911 call summoning Ottawa police to wrong address leaves mother, 4 kids shaken

An Ottawa family's interaction with police after a 911 call that mistakenly brought officers to their home is once again raising questions about officers' involvement in wellness checks and the way they enter private homes.

Around 5:45 a.m. ET on Wednesday, city policeresponded toa call about a potentially suicidal man.

Thecall was about a man "threatening self-harm," but the female caller gave thewrong address, say police.

They narrowed downthe call's location to within 25 metresand entered a home on Montgomery Street in the city's Vanier neighbourhood, but itwas the wrong house.

In their search for the distressed man, Nadia Ngoto saidpolice walked into her home without permission.

"I didn't hear them announce themselves," said Ngoto, 38. "I have four children and one roommate, and not one person heard police announce themselves."

Family 'terrified'

She saidpolice first walked to the back of the house, andknocked on her 11-year-old son Armaan's bedroom windowwith their flashlights and startled him awake.

"I was scared because I don't have the best experience with officers and I didn't really know what was going on and everybody in my house was asleep, so I was pretty terrified," said Armaan, who saidhe saw three officers by his window.

He saidhe wanted to leave the room to get his older brother, but was told not to move. The officer asked about the address of the home and its layout, Armaan said, but hecouldn't remember the address because the familyhad just moved intwo months earlier.

• When Police Don't Knock

CBCNews asked Ottawa police if waking up the child was considered "announcing their presence."

"Front-line officers attended this home and spoke to a young resident through a window," the Ottawa Police Service said in an email."Simultaneously, other frontline officers entered through the unlocked front door, announcing themselves before and during their entry."

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Around the same timeArmaan was being questioned, Ngoto's oldest son,Ozzy, was awakened by heavy footsteps walking acrosswooden floors. He could see the flashlights shining through the cracks of his bedroom door.

"I proceeded with caution and opened my door," said Ozzy. "I saw this tall figure ... and he turns around, and he has this huge-ass gun in his handand starts asking me all these types of questions about someone named Carlos who I didn't know."

He saida flashlight was shone in his face and he could see what looked like a long gun at the officer's hip level.

"You don't expect to see armed men in your home. I assumed it was an accidental call [that]someone tipped them off about a drug charge and they got the wrong address."

Ozzy says he was even more disturbed when officers told him they were there for a suicide wellness check.

"That threw me off even more. That doesn't seem to de-escalate things," said Ozzy. He estimates there were at least 10 officers in his home.

Ozzy says police said "sorry" as they exited after realizing they had the wrong house, butbefore they left officers did a "sweep" of the house and barged into the upstairs bedroom of a 70 year-old family friend. Ozzyestimates they were in the home for about 15 minutes.

Questioning police wellness checks

ACBC analysis of deadly police encounters show that the majority of the victims suffer from mental illness or substance abuse. Black and Indigenous people are also disproportionately killed in police encounters.

They told my son "Don't move"... Would he have gotten shot for not listening to instructions?- Nadia Ngoto, mother

Kevin Walby, a criminologist at the University of Winnipeg, saidpast fatalities show why police should not be engaged in mental health calls. He saidresources should instead be put into solutions that turn health workers and community advocates into first responders to these types of calls.

"If we reimagine the way we respond to distress, re-imagine the way we respond to transgression so that so we're not defaulting to policing all the time, butinstead empower these community groups that have so much passion to keep people safe then I think we would be in a situation where people don't have to worry about getting killed by police," he said.

Walby finds it particularly galling that the incident at the Ngoto family homeoccurred just two days after Ottawa police Chief Peter Sloly announced a temporary ban on "dynamicentries" involvingsearches for disposable evidence, such as drugs. The force has come under fire for several cases of misconduct related to no-knock raids revealed by the The Fifth Estate.

He wonders if there is a disconnect between the police executive and the rank and file.

• Ottawa Police temporarily bansno-knock dynamic entries

Walby saidjudges have ruledthat a police announcement of entry has to be "loud and clear and have some duration. And it doesn't seem like any of that was there [in this case]."

Despite Ozzy Ngoto's account of seeing officers with long guns, Ottawa police say this was a wellness check and not a dynamic entry. The force says its tactical officers did not enter the home, although they were called in later to support the search for the potentially suicidal man.

Police didn't find the distressed man that night, butNadia Ngoto saidher family has been retraumatized.

For several years, the Congolese-Canadianlived in shelters with her children after fleeing domestic violence. Ngotoand her foursons have had negative experiences with police involving racial profiling, she said.

"If any of us made the wrong move, we would have been the ones in trouble or dead.

"They told my 11-year-old son, 'Don't move, don't move.' So what if he turned his back and left his room? Would he have gotten shot for not listening to police instructions? Those are questions I don't want to know. It's a nightmare."

For more stories about the experiences of Black Canadians from anti-Black racism to success stories within the Black community check out Being Black in Canada, a CBC project Black Canadians can be proud of. You can read more stories here.