This evening, we contacted Police Commissioner Chester Williams for comment on the allegations raised by this family.
The Commissioner was on the road, but did share his views with us on the incident. He told us that Professional Standards Branch is investigating the officers to assess their conduct while they were responding to this family's call for help:
Voice of: Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police
"He was instructed by the officers to put down the weapons as they feared approaching him and he refused to do so. According to the officers he did not seem to be in a normal state at that moment and rubber bullets to be use to subdue him. The amount of rubber bullets is not 200 as stipulated by the mother in her report. Professional Standard Branch have been tasked to look at the issue for us to be able to ascertain whether or not the forced use was justified or excessive, so it is an issue that we certainly are looking at and this is one of the reasons why I have always said that I am reluctant to have our officers respond to situations where it involves people with some mental condition, because the outcome most of the family members are not happy with, even though they would be the one to call the police and police would go in support of them. The end result is for the most part not accepted by the family members and it puts our officers in a position where they have to be investigated and if it turns out that they overacted or use excessive force, then they are dealt with when in fact we have tried out utmost best to work with the ministry of health in responding to cases like these and then the police would just be a support to the ministry of health as opposed to just officers responding. It is something we need look at, we do have a policy on it and obviously the police officers did not follow the policy, because they ought not to have responded without ministry of health. Again, I believe that they did so in good faith trying to help the family members who obviously needed the assistance of the police at that moment, so it's a balance that we must strike and the investigation will be concluded very shortly and then we see how we proceed from there."
Joshua Smith's family says that the doctors won't know if his eyesight was affected by the shooting until after the swelling on his face subsides. That will take several days of recovery.
