Police shootings in B.C. skyrocket in 2022

Police shootings increased by almost 80 per cent last year in British Columbia.

In 2022 in B.C. 23 people were shot by police, a significant increase from the 13 shot the year before.

Statistics show that police in B.C. were involved in more shootings than in any other province.

Ontario came second with 22 shootings, although it has three times the population of B.C. at 15 million.

Alberta was the third highest in the country with police in that province shooting 15 people.

Across the country, Canadian police shot 87 people, of which 46 died.

READ MORE: Expert warns of 'perfect storm' as the number of police shootings increases in 2022

The numbers show a 25 per cent increase over 2021 when Canadian police shot 70 people of which 37 were killed.

In the Thompson Okanagan RCMP shot and killed one individual in 2022.

In August, Kamloops RCMP shot and killed an individual who, after a stand-off with police, left a trailer brandishing a weapon and holding a child.

Police shot and killed the man and the child was not injured.

In December 2022, B.C.'s police watchdog, the Independent Investigations Office, opened a file after a driver was allegedly shot and killed by police in Creston.

The watchdog said that the officer approached a pickup truck parked in a driveway in the middle of the night when the truck reversed and hit the officer.

The officer fired his weapon in return and the driver was found in his truck in a ditch suffering a gunshot wound soon afterwards. He died at the scene.

The police watchdog is currently investigating the case.

In the U.S., 1,084 were shot and killed by police in 2022, according to the Washington Post. Even accounting for the larger population, this is more than twice the number of people killed by police than in Canada.

However, Canada doesn't compare well to the U.K. where just three people were killed by police in 2022 according to U.K. charity Inquest.

Separate from police shootings, there were more people killed in homicides or suspicious circumstances in 2022 in Kamloops and the Okanagan than the year before.

Fourteen people were killed in Kamloops, Kelowna, Vernon, and Penticton in 2022. The majority of these cases remain unsolved.

— With files from the Canadian Press

READ MORE: 14 homicides, suspicious deaths in Kamloops, Okanagan in 2022

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