Witnesses, video wanted after officer shoots driver of stolen car

Provincial investigators are looking for witnesses and videos of a confrontation in an alley that ended in a police officer shooting the driver of a stolen vehicle.

The Alberta Serious Incident Response Team (ASIRT), which investigates officer-involved shootings, asked for help from the public in a Friday statement.

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ASIRT also released more details about what happened in the moments before the officer shot the driver in the southeast neighbourhood of Dover at around 7 p.m. on Thursday.

Two officers, who were investigating a stolen Honda Civic, had asked for back up, but ended up approaching the vehicle on their own when they spotted it in an alley in the3800 block of30th Avenue S.E.

"When the officers pulled up to the Civic in their marked police vehicle, it reversed and struck the left front side of the police cruiser," ASIRT said.

Officer reached into the car

One officer walked up to the driver's-side window and tried to speak to the 20-year-old man, who was alone in the car.

"(The officer) reached into the car in an attempt to put it in park. An altercation occurred between the man and the officer. During the struggle, the man was able to put the Civic into motion while the officer's upper body was in the vehicle. Ultimately, the officer was dislodged from the moving vehicle," investigators said.

"While this was going on, a second officer had moved to the passenger side of the Civic as it continued to move and fired his service pistol. As a result, the driver was injured, lost control of the vehicle and crashed into a nearby garbage bin."

The officer dragged by the car had minor injuries. When more officers and paramedics arrived, the driver of the stolen vehicle was given emergency medical attention and arrested. He is still in hospital in stable condition, according to ASIRT.

ASIRT investigators are asking witnesses and those with video to contact them at403-592-4306.

Opioid addiction driving crime

There have been approximately 4,000 vehicle thefts so far this year and some, especially involving guns or drugs, are becoming "incredibly chaotic events," said chief Roger Chaffin.

A Calgary criminologist says opioid addictions are behind the increasingly dangerous crime police officers face these days.

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Doug King,a criminal justice professor at Mount Royal University, saidcrime is up across the countryand he attributes that to the funnelling of opioids into Canada.

"When you add the dynamics of opioid addictions and people are now turning quite desperate on the street related to these addictions that does up the ante to make something quite unpredictable and potentially very dangerous."