By Tristan Tuckett (@TristanTuckett on Twitter) / Dori Modney (@Dori_Modney on Twitter)

Lethbridge Use of Force Stats On-Par with Other Police Agencies

Feb 29, 2016 | 8:08 AM

LETHBRIDGE:  The Lethbridge Police Service (LPS) was able to resolve 99.6 percent of cases in 2015 without the use of force.

The information was presented at Police Commission on Wednesday (February 24th) as part of the Subject Behaviour-Officer Response Annual Report.

LPS officers used force on 131 subjects, with only one requiring hospital care. That particular case occurred when a teen was shot by an officer in west Lethbridge last year. 17 others suffered minor injuries.

Sergeant Jim Olsen talked about how the information is used by the service.

“We analyze that report – if we see that there is something that’s coming up with training that we need to address, we do it immediately and we address the training and what the issue is, so we can actually correct it.”

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Olsen said the stats were broken down for different areas of the city.

“The areas we were looking at were the south side where it (use of force) was 37 percent, it was 26 percent for the north and west sides, and Coaldale and the downtown area were 4 percent each.”

With force only being used in 0.3 percent of cases, that matches the number reported by Lethbridge Police in 2014, and is also comparable to other communities.