IIO BC investigating after fatal shooting involving police in Surrey

DAWSON CREEK, B.C. – A witness video has emerged and appears to show the aftermath of a fatal RCMP shooting outside a public hearing for the contentious Site C dam in Dawson Creek, B.C.

A Twitter account associated with the group posted screenshots showing the site’s server status as “down”.

RCMP said despite attempts to de-escalate the situation, there was a confrontation and the unidentified man was shot and later died in hospital.

British Columbia’s police watchdog is investigating its second police shooting in three days after officers killed a distressed man in Surrey early Saturday, sparking alarm from civil liberties advocates.

The group took to social media claiming to have crashed parts of the RCMP website.

“We will certainly avenge one of our own when they are cut down in the streets while protesting the earth-wrecking environmental policies of the Canadian government”, the voice states. Dave Attfield, Surrey RCMP operations officer, said in a release.

“The cops just… shot this guy,” says a man in a profanity-filled narrative as he records the video. We will ensure that he is never forgotten, and takes his place in the growing ledger of courageous Anonymous martyrs around the world. Investigators have not confirmed any link between the social media posts and the incident. However, police insisted that the man wearing the Guy Fawkes mask, was in fact carrying a knife.

One officer appears to kick something away from the man although the object can not be seen. Kilpatrick said a knife was recovered along with other physical evidence. It has not confirmed the authenticity of the smartphone video.

Instead, when police arrived in response to the disturbance complaint, they came into contact with a different man.

It remains unclear if the Anonymous hacker group was responsible for the outage.

Anonymous has no identifiable leadership but online posters who say they’re members have claimed responsibility in the past for hacking incidents including the shutdown of the city of Cleveland’s website last fall.

What is a denial of service attack?

The IIO has responded to six officer-involved shootings in B.C. since the beginning of April, including in Vancouver, Burnaby, Salmon Arm and Port Hardy.

The threat, which is referred to as “doxing” online, typically involves outing all of a target’s personal information, leaving them vulnerable to cyberattacks and shaming from the community at large.

“I don’t know what this subject officer intends to do”, she said.