Police Interventions – Statistics and Trends

From 2017 to 2019, the RCMP entered an average of 2.93 million occurrences per year into RCMP records management systems.
Over this time period, each year there were on average 2,215 encounters involving reportable applications of police interventionFootnote1. Applications of police intervention account for 0.08% of the total number of RCMP occurrences, or one encounter involving police intervention for every 1322 occurrences. This indicates that approximately 99.9% of RCMP encounters are resolved naturally or successfully de-escalated by officers without the need for police intervention.

Application of Police Intervention Occurrence Rate

Application of Police Intervention Occurrence Rate
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Application of Police Intervention Occurrence Rate


 

Application of Police Intervention Occurrence Rate
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Breakdown of Police Intervention Options (including use as deterrent – e.g., draw & display) by Year

Officer Response Utilized

Deployment Type

 

Year

 

2017

2018

2019

Total

Count

Count

Count

Count

Physical Control - Soft

Pressure Points
Joint Locks
Escort/Come-Along Techniques
Takedown

20
58
86 251

11
77
99 206

12
54 110
205

43 189
295
662

Physical Control - Hard

Stuns/Strikes
Vascular Neck Restraint (Vnr) Takedown

649
25 291

707
22 276

718
25 275

2074
72 842

Oc Spray

Draw And Display
Pointed At Subject Applied

9
10 333

4
11 303

8
13 289

21
34 925

Conducted Energy Weapon

Laser Sight Activated
Spark Display Activated
Contact Mode Deployed
Probe Deployed
Draw And Display
Pointed At Subject

119
8
67 454
152
305

89
2
75 449
150
301

109
4
84 535
202
389

317
14
226
1438 504
995

Baton

Draw And Display
Pointed At Subject Applied

14
0 44

16
0 24

12
1 37

42
1 105

Extended Range Impact Weapon

Draw And Display
Pointed At Subject Applied

2
5
3

19
14
19

8 28
28

29
47
50

Speciality Munitions

 

25

44

48

117

Police Firearm

Draw And Display Pointed At Subject

1001
1688

908
1830

1153
1923

3062
5441

Other

 

35

48

50

133

Police Service Dog

Presence Only
Track Only Bite

141
232
409

169
171
461

194
189
421

504
592 1291

Note: Occurrences can involve more than one intervention options/methods (i.e., multiple officer using interventions options/methods or one officer using multiple intervention options/methods). Physical control soft is only required to be reported when it resulted in an injury to the subject or the officer; however, some officers opt to report it without injury to demonstrate an (de-)escalation in force. This table excludes officer-involved shootings, which are reported separately on the following page.

Officer-Involved Shootings

From 2017 to 2019, RCMP officers were involved in 99 officer-involved shootings (an average of 33 per year), of which 26 (an average of nine per year) resulted in the death of the subjectFootnote2.
From 2017 to 2019, RCMP officers discharged a firearm in 0.001 per cent of RCMP occurrences — or one in approximately 89,000 occurrences.
From 2017 to 2019, RCMP officers discharged a firearm resulting in a fatality, in 0.0003 per cent of RCMP occurrences — or one in approximately 338,000 occurrences.

Member-Involved Shootings at Subjects - Occurrence Rate
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Member-Involved Shootings at Subjects - Occurrence Rate


Footnotes

  1. 1

    Excluding incidents where an intervention was drawn and displayed, as a deterrent only.

  2. 2

    Excludes deaths resulting from self-inflicted injury.

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