cleaning the driveway. He enjoyed the simple things. I never saw Doug angry.”

Minty's brother wonders if the salesman's two unsolicited visits made Doug feel threatened or defensive for his 82-year-old mother.

There were a number of mistakes made by both the salesman and the police officer. The salesman had made several unwanted visits to the house. When told to leave, he should have left immediately and not returned. Douglas Minty swung at him but he didn’t hit him.

Admittedly, even swinging your fist at someone constitutes an assault in Canada but what does the salesman do? He calls the police. He should have simply walked away and leave it at that. But his actions of calling the police resulted in Minty be shot to death by a police officer who should have never been hired by any police force at all. We don’t need or want ‘cowboys’ in our police forces.

Constable Jeff Seguin should have backed off. There is a good chance that Minty would then have stopped approaching him. Seguin could then use the pepper spray he had with him. Instead, Seguin pulls out his gun and Bam, Bam, Bam, Bam, Bam.“Gotcha, ya ornery bandit. Hey pilgrim. Us sheriffs don’t use pepper spray." They quick draw their guns and shoot first and ask questions later. This cop's actions were no different than those of children when they are playing sheriffs and bad guys.

This raises three rhetorical questions. (1) Do we need cowboys like Seguin in our police forces? (2) If this cowboy had to shoot Minty, why didn’t he shoot him in his legs instead? (3) Isn’t it time that we replace the SIU with something better? Here are my three rhetorical answers. (1) No. (2) Because he’s stupid. (3) Yes.